Can we rethink co-ordination

But as we all know, this is not how things are done. All too often elements of a building are designed in isolation, and the quality of information that passes between consultants and contractors is highly variable and open to misinterpretation. The result? A contractual quagmire and dysfunctional building services.

So how can m&e co-ordination be more clearly defined? Should consultants be limited to performance duties, with m&e contractors doing the full detailed design? If so, should m&e contractors be appointed at the scheme design stage? To answer some of these questions Building Services Journal and cost consultant Gardiner & Theobald held a brainstorm with designers and construction consultants.

The participants were Tony Smith, a partner with cost consultant Gardiner and Theobald (which hosted the meeting), Jim McElligott, principal of cost consultant The McElligott Partnership, Steve Pomeroy, building services financial manager with John Laing Construction, John Grounds, a partner with quantity surveyor Currie & Brown, Paul Bradley of consulting engineer Troup Bywaters & Anders, Lewis Robertson of construction consultant Northcroft, David Somerset, md of construction consultant Haley Somerset Consulting and David Chelmick, an expert witness and a director of the MDA Group.

The root cause of poor m&e co-ordination

Roderic Bunn: It seems to me that the problem of m&e design co-ordination starts early in the construction process. What are the contributory factors?

David Chelmick: The first thing a client needs to find out is: "What kind of building do I need?" Most clients are ignorant of their priorities. Is it time, money or the best possible quality? Most clients want all three. So the most important thing is not the brief, but identifying the client's key requirements.

Tony Smith: The process starts to go wrong when the client nominates a person to be his closest advisor, such as an architect or a project manager. These people have little clue about m&e design and co-ordination. Those who do, like m&e consultants and contractors, are involved after major decisions have already been made and relationships formed.

David Chelmick: By the time you get the m&e guy on board, the client's advisor has already told the client that the floors will be 2·7 m apart with full air conditioning. Then the m&e consultant comes along, and because the consultant wants the work, he agrees without question, and the thing starts to fall apart.

Tony Smith: The lead advisor should recognise when space will be a problem, and that should affect the procurement route.

Jim McElligott: Is there a title you could give to a person that would give a clear signal to client that would say: "That guy is not just an architect, not just an engineer, but the first person I need to contact that will lead me to all the others?"

David Chelmick: It used to be the architect.

Lewis Robertson: Now it is a project manager, management contractor or construction manager.

David Chelmick: Which is what the architect gave up to do pretty design.

Roderic Bunn: The success of projects like the Elizabeth Fry Building was partially due to an enthusiastic and involved client and an old fashioned Clerk of Works. So are we breeding the wrong kind of project manager? If so, what do we need instead?

Tony Smith: Many project managers are not capable of advising on 50% of the problems and the cost on a project. They haven't got a clue about fit-out, shell and core services and all the associated problems. You need a consultant to do that. Project managers tend to think of m&e services merely as a provisional sum, and some way down the track.

Jim McElligott: We already have construction managers, but they need to incorporate all the other elements. It should really be called design and construction management.

Paul Bradley: Yes, but many construction managers are basically contractors acting as postboxes for everyone else.

David Chelmick: Yes, I don't see the relevance of that to the industry, it's just another layer. We don't need it, and can't afford it.

“Consultants and contractors are only involved after major decisions have been made and relationships formed”

Tony Smith

Paul Bradley: Yes, but the vast majority of projects are lay clients who are not going to appoint a proper construction manager.

John Grounds: No, not as clients currently understand and perceive the role.

Tony Smith: The procurement processes as they are currently written do not recognise it.

David Chelmick: The best project manager is not someone who knows about construction, but one who has one million percent commonsense, one percent knowledge and the ability to listen.

Lewis Robertson: You get team builders in other industries, and they involve building a team spirit, usually for a partnering project.

David Chelmick: It's project management generally, the teaching of non-construction related project management skills. It's not a glorified quantity surveyor who can't add up, and it's not an engineer who can't engineer. What we are talking about here is a person with proper communication skills who can identify what his client actually wants and understand the technical requirements and procure them...

Tony Smith:...and come to the table without preconceived ideas.

Lewis Robertson: Someone with good interpersonal skills, not necessarily from a construction background.

The engineering problems

John Grounds: Sir John Egan said that the Japanese take two years to design and one year to build. In this country we take one year to design and two years to build.

David Chelmick: And three years to sort the claims out. But how many clients do we know that once they have bought the site, want to start, quick-quick-quick? And we say: "Yeah, OK guv". And then having spent all this money on services there is no time to commission it because you have used up all the time and money dealing with the variations.

David Somerset: But even with a long programme period, if the job is not designed properly you can still have huge problems at the end. Lack of thought is just as bad as having no time.

