As Sir Michael Latham’s Constructing the Team diplomatically suggested, and Sir John Egan’s Rethinking Construction emphasised more stridently, independent consultants are an overhead that the industry can no longer afford to carry.
After all, it is only in the past 200 years that independent designers, and in the past 100 years, that quantity surveyors have emerged as well-paid supervisors of the construction process. In the past 10 years, they have even abrogated their responsibility for supervision.
Until 1800, master craftsmen and master builders, such as Sir Christopher Wren, were entirely responsible for the construction of their buildings. They built soundly in accordance with well-established good practice and designed in the fashionable style their customers demanded, without the technical and contractual shenanigans that modern consultants impose on their clients.
Rethinking Construction could not have made this message any plainer. If we are going to improve the efficiency of the industry and the quality of service and product, we must go back to the understanding that contractors are responsible for the whole process, including the design, quality and cost control. It is not possible to meet Egan’s targets through lean construction unless the contractors have total control of the process, including design.
Those quantity surveyors who are going to survive into the next millennium have already realised that they must change and are moving into more constructive roles within the business.
Despite the evidence stacked against them in the Latham and Egan reports, the poor old architects are insisting that the designer leads the team with prime ministerial privilege and are trying to block the government’s shift to contractor-led procurement.
Very few architects have the construction management skills to justify their claim to be team leaders. About half of my business is medium-sized contracting under standard adversarial forms of contract. On about 75% of these contracts, the management and/or quality of the product suffers to a varying degree as a direct result of the designers’ failure to do their job properly and professionally.
Typical lapses are:
- specifying inappropriate materials and systems, then being incapable of devising professional solutions to overcome the technical problems created
It is not possible to meet Egan’s targets unless the contractors have total control of the process, including design
- distancing the supply side from the client and the design process
- lack of knowledge of basic construction techniques
- no understanding of buildability
- unwillingness to accept budget constraints
- inability to manage the design process, so that design information is often late or inaccurate.
What is so disappointing is that, in my opinion, the standard of professionalism among architects is still falling. They need to be managed themselves – by construction managers.
The arrogance of the “god architect” persists in the attitude that “good design” can only mean extravagant, way-out and expensive design, provided exclusively by independent consultants. It is that arrogance that has lost the industry future lottery-funded projects. It is also a major factor behind the government’s bold decision to adopt contractor-led partnering and prime contracting.
In all the high-minded huffing and puffing about their role in protecting a building’s functional, aesthetic and environmental qualities, architects have forgotten that, as professionals, they should provide that service even when working to a strict budget and as part of an integrated construction management team.
It is essential that we support the government’s drive towards contractor-led procurement and management routes. Now is the time for construction to grow up, cut out the middle men and take charge of its product for the first time in 200 years.
Postscript
Colin Harding is chairman of Bournemouth-based contractor George & Harding.
