The study was commissioned after the Grenfell fire
Report on building failures urges collaborative approach to procurement of residential projects.
A key report by the Housing Forum, commissioned after last year’s Grenfell fire, has urged earlier involvement for designers and contractors, including two-stage tenders, to address the “significant minority” of residential projects which have serious defects.
Authored by a working group led by Andy Tookey, managing partner at consultant Baily Garner, and Nigel Ostime, delivery director at Hawkins Brown Architects, the publication describes two-stage procurement, on an open-book basis, as “a better way of identifying potential savings”, rather than a single-stage competitive tender that might incentivise main contractors to find the cheapest way to discharge contractual obligations.
Scoping and specifying
The study also criticises the “use it or lose it” nature of local authority funding, and instead recommends increasing the time and money that clients expend on scoping and specifying a project, including earlier involvement of the contractors.
“True collaboration, between client, design team and contractor, as early as possible, provides the very best outcome,” Tookey said. “To achieve this, we need to focus on the way projects are procured. A form of cost-led or two-stage open book procurement process offers a better chance of enabling better collaboration and more successful projects.”
The report also recommends greater use of digital and factory-based construction processes to address quality and productivity issues.
“True collaboration, between client, design team and contractor, as early as possible, provides the very best outcome.”
Andy Tookey, Baily Garner
Ostime said: “We’ve identified that improvements in quality and productivity can be significantly enhanced through both digital technologies and offsite manufacture.
“Working this way requires an integrated project team approach with client, designers, specialist consultants and contractors engaged at an early stage in the project process. This early engagement requires forms of procurement that enable this to happen, which single-stage design-and-build does not.”
“We also need to cement the fragmented nature of many projects. Where the design team changes during the life of the project we must form a ‘chain of custody’, ensuring key information is passed from one stage to the next without loss of fidelity.”
Assad Maqbool, a partner at law firm Trowers & Hamlins who sits on the forum, said that clients should expect to have some risk on regeneration schemes.
“The procurement of the main contractor should not amount to a ‘design-and-dump’ risk allocation,” he said. “To gain the best results, clients must retain some risk in, and therefore control over, the specification process.”
Links to wider quality findings
Michael Cleaver, director at the Housing Forum, said the study “links closely” with the findings of the Chartered Institute of Building “call for evidence” on quality across the wider construction industry, which highlighted concerns around areas including workmanship, supervision and sign-off.
The report – Stopping Building Failures: How a Collaborative Approach can Improve Quality and Workmanship – will be launched later this month and sent to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government plus procuring authorities.
