Storms and shipwrecks

I realised that I was not the sole voice in the wilderness, baying at the moon and beseeching designers (of all disciplines) to provide detailed design information for the purposes of preparing tender documents and obtaining tenders.

It is widely recognised (albeit generally ignored) that on construction projects the curse of design development during the construction phase casts a long a costly shadow.

The shore, that is the history of construction projects in this country, is littered with the wrecks of those which have come to grief and almost foundered on the jagged rocks of design development during the construction phase and although with very few exceptions such projects are always completed, they leave in their wake a sorry legacy of: cost overruns, failure to complete on programme, contractual claims, dissatisfied clients and unnecessary grief.

The procurement of any building involves three key activities: designing, pricing and constructing, and should ideally occur in a sequential fashion. As soon as the designing and the pricing spill into the constructing, you can prepare to batten down the hatches and standby to repel boarders as the claims roll in and the lawyers line up like hungry sharks in the by now stormy waters.

Please, the detailed design needs to be done sometime, why not for everyone’s benefit get it done before it’s too late.

Alastair Patrick, Armour Construction Consultants, Scotland