THINKING OF BUILDING?
SEVEN STEPS TO SUCCESS
The process of having a building constructed to your
requirements is very different to acquiring a pre-built or
standard off the shelf item. New buildings are rarely standard
and the act of creating a building is not therefore simply the
making of a product but rather the giving and receiving of a
service. This involves the interaction between you and those
serving you. The evidence shows that you get what you put in.
Clients need to be highly involved customers in order to obtain
the best service and the most appropriate performance from
their building. The following seven steps distilled from research
by the NEDO Organisation in their report “Faster Building for
Industry” highlights seven key points for consideration.
years a number of contractors now provide a “one stop shop”
design and construction service. Be aware that the fundamental
difference between appointing an independent design
consultant or team as opposed to a design/build contractor is
the degree of competition and therefore value for money and
transparency in the arrangement. Both arrangements can work
well when properly policed but generally design build projects
are most suited to low tech “basic industrial style buildings”.
The more complex the premises or the usage, the greater is the
need for thorough and creative design.
STEP 1: Selecting your Project Executive
Organisations which build regularly have people with developed
project management skills. These skills are very different
from those needed to manage a normal day to day process
or commercial operation. If you have a person and they are
available full time for your project, they can be given the task of
project managing the new facility. If such people do not exist
in your organisation, or are not fully available, you will probably
require external support, ideally from a professional project
manager or surveyor. Nevertheless an in-house executive must
be identified with sufficient power and authority to speak on
behalf of your organisation. This executive will need to organise
the internal decision making process and to act as a channel
(and usually single point) for all communication between the
acquiring company and external providers.
Speedy and efficient building work flows only from good
planning. You can have what you want, only if you know
what you want. Defining your requirements is known as “brief
making” and is a searching process. Whilst you may start off
preparing the specification for a new building or remodelling
an existing building to fit your activities, it is not unusual for
the brief making process to uncover other possibilities. Your
efficiency in the finished space will be far greater if the brief
making is radical and undertaken at the earliest start. However
be aware of the danger of making a building too bespoke
and tailored to your own requirements. This may later reduce
your ability to fund or market the space if your circumstances
change. The brief making process should be initiated by your
principal adviser or in-house executive, bringing to bear the
expertise of the whole design team together with your cost and
investment advisers.
STEP 2: Appointment of a Principal Adviser
STEP 4: Timing Your Project Realistically
If you find you do not have the skills or time resources available
in-house to organise a building project it is worthwhile hiring
these for the duration. The quality of this appointment will
be crucial to the success of your project. A suitable Principal
Adviser to fulfil the role required may be found in many types
of organisation, including Architects, Engineers, Quantity
Surveyors, Project Managers and Surveying Practices.
Collectively these form the independent professional
consultancies acting within construction. In the last 10-15
The NEDO research demonstrated that customers in the UK
could obtain a newly designed and built facility as quickly
as anywhere else in the world. However this was not always
the experience and the “Faster Building for Industry” report
demonstrated that realistic timescales were not often set.
Extreme speed in delivery was often found to have an adverse
effect on cost or quality. When complexity and scope of works
are also factored into the process, it is clear that there must be
a balance between these competing requirements. Realistic
STEP 3: Care in Deciding Your Requirements
THINKING OF BUILDING?
SEVEN STEPS TO SUCCESS
timing is important and usually the pre-construction period will
exceed the construction time being between one and three
times as long. From decision to build to submission of a Planning
Application was found to be an average of three months, from
Planning Application to Approval four months and from Approval
to start on site a further four months. In order to achieve
minimum periods for both design and construction various
procurement methods have been developed which allow them to
overlap depending how the members of the team are set up.
STEP 5: Selecting your Procurement Path
There are several alternative ways of using the construction
industry to best suit your needs. The members of the construction
team can be set up in four fundamentally different ways. Each of
these are suited to meet a particular set of client priorities.
i.
Traditional – You select a design team who prepare the
design, obtain planning permission and then tender the
work with a number of contractors. Contractors compete
on a fully fleshed out design and this variant is most
suited to bespoke buildings where clients have clear, fixed
requirements to be delivered at minimum cost. The penalty
is usually lack of speed as the process of design, tendering
and building is sequential.
ii. Design and Build – Here the client negotiates and buys
a finished building from a single contractor responsible
for both design and construction. This works best for
basic buildings which can be quickly and simply defined
and where onerous requirements do not need to be
met. It can be difficult to demonstrate value for money,
particularly if a builder is providing the land also. The
weakness of this system is centred on the client’s ability
to understand the building they will receive from drawings
and written specifications. This can lead to alterations and
“corrections” giving rise to larger than normal fit out costs.
iii. Management Contracts – Under this arrangement the
client appoints consultants to design, cost and manage
the construction process for a fee. The construction work
itself is tendered by your manager as a series of packages,
usually based on specialist trades or activities. The pitfall
with this option is that costs cannot be guaranteed until
late in the process and there is a need for strong quantity
surveying and cost management input to set realistic
budgets and control costs when on-site. The client will
usually retain most of the project risks and although they
will consequently benefit from any savings achieved, they
will also be liable for any cost over-runs.
iv. Design and Manage – This combination involves certain
characteristics of the Design and Build variant and some
from the Management form of procurement. The client
appoints a single firm to design and deliver the project,
sometimes referred to “turn key”. Some providers will give
firm guarantees for cost and programme but the client
usually pays heavily for this privilege. This arrangement
usually works best with experienced clients undertaking
regular building work where the form of building and
process is well understood.
STEP 6: Choosing the Organisation to Work For You
It is the quality of the people themselves and the firms they
work in which would be most important to the success of your
project. Quoted price is not the only nor necessarily the best
guide to selection. The attitude and abilities of the people down
the line must be right. This is more likely to be achieved if the
price is not unduly squeezed.
You should compare several firms and ask to meet the
person who would be in day to day charge of the project. The
quality of this person and the chemistry of your interaction
is most important. The track record of such people and of
the companies which support them should be checked and
references should be taken from current or previous clients.
Depending on the procurement path chosen you may be asking
your principal adviser to take a large amount of responsibility for
THINKING OF BUILDING?
SEVEN STEPS TO SUCCESS
project delivery and cost on your behalf. Consequently the integrity
of your adviser is important. You need to be confident that the
advice given is not simply intended to maximise the workload of
the adviser’s organisation. Clearly this could work against you.
You are looking for somebody who you can trust and relate to
as they will become an extension of your own organisation. So
whilst price is obviously important, it is the quality of input from
the principal adviser that is more important. They will have a
huge effect on the price of the building and its value for money
which will far outweigh any increase in fee.
STEP 7: Designating Your Site
The “Faster Building for Industry” report showed that
clients often determined their site or building before it was
professionally appraised. This led to delays and expense which
could otherwise have been avoided. Before committing to a site
or a shortlist have your professional team look at the options in
some detail. Matters to be considered include, soil conditions,
servicing and utility availability, location and traffic handling,
Planning, structural appraisal and environmental issues.
Acquiring these reports inevitably takes time and expense but
always pays dividends later in the process.
Prepared by:
Gleeds, Cardinal House,
20 St Mary’s Parsonage, Manchester M3 2LY
Contact: [email protected] or 07768 553336
In conjunction with:
Corporate Property Partners, Downs Court,
31 The Downs, Altrincham WA14 2QD
Contact: [email protected] or 07711 926789
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