News

Cost, clients and skills to blame for ‘performance gap’

Story for CM? Get in touch via email: [email protected]

Comments

  1. Interesting that the performance gap clauses could apply equally as causes for poor project performance generally. Why do they take so long, cost so much, and often miss their targets?…
    a) Client lack of knowledge
    b) Poor (= using the wrong process) project planning & control
    c) Overemphasis on cost (= missing the fact that to reduce cost you need to improve the project process, not just squeeze margins)

  2. Why the surprise? We are dealing with a process where the investment often enough is by those who are not the ones standing to benefit.

    Given most projects (in my experience) are ruled by QS’s advising clients on the cost of everything, and designers are often enough ignored or silenced when it comes to quality, there should be no surprise quality issues suffer.

    Just yesterday, in not approving materials simply because the contractor has failed to demonstrate they were suitable for the project, (I work for the Contract Administrator) I was overruled by my QS boss and told I had to change the status to approve them, on the spurious grounds that someone else in the process (a specialist consultant who was ignoring their own specification requirements) had approved it, we hadn’t spotted it, and now it was too late.

    It also ‘wasn’t the way to do it’.

    When I asked as a clear question, if stopping the contractor from proceeding with what may be substandard materials, of which we know little, wasn’t the way, then what was?

    He didn’t know and couldn’t tell me, but regardless ‘it wasn’t the way’.

    It was apparently also not my problem if the contractor eventually installed substandard materials, for all I am a registered architect and in charge of managing the scope of work we were talking about!

    With such clear and decisive leadership when it comes to dealing with quality issues, and a contractor’s repeated failure to perform its contractual obligations, is it any wonder we end up with projects where quality has taken an obvious distance 3rd place after time and cost?

Comments are closed.

Latest articles in News