Paul Bradley: But 70-80% of construction disputes centre on time and information. When the contractor finds things don't fit, arguments start over responsibilities, the contractor doesn't want to do it and the whole thing collapses.

Jim McElligott: Co-ordination is about choice, and who chooses to do what. If a duct has been put in a certain location at a certain height, you must be able to rely on that, unless the person doing the drawing says: "Do not rely on that". The same is true of a fan coil.

David Chelmick: But if you choose a fan coil, then you must identify all the problems that go with it.

Jim McElligott: Yes, and the consequence is that whoever makes the choice owns the problems.

David Chelmick: If it costs £100 000 to buy the fan coils but another £100 000 to fit the fan coils, then you have to take that on board as well.

Jim McElligott: Yes, but that means analysing problems after the event, and disputes and so on. You have to pre-empt that kind of thing.

“You can’t say ‘I am the designer’, and then pass the co-ordination down the line”

John Grounds

Tony Smith: It's never covered in contracts.

Jim McElligott: No, you get fuzzy terms that can mean different things to different people. To main contractors, co-ordination means everything is down to the subcontractor.

John Grounds: But if you are talking about responsibility for design co-ordination, you are in fact talking about design responsibility. You can't say: "I am the designer", and then pass the co-ordination down the line.

Jim McElligott: It's a continuation.

John Grounds: No it isn't, you take design responsibility than pass design co-ordination down the line. If, for example, you change the ductwork aspect ratio, you have to check that the fan sizes are still suitable. Ergo: design.

Jim McElligott: But if the duct was sized in the first place, it should have fitted in where it was. But if you change the ratio of the duct, it may have been because it didn't fit. That's a correction.

David Chelmick: Yes but that is still design. And it may impact upon the fan. A lot of the responsibility is passed to the contractor. You can't make that design decision because you don't know how many bends it is going to have in it and it affects the size of the pump. Which is why consultants say to contractors: "make it work".

Roderic Bunn: But when an amended drawing comes back for signing off, do you have time to wind back through all your design criteria?

Paul Bradley: You would make a judgment based on engineering skill. But if the contractor changes something, he adopts the responsibility for it.

Jim McElligott: That depends whether it is a change which is purely voluntary or of necessity. Contractually, if it is not your obligation to correct the design, contractually you could demand a solution from the consultant.

Paul Bradley: I have had problems in the past where the contractor wants to change an air handling unit, and states that he has the right to do so under the contract, and tells me what he is going to do. I am then involved in the checking process. I get no fees for doing that, and the contractor is not obliged to pass the saving onto the client. The contractor is in a win-win situation, and the consultant is on a lose-lose situation.

Roderic Bunn: How can this be resolved? David Chelmick: The answer must be that the consultant does a design that the m&e contractor builds. I believe if you want to make something work, that's how you do it. But if I said that the consultant be paid three times his fees, I wouldn't win another job.

Jim McElligott: How many clients make an agreement with a designer when they are not sure what they are going to get? The ACE conditions give the option of full duties, performance duties and the horrible abridged duties. How many clients go flying into abridged duties without thinking it through?

Paul Bradley: The problem is that there is no professional trust between consultants and clients. We are often regarded as design contractors, screwed down on fees in the same way as a contractor is, and we have very onerous terms imposed on us.

John Grounds: Are we saying that consulting engineers should just do performance design, and pass all design responsibility down to the contractors?

David Chelmick: It won't work. A consultant will come up with a preferred solution – vav, chilled ceilings, fan coils under the floor or whatever – and then someone says "how much and how much space do you need?" And the consultant says "Ah well, I can't tell you that, as we will get the detailed design done by the contractor, and we haven't got one yet".

John Grounds: In both the pharmaceutical and process industries, designers are often appointed on resource-based fees, on a stage-by-stage basis. There is no lump sum competitively-bid fee at the outset. They make sure that they go through all the tricky front-end stuff until they can get to a point where they can go ahead and actually press a button.

Paul Bradley: Then let's have the ACE fees replaced with all the early stages time-charged.

“How many clients go flying into abridged duties without thinking it through?”

Jim McElligott

John Grounds: That won't happen in a competitive commercial market.

Jim McElligott: That's because bargains tend to be struck. And you don't know what form of duties you are going to be on. We have all been involved in disputes at one time or another, and it all rolls right back to the gulf between full duties and performance duties, and the foggy thing in the middle which is no good to anybody.

David Chelmick: It all comes back to the professional advisor. The person sitting with the client at the start should be able to explain what abridged duties are and what the client will get.

Elevating the m&e contractor

Roderic Bunn: Does getting the m&e contractor on board early improve the chance of good m&e co-ordination?

