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Construction product substitution rife

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Comments

  1. In the industry its called “Value Engineering” !

  2. The most abused term in the construction industry in over 45 years of working in construction.
    I do not know why any construction professional be it designer, consultant, client, contractor and subcontractor should be surprised at that, it is has been going on for over 30 years predominantly and very main contractor led in these last 20 years.
    Main Contractors have led this for their own financial gain following below cost tendering and sometimes the client in view of the project being over budget. I doubt, indeed I`m very sure that the client does not receive the full financial saving offered by `equal and approved` cost savings, some or large chunks being secretly kept by the main contractor, its the very opportunity they want to recover more profit.
    So many local authorities, institutions, educational establishments have been ripped off by system changes based on `equal and approved` with most of the benefit going to the contractor?
    I have rarely known an evaluation to take place with product substitutions, I personally always wished to retain the original specification as that was generally what the client specified and wanted and would first see whether the specified manufacturer would give a reduced cost for the same product. After that it would be same manufacturer but with a change to the performance specification to meet the clients budget.
    I am glad I was prepared to walk away from so many instances when we would not change manufacturer just to suit the main contractor. So often one got the chance to go back to the same building years later and see the change in specified system only to see the failures of an inappropriate material substitutions and usually coupled with poor workmanship and main contractors builders poor coordination and site management of other trades.
    I could go on forever on this subject with great in depth knowledge of the `before` and `after` situation?

  3. Who’d have thought, eh?

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