CHALLENGING THE CONCEPT OF THE DESIGN

Giving contractors the chance to challenge the way the design achieves the client's requirements offers the greatest potential for big savings. But achieving such benefits is bound to be an uphill battle.

So why is that? Surely the client who invites alternative offers when he goes out to tender will attract potentially better plans from contractors' own design teams?

The very idea of this applaudable and beneficial concept working makes procurement consultant Frank Griffiths chuckle.

'The designer has been paid for doing what probably amounts to a full year's work on a project. Then in comes an alternative which is not only cheaper but has been drawn up by the contractor's designer in just two months. Do you really expect the client's designer to say to the client 'this is better?'.

'The original designer has a vested interest in turning it down. Clients must be aware of that,' Griffiths said.

Elizabeth Randall, executive value manager, heads Bovis's value management consultancy which is used increasingly by clients on a standalone basis. Randall's work, in a nutshell, is to make good designs better.

Interestingly, she reports that it is usually those designers who are themselves blessed with an economical-to-build approach to their own work who are most willing to modify their proposals, following a round-the-table bout of value engineering, with panache.

A city commercial developer who called in Randall's team in last November was rewarded with a 15% saving. The total contract sum was trimmed by virtue of 5% savings on the external cladding, 3.5% on the superstructure, 1.5% from making the cores more efficient and 1% on substructure costs.

Higgs and Hill was invited by a hotel chain to tender on a d&b basis against the cost and functional specification on a new hotel project, value œ3.8 million.

'We worked with the novated design team,' recalled Peter Popper, Higgs and Hill's deputy managing director.

'The proposals we suggested were adopted, resulting in a œ520,000 saving in cost and a reduced programme: down from 76 weeks to 59. We were in competition with three other contractors, the highest bid going in at œ3.9 million.'

Another interesting example from Popper's files was an approach, in January, by a major leasure industry client planning a new chain of restaurants with adjoining small hotel facilities.

There was the opportunity to evaluate the traditional construction programme against (i) a loose-fit, fast-track structural solution, and (ii) volumetric methodology (building a hotel with prefabricated toilet and bedroom pods). All three solutions had to be judged on both cost and programme bases.

The volumetric option showed time-saving benefits of 10 weeks, from tender/ selection to the final operating facility, when compared with the traditional methods. And while the cost on the traditional route stood at œ1.4m, the volumetric approach offered a œ200,000 cost saving.

Further, Popper was able to tell the client that should he go ahead with a standardised design on several locations up and down the country, then he could anticipate an added saving of 7% through repetition.

Getting the various design team members together may sound a simple and fundamental notion, but in real life it happens far too rarely. 'We often get called in and find that the various designers haven't had the opportunity to sit round the same table in a form where they can challenge the brief, meet the other people involved and take a look at the project en bloc,' said Randall.