Tony Smith: M&E contractors should work closely with the consultant during the scheme design stage, and that means getting him on board early. If m&e contractors were brought into the professional team early on, the problems with design co-ordination should disappear. But the dilemma is demonstrating to the client that the process is economic. They think it will cost them a fortune.

Paul Bradley: I've done a PFI job where it worked well. We worked to a preferred list of suppliers, but the contractors went out to the market and did the deals. It gave us the certainty on the use of the kit when it came to doing the drawings.It also enables either side to see the other side's problems, and at an early enough stage to address them rather than when it gets to the adversarial position.

David Chelmick: I get very cynical about that. I have had jobs where it's worked, but that's worked because the right people were sent by the contractor. But what normally happens is that the marketing man does all the presentations. So you select your team from the contractors, identifying the people you want, but then you get on with the job and find they've sent you the teaboy.

Roderic Bunn: There must be a way round that.

John Grounds: It's all to do with them understanding their role, what it is they have to understand, pick up and deliver.

David Chelmick: No question about it. It's about information. There is a certain kind of information that the consultant can't provide, therefore you bring the contractor in to provide the additional information.

Jim McElligott: Do we think that services designers and architects no longer have the skills to produce co-ordinated information? With fee competition those skills have dropped by the wayside, and effectively become the contractors' responsibility.

David Chelmick: Does that mean that design knowledge should reside in the consulting engineer, or the solid engineer residing in a contractor? If the latter, how does the client get hold of this information? Or is the term 'contractor' the wrong term to use?

John Grounds: Perhaps we should move away from thinking about 'the contractor' to someone who delivers the product.

Roderic Bunn: Should we tell clients to take a lead here? They are already saying, via Sir John Egan, that it is in their interest to sponsor certain improvements to the construction industry which will deliver a better product.

John Grounds: Why can't the institutions do something about it? The RIBA, the RICS the CIBSE and the ICE could pool their brainpower to work out a way to deliver to our clients a better product. We are all into this.

John Grounds: But clients are too ephemeral in the construction industry to take a lead.

Steve Pomeroy: Wasn't the Construction Industry Board set up to represent client interests? You would think that would be the ideal body to follow this up. After all, if you want an arbitrator you can get a list completewith curriculum vitae. Why can't the CIB do the same thing for project managers?

“Let’s have the ACE fee scales replaced with all the early stages time-charged”

Paul Bradley

Commissioning and quality assurance

David Chelmick: Consultants must produce a design that is commissionable and installable. We must have that when the contractor is appointed, which should preferably be before the design goes to tender.

John Grounds: At scheme design, or at least at a time when the contractor can influence the design and buildability.

David Chelmick: That will get you a commissionable building. So long as you let the commissioning engineer do his job.

Roderic Bunn: Its not just commissioning though, is it, it's also sea trials for the building to ensure that the systems are working in terms of the client's day-to-day requirements.

Paul Bradley: But all the contracts are geared to finish at practical completion. It is the culture of the industry to do the snagging and get off to the next job. There is no incentive for the contractor or the professional to stay.

David Chelmick: On any number of jobs you see commissioning valves all hidden behind ductwork, and you can't get at them. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that the services should be co-ordinated so the valves are accessible.

Paul Bradley: It all comes down to human error. Sufficient time to do the job minimises that. We need people who know what they are doing, and who are paid for doing it. The BSRIA allocation of design responsibilities is a very good place to start1.

Roderic Bunn: Will computerised building models help in the years ahead?

David Chelmick: The use of object-oriented construction models in design will dramatically affect construction procurement. Within five years we will have boilers ordered over the Internet, with contractors drawings sent on e-mail with the bill of quantities sorted.

Roderic Bunn: Irrespective of how sophisticated the design system, there will always be a contractor who will circumvent designers' product choice.

David Chelmick: Yes, but the more you build it on a computer the more you get rid of that. Admittedly, this process will not eradicate human frailty.

Lewis Robertson: It won't mean better co-ordination, either. You still have to have your m&e contractor on board at the start.

John Grounds: I would like to see some way of measuring and validating co-ordination.

Paul Bradley: It's a quality assurance process. It's for someone other than the person that has drawn it to go through and check it.

Roderic Bunn: So quality assurance processes ought to include a time element, then? John Grounds: Yes, and validation.

Roderic Bunn: Do we need better feedback on the problems of poor co-ordination?

Paul Bradley:Feedback comes from the contractor saying: "It won't fit". You don't need to wait six months after the job to learn that. We need prevention, not cure. The best place to address a co-ordination problem is on the drawing board.

Lewis Robertson: That's right. It is far cheaper to rub it out on a drawing than to sort it out on site.