THE ROLE OF THE CLIENT

Clients should be making the running: they should be calling in contractors and talking to them - positive vetting, to use the modern parlance.

Rather than just pick any six names from the rota when the next project comes along, the client should have already talked to all his regular 'names', quizzing them closely on questions such as 'how would you achieve the 30% savings I ought to be achieving?'. In other words, create a pecking order based on management skills not just price.

'We still have clients meeting architects on the golf course,' said Frank Griffiths, a construction procurement consultant, 'where it's agreed that the architect will do the design and that he will then pick the contractor who will do the building.'

And even among clients who are a decent one step above the golf course level, There is a lot of room for the way designers are chosen to be improved. Again the message is not to pick the cheapest.

'A building that is cheap to design can be expensive to build,' said Griffiths.

The CIREA guide, Value of competition guide book on how to pick professionals, backs him up. It warns, again, that you don't get good designs by taking the lowest bidder just because he chases an easy design and says 'blow to its buildability'.

But are clients enlightened enough to change their approach? How many even know what they want? The answer, sadly, is very few.

What is worse, their attempts to change are often counter-productive. Tom Barton, southern director, Mowlem Construction, finds clients often go to extremes, from having no specific ideas to wanting to define very specific building plans before going to tender.

'The more they want definition at this early stage, the less scope there is for the contractor to influence design,' he pointed out.