CIC helps overcome integration barriers

Wider use of guidance material is essential if the industry is widely to adopt integrated teams in construction.

Selecting the team, a key document produced by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) partnering task force, has been cited as a vital tool in the work to overcome barriers to integration.

A recent report from the Strategic Forum for Construction’s integration task group encouraged a wider use of the guide, which offers practical advice to clients. This includes information on how to put together a selection panel, develop a questionnaire, set the criteria for a shortlist and evaluate the shortlisted candidates.

Selecting the team is part of the suite of partnering guides produced by the CIC that also includes A guide to partnering workshops. This uses straightforward language to clarify why teams will benefit and projects will be enhanced by using workshops. Responding to the group’s report, CIC has now made both publications freely available to the construction industry.

Chairman of the integration task group, Martin Nielsen commented: “The decision by the CIC is welcomed by the task group as a first step in encouraging further team work in the industry. This is the first of a number of actions that are currently being recommended by the group.”

Martin Davis, the SEC Group representative on the task force said: “Significantly, this tool is designed objectively to assess the ability and merits of all members of the integrated team: consultant designers, project/construction managers, specialist contractors, key suppliers/manufacturers and supply chains, cost advisers and facilities managers. Its promotion is timely as pressure to realize the full potential benefits from integrated projects is growing.”