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A Question of Pedigree

Big Project ME asks consultants from across the construction industry to examine the challenges facing the region and identify the core issues that need to be addressed if progress is to be made

As the construction industry has grown and evolved over the years, operating practices and systems have continued to evolve with it, driven by technology changes and the adoption of new methods and processes. Driving this change has been the consultants who are appointed to oversee the projects and help guide both developers and contractors down the best path to a successfully completed project.

Imagine an industry without consultants. Clients and contractors would be left in a state of limbo, constantly struggling to achieve their targets, while also looking to keep prices down. This creates a situation where they’re frequently at odds with each other, which in turns leads to claims being brought or countered and the project being stalled delayed while half complete. It’s a rather terrifying prospect, isn’t it?

With that scenario in mind, it’s easy to see why consultants are often cast as the ones ‘who bring balance to the force’, so to speak. Serving as a go-between between a client and contractors is no easy task, but it is a vital one.

By opening the doors of communication, consultants allow for clarity and cooperation to flourish on complex projects, smoothening the way forward.

However, to cast them solely as intermediaries between two factions is to do disserve to their work. A good consultant is one who not only oversees the completion of a project, but one who helps foster coordination and manages a project, says Steve Garbe, a project director with Faithful + Gould.

“We’ve always maintained that it was important to have a lot of cooperation and to work closely together. Figuring out when things could go wrong, potential areas for problems, it’s an essential part of doing business where there’s lots of things going on and things change all the time, it’s having that cooperation to actually amend things, change them around, push things back,” he explains during an interview with Big Project ME.

“You do that by talking to them all, not necessarily by having a go at them when they’re late, but talking to them and finding out how you can resolve it, how you can help them by working somewhere else (on the project),” Garbe asserts.

Cooperation and teamwork are an essential component of any successful project, agrees Mike Berry, a director with CKR Consulting Engineers. He points out that it’s essential to make sure a consultant gets the right contractor on board, because a construction team is only as strong as its weakest link.

“You want a contractor who’s a team player, that’s part of a team. You’re not looking at someone who’s claims conscious. Someone who under-prices the tender merely to make claims later to make up their shortfalls,” he says.

His partner, Anil Menon, also a director at the consultancy, says that one of the things CKR does to ensure the smooth operation of a project is to assume responsibility of appointing the MEP contractor for the projects they’re working on. This is to ensure that the right contractor is chosen for the project and to pre-empt any potential problems along the way.

“What we do as MEP consultants, we ensure that we dictate that the MEP contractor is to be nominated. Although the clients may be looking at a one-stop solution, where they’re wanting the main contractor to take the entire responsibility, what we want to do, with MEP being a very important and high-priced contract, we’d like it to be nominated so that we, being the client’s representative, can be part of the process of choosing the MEP contractor,” he explains.

“The MEP contractor definitely needs to be a proven player, it needs to be financial stable,” Menon says. “If you don’t have a contractor who is respected in the market, you’ll find that the supply chain will be choked. If the supply chain gets choked, then your construction on-site is choked and the project gets delayed.

“So you need a contractor who’s got an influence on the supply chain, gets the best price; because if he gets the best prices, then the client gets the better pricing,” he says.

Cost has always been a major factor in deciding how a project is developed. For a long time, the attitude amongst developers towards construction veered towards getting the lowest price possible, often at the expense of build quality.

Andy Hewitt, a construction contracts and claims consultant with almost 40 years of experience in the industry, says that this attitude is a common cause of problems on-site.

“I think this part of the world tends to think that you can buy quality cheaply and I don’t believe that’s the case. I see a lot of poor consultants, because they work on a tight budget, and I also see a lot of good consultants that are not allowed to provide a good service, either because the fees they’ve been paid don’t allow them to employ better people or enough people. I actually think that the way the consultants are bought certainly does not allow for the quality of service,” he says.

“If the client buys the design cheap, then there are going to be design errors, that’s inevitable. On a construction project there are going to be omissions in the design, but you know, I often see huge errors of omission in the design, which is often the cause of delays and of course extra work. And this is where the claims start coming in and everybody gets unhappy and starts to throw their toys out of the pram.”

The regional leader for the Middle East at EC Harris John Williams says that pricing has to be done sensibly, or the pre-2008 mistakes could be repeated.

“Regardless of the competitive nature of the market and whether or not things are won on price alone or qualitatively as well as price, I think there needs to be a very clear understanding of what it is people are trying to achieve,” he says.

“One of the things I’d say is, at this stage, I still get the feeling that enthusiastic optimistic programmes are being submitted, potentially at the same price, and the market is encouraging that as well, because it’s still quite competitive.”

So how does a consultant choose the right contractor for a project then? Given that there are so many issues to keep an eye on, consultants tend to stick to what they know. A contractor’s past plays a major role in determining its future.

“In any situation or scenario, track record and past experience still goes ahead of many other things. ‘You’re only as good as your last job’ is the go with your gut answer that most people would immediately give you,” says Williams.

“The market is becoming more diversified, the buildings that are being requested are more technology-rich. So I think that relevant expertise in a particular type of sector or project might be something that would be considered. A track record of commercial awareness and commercial agenda (is necessary).”

Menon agrees and points out that experience isn’t only confined to the contractors on-site. One of a consultant’s most important jobs is to sign off on installations, and he says that this is often where clients and contractors tend to cut corners on projects.

“Although there are strict approval processes from authorities, when it comes to onsite inspections, you can’t expect the authorities to come and inspect every nut and bolt. I think, somehow, the clients interpretations and aspirations vis-à-vis bringing in an international consultant or policing the procedure during design, doesn’t really get translated as such during the supervision. So supervision is thinner than design, if I may say,” he warns.

“When you talk about design, you’ve got highly experienced looking at it. But when it comes to supervision, they say, “I’ll just a few inspectors and the contractor would do the work”. So there’s not much policing, I would say.”

“We tell the clients that you don’t need ‘bums on seat’, you need managed supervision, where you get an experienced guy to set foot on site. The reason they don’t want that experienced guys to come onsite is because experience comes with a cost.”

“But it’s like an experienced doctor. You want an experienced doctor to come and give you advice, you pay a doctor for that, right? So what we’re saying is, ‘don’t pay him for full time, but bring him once in a month or something. An experienced inspector, who has clocked years of experience, one look and he can pick up on things.”

With the pace of construction picking up in the UAE, it’s clear then that consultants have their work cut out for them. While none of the experts Big Project ME spoke with expected there to be a dramatic upswing in business, they were optimistic about the prospects for the industry. A common theme, however, was that the mistakes of the past needed to be learnt from, and going forward, the industry itself needs to embrace best practices and drive itself forward; starting with the consultants themselves.

According to Menon, consultants must define what the client’s needs are and how the project will be delivered.

“What’s very important is to be very clear on what the client brief is. We have to articulate what the client’s needs are and help the client define those. They’re only going to get what they put into their requirements and nothing more. So I think what’s very important is to be very clear on what the client brief is.” n

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