It'll run rings round them

No comments

The Olympics will be like every other project - ridden with bluffers, slackers and buck passers - but a dispute resolution board can keep them all in order

I was asked a very good question the other day about the 2012 Olympics building works: "What contract document would you recommend?" I fumbled and stumbled around.

I know the Olympic Delivery Authority says the NEC document is preferred. Some say they wouldn't touch that bumf with a polo player's barge pole. Others shout for JCT, and others don't care so long as they get a cut of the ante. So I ducked the answer; what say you?

What I did get quite excited about was some simple facts and a simple remedy. Simple fact: outfit A will not want to carry the can for anything. It will want outfits B to Z to carry the can … for no matter what goes awry. Outfit A is hellbent on avoiding responsibility, risk, rows and damage claims. Outfit B will want more or less the same. In the end, the 2012 Olympic stadium will be late or overspent or fall to bits because some plasterer mixed his carlite with his siraphite or didn't read the NEC contract document and had a hangover.

Simple fact: the big-wigs who decide these things will want the contract to be design-and-build. Big-wigs like "one bottom to kick". So they insist that an outfit called a "builder" shall pretend he is also a "designer". Then when the two-hour, fire-rated partition or fire barrier is found eventually to last five minutes in a fire, we find out it was designed by the plasterer who also does, part-time of course, fire partition work. He read a brochure somewhere that says this plasterboard stuff gives two hours fire rating.

Meanwhile, the real engineer (the one bristling with qualifications and gongs) is earning a fee for telling the plasterer to design the fire barriers. Simple fact: builders should build. Designers should design.

Simple fact: a design-and-build project needs management skills of a very high order. Thank goodness the American construction industry is willing to teach us how to do it. Mind you, none of us expect the Americans to actually manage the London Olympics building works, do we?

Simple fact: those who are to decide what to build will not be quick to make up their mind. When the sods are dug, the deciders will be still thinking things through, rather like Mr Miralles at the Scottish parliament. And when the works is nine-tenths through, the thinkers will be thinking about changing the works done when the sods were dug.

The dispure resolution board is an independent, non-partisan group of people who ask awkward questions. The board is a friend of the building

Simple fact: the date that the sod digger and the plasterer and the hundreds of subcontract outfits were promised a start on site will not happen. The plasterer agreed to begin in October. Come February, he will be told to start next June. Then he will be busy elsewhere or have a hangover. Simple fact: building works, even in America, are heaving with delays, changes of mind, minds that dither and minds that are working on blaming the other bloke. This is worldwide construction; I love it.

So what can the ODA do? Appoint a dispute resolution board now, today, this minute; yes, umpteen years before the Olympics final account. Major building projects work ever so well if, from the outset, there is a dispute resolution board. All European Union-funded contracts worldwide now require a board. This time, let's do it the British way. The panel of five people are analogous to non-executive directors of the project. They are not only in place to "sort" the inevitable crop of disputes, they are there to monitor, witness, even interrogate the behaviour of outfits A to Z, even before all these folk get into contract. The dispute resolution board is an independent, non-partisan group of people who ask awkward questions such as: "Why do you intend to use this NEC contract?" "Why are you passing the risk down to outfits that haven't got a clue how to handle that type of risk?" The board is not a friend of any of the outfits A to Z; it is a friend of the building.

The blame game blights building. Building is done on the hoof, design is done on the backs of envelopes and shenanigans are the norm. The 2012 Olympics will visit upon it a fair share of bluffers and an even greater share of duffers; even among the big-wigs. The job of the five-person panel as non-executive directors of the 2012 Olympics project is to guard us from these guards. Get that board in place now.