Mark Beard, CEO of construction company Beard, says if we are serious about producing more for less then long-winded and wasteful bidding processes need to be addressed too.
Mark Beard
The US economist, Paul Krugman, famously said: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.” So what can we do within the construction industry to raise our productivity?
Over the past five years the UK has done well in achieving high levels of employment with more people contributing to wealth generation. Conversely, individual productivity levels have remained broadly static.
In the long run, the way we can afford to pay ourselves more is to produce more, through a more collaborative work approach, where the skills of those at the coal face are used before the project design or construction methodology is too far developed.
In our view project efficiency correlates very closely with the time spent pre-planning works. For example, working with the design team and supply chain at the earliest opportunity to design elements where numerous interfaces exist, enabling the coordination of junctions, dissimilar materials and reduced complexity.
This is not just the period from order to project start, but also time spent during the bidding period. Securing a good quality contractor or project time constraints are often the customer’s main driver for negotiating a project rather than tendering for the lowest possible quote.
In our experience while initial costs can be higher on negotiated projects, they normally deliver a very similar final account cost to customers, but with a higher quality product delivered in a more certain and stress-free environment. Maximisation of workplace safety and waste reduction are also key by-products of a collaborative approach.
The level of negotiated work closely follows the health of our industry and we are likely to see a significant fall in this type of work over the next two years as the economy tightens. As a company, we feel we can increase our relative share of negotiated work by looking beyond the vagaries of the marketplace and focusing on communicating the value we add for our customers during both the pre-construction and construction phases of every project.
Recently, our Bristol office was able to demonstrate to one of our customers, who was going to refurbish an existing office facility into student accommodation, the benefit of engaging us directly. As a result, we worked with the design team and employer and achieved an earlier completion than the customer anticipated. We also advised on material and equipment choices that the customer had not considered, which reduced the out-turn cost.
Collaborative working has been part of our business culture for many years. As buildings have become more complex, we have become increasingly reliant on our supply chain to bring detailed solutions to the table which give our customer a high-quality building within their budget.
At Mansfield College, Oxford, for example, we have recently worked with project design team and our supply chain partners to identify structural solutions which met the customer’s tight time and quality parameters – in this case we opted for a CLT-framed building.
I believe there are three main drivers for genuine project collaboration:
- A willingness and capability for contractors and their supply chain to take broader responsibility for delivering a successful project;
- Embracing design, project planning and information-sharing software, including BIM, which facilitates greater teamwork;
- Old-fashioned trust between contractors and customer and the wider consultant and co-contractor team, built up over many years of doing what you say you will do.
If our industry is truly serious about raising productivity, collaborative working is essential. Investing in getting things right first time has infinitely more merit than paying expensive lawyers to sort the mess of not getting it right.
