黑洞社区

What are you up to in the next 2,097 days? Better still, are you up for a little bit of building and civil engineering between now and Friday 27 July 2012? Yes, you are? Excellent. That鈥檚 the opening day of the London Olympics.

The Olympic Delivery Authority recently published its draft manifesto. It asks you building folk what you think of the ODA鈥檚 鈥減rocurement policy鈥�. To make sure it gets everything ready for Friday afternoon, the ODA says it needs to 鈥渨ork with some of the best designers and construction companies in the world, many of them based in the UK. And the finest chippies and plasterers鈥�. (I added that last bit, as I want the ODA to think about the putter-upperers, too. You know the people I mean 鈥� the ones who actually do the work.)

And the ODA manifesto explains that the task is to build on time, and to budget. Actually, it says, 鈥溾�� deliver on time against a tight budget鈥�. You鈥檝e heard that phrase before, haven鈥檛 you? You were weaned on it. Every single construction job I know has used those words as a mantra 鈥� like a hymn 鈥� an instrument of thought. It鈥檚 why I came into the disputes business!

But why don鈥檛 we try a different slogan? 鈥淟et鈥檚 deliver on time and make a profit.鈥� If you try to build anything to a tight budget, you will end up dancing 鈥� dancing with lawyers. And dancing with a lawyer is like dancing with a gorilla; you only stop dancing when the gorilla says stop.

黑洞社区 to a 鈥渢ight budget鈥� is the curse of construction worldwide. And here on page, one of the manifesto is the same old-fashioned notion. Book your place in the High Court now. But how about this? For every 拢1 in the budget, you use the best designers and contractors in the world to design for 60p; you know you will spend 50% more, and you let people make a profit. Page one of the manifesto needs to be rewritten.

Dancing with a lawyer is like dancing with a gorilla; you only stop when the gorilla says stop

So are you ready to make a profit? Let鈥檚 have a look at the delivery programme. Detailed planning and detailed design is all to be done by 1 July 2008. Construction work is supposed to start one year before, on 1 July 2007 鈥�

Oh, hell 鈥� any overlap between design and build calls for a red flashing light. The trick in all building construction is to give the builder the drawings on day one of pricing. And who will build? It will not, please, be the contractors that bid lowest, or those subcontractors that are pretending to be able to do jobs that they don鈥檛 have resources for. Focus, please, on the subcontractors and their competence. Place the contracts with the price nearest the mean average. Do you see what I mean by profit?

And, if the drawings are all done and go with that order to the contractors, the next mantra can be: 鈥渘o creep.鈥� Time without number, I decide disputes about creep. Squillions of variations crucify this industry. I am telling the truth when I say final accounts bear no resemblance to contract price. Variations cut the legs from that 鈥渢ight鈥� budget and, even worse, utterly torpedo the programme. If you are to stand half a chance of hitting the completion date, stop the design 鈥� then, and only then, start to build. In other words, the idea, daft as it sounds, is to have a final account for the steelwork, the M&E and the plastering that is the same as the contract price. Don鈥檛 be a creep. Finish designing, price it, then build it.

Now then, what about morale? If this Olympic adventure is to be a success, don鈥檛 make people fed up and suspicious at the outset. The ODA proposes to use the NEC3 鈥� the 鈥淣ew Engineering Contract: Version 3鈥�. No matter how much I tell folk how brilliant that animal is, they do not believe me. Every time I do a dispute on the NEC, I find the parties flummoxed by its machinery. The industry has struggled to warm to NEC. The worst bit of it is the poppycock idea that the has no duty to be impartial between employer and contractor when assessing sums payable to the contractor. NEC really must dispel that idea. The latest NEC has not won a great press. Sad, really.

Then the manifesto mentions 鈥�partnering鈥�. Has the ODA not had its ear to the ground? Partnering works wonderfully, so long as the contractor side of partnering does what it is told and puts up with the employer鈥檚 demands day in day out. The contractor pretends it is up for partnering. But, get it on one side, ply it with the odd Mickey Finn and the truth will out. Partnering is a myth. When the chips are down and the account is in dispute, partnering gives way to dancing.