Ups and downs of D&B

Design and build accounts for a third of Pettifer Construction's turnover.

Brian Pettifer is less than enthusiastic about the form of D&B offered by some clients. "They don't allow us to have a design input," he says. "They are purely novated projects that are nothing more than a transfer of risk. If a client asks then we'll look at it, for sure, but where you can't use your flair you have a procurer who thinks that he's getting a good price but, in reality, isn't."

Repeat clients account for 30 per cent of Pettifer Construction's workload. Sectors proving particularly strong at the moment are education, leisure, country houses and the refurbishment of offices in Birmingham.

"We normally have two or three schools on the go at any one time," says Brian, "in both the public and private sector. The country houses, which are schemes of up to œ3 million, are for private clients who don't want to be named. Pettifer's name is also amongst those working regularly for the Ministry of Defence, a client it enjoys working for, Pettifer's current MoD project being the army's university at Shrivenham.

"The MoD is a good quality client whom we work with quite successfully," reports Brian. "Sure it uses the GC Works 1 contract, which is nasty if applied literally, but our approach is that if we have to get the contract out then we've failed."

Brian Pettifer is enthusiastic about the prequalification system as it sets capable firms against capable firms, pitching the financially strong against the financially strong.

Pettifer's ideal job would be a œ1 million scheme with a six month turnover - this could be either a œ500,000 project taking three months or a œ2 million scheme running for a year.

Supermarkets, however, are an exception to this rule and here Pettifer's ideal would be an œ8 million job in 35 weeks.n