Best value and a satisfied client

The answer is that it rarely can be without concerted efforts by knowledgeable and willing participants to overcome the inherent deficiencies in that process. The advice here must be 'caveat emptor'; select the design build contractor with care and ensure the rest of the team are prepared to be flexible and understanding to overcome the shortcomings.

However, I am pleased to be able to tell him that his problem has long since been solved by design build contractors entering into collaborative partnerships with knowledgeable and understanding clients at inception stage. A number of financial/contractual models exist to enable this to be done and they allow close involvement of client end user, designer and constructor, and also plant and material suppliers through respective supply chains, to deliver projects which meet users needs at optimal cost and on time.

My own company has been involved in this type of work for more than twenty five years and it has been gratifying to see that following Latham, albeit slowly, there has been a wider and increasing acceptance that confrontational competitive contracting based on tendering against 'designs' whether 'outline' or 'full specification' will inevitably deliver a curate's egg of a project to the client. Further, the increasing invidious practice of asking the contractor to underwrite and accept a design prepared by others, so the client pays for the design risk twice and, more, can only bring the process further into disrepute.