Prime suspect

The concept of prime contracting makes me really nervous. Putting the development of the built environment into the hands of builders is like putting care of the countryside into the hands of farmers. No doubt a few governmental problems will appear to be solved and the directors of a few successful companies will make spectacular amounts of money, but the long-term prognosis does not bear thinking about.

I can see it now: the construction equivalent of miles and miles of oilseed rape wasteland, choking almost every decent town and village in the country with its cancerous rash of boxy executive-home units.

Most builders are amazed when they discover that 75% of the consultant’s work has been done before they even start on site. OK, there are plenty of bad architects about, but this is the only profession in which one can deal with all aspects of a project, from the gleam in a client’s eye to settling the final account. It is hard to see how an architect working for a builder on a client’s behalf can be better value than working for that client directly.

Anyone who has been on a long train journey in a developing country will recognise the following scenario: you offer the conductor a high-denomination note, which he pockets before disappearing down the train. Hours later, when you’ve given up hope of ever seeing your change, he breezes in with an armful of crumpled notes and featherweight coins. As long as he is wandering around the train with the equivalent of a month’s salary in his pocket, he feels rich and can enjoy lording it over his regular passengers. The fact that it is your money doesn’t bother him; for two hours he can feel like a sultan.

The same goes for some contractors. What makes them feel wonderful and omnipotent is sitting on the money the client has paid them, instead of handing it over to the people who have done the work. Builders like this do not really enjoy making buildings. If they could find exactly what their client wanted in a catalogue, they would rather just pass it on, ready-made, and take their cut.

This was not the situation that applied, for instance, between the world wars. Plenty of perfectly decent suburbs were developed by builders who did understand the local vernacular, who did train and employ artisans. They were known by the citizens who were affected by their developments, so they had to offer at least a basic provision of architectural standards, such as sensitivity to detail, scale and materials.

You can see it now, the building equivalent of miles of oilseed rape wasteland, choking decent towns with its rash of executive homes

These days you can’t walk 50 yards without seeing builder-controlled developments, where to save pitifully small amounts of money, clay bricks have been replaced with calcium silicate ones, and purpose-designed windows scrapped in favour of ill-proportioned junk from builders merchants. The grp coach lamps remain, of course. And the builders still go broke.

And nothing is ever a builder’s fault. When you first start out as an architect, you can become practically suicidal with guilt when you confront the reams of claims presented to you by put-upon building contractors, totally unable to honour their contractual obligations because of your inability to provide them with full-size drawings of step irons in the manholes that same afternoon.

It is not until you are fortunate enough to deal with firms that actually get on with the job in hand that you recognise the claims merchants for the chancers they are. The danger is that builders who behave this way get to your client before you do.

Anything that takes the need for confrontation out of the procurement process must be beneficial. But if a structure as successful and revolutionary as the Lloyd’s Building can be built on time and on budget, there must be something to be said for architect-led procurement.

At the exact time that the rest of Europe is realising that nothing other than first-class architecture makes economic sense, the commissioning body at the Treasury is responding to absolutely no aspect of the building process other than picking up the tab. It is easily seduced by soothing PR consultants employed at enormous expense by fat-cat building contractors promising to make these tabs smaller if only they can be put in the driving seat. Bugger the contributions to civic well being and cultural rejuvenation.