Joe's Blog

It may be said - with about as much exaggeration as may be normally attributed to such statements, but no more - that the publication in 1951, of the...

...Ministry of Education Building Bulletin No 4 introduced the concept of elemental cost planning to the UK construction industry.

Its Author was James Nisbet who has died aged 89.

The preface to the Bulletin says that with the need for a great number of new schools, it is "essential to explore every possible means of reducing the cost, increasing the speed of school building whilst maintaining standards of quality and educational efficiency". Does that sound familiar?

Our drive today to produce better buildings for less money is the same as it ever was.

The Bulletin described a "new approach towards a costing technique for use by architects and surveyors". The fact that the quantity surveying profession made the technique their own may explain the changing influence of the two professions over the past half century.

The key to this innovation was the concept of elements. Again, it is worth quoting from the bulletin:

"An architect tends to think in terms of functions and of the means by which he can perform those functions. For example, he sees as one function the exclusion of rain and weather and he looks to a roof to perform this task. It is, for the purposes of cost analysis, immaterial to him whether the roof be of timber and tiles or of concrete and asphalt. He is primarily concerned to know how much it has cost to roof in the building."

"Thus, where the estimator builds up his tender by adding together a large number of relatively small items, classified by trades, cost analysis must reverse this process and break down the tender into groups of material and labour classified according to the functions they perform. These groups have been described as elements."

Thus an element is defined as 'a part of a building that fulfils a specific function or functions irrespective of its design, specification or construction'.

The move from 'costing a design' to 'designing to a cost' and the development of cost planning techniques has served the profession well in offering value added services to clients. The concept of elements has been incorporated into the development of life cycle costing and value management. It has also spread around the globe and both the term and its definition are enshrined in national and international standards.

BCIS was set up in 1961 to provide the profession with cost information in elemental format and we hope that it is a tribute to Jim that it flourishes today and we will continue our best endeavours to promote the use of elements and of elemental cost planning.

James Nisbet 1920 to 2009 a big thank you from us all.

Building Information Models (BIM). One day, and I don't know when, buildings will be developed in integrated Building Information Models iBIM and it will solve a lot of the industries ills.

We will get better designed buildings that are easier to build; life cycle costs will be an inherent part of the design; the client will get an as built model to run their maintenance and facilities management operations, and manage their occupancy, letting operations.

All this will be delivered under project insurance so we perhaps will also become the non-confrontational industry that we are supposed to be.

So what is BIM? The CIPC definition is:
Digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility creating a shared knowledge resource for information about it and forming a reliable basis for decisions its life cycle, from earliest conception to demolition'

BCIS are involved with the Construction Project Information Committee (CPIC) in looking at the classification and data issues involved in developing BIM and the RICS QS and Construction Business Group's IT committee has set up a working party to produce some guidance for surveyors.

I should stress that this will one day be part of your everyday work, it is not an IT thing its how we work with the tools available.

If you are interested in finding out more BSRIA and RIBA are running a conference 'Building Information Modelling - what is it really?' on 26th June at the RIBA. I am giving a short paper on data classification issues but I am really keen to find out more. Perhaps you should be too.

For more information see the BIM Conference PDF

I am encouraged and perplexed in equal measure by the results of the recent RICS survey of tendering practice...

It shows that, while there is a significant increase in the numbers of tenders where the contractors are sent electronic documents, firms are choosing to send them by post, rather than electronically via the internet - the equivalent of typing a telegram and sending it by pigeon post.

Although the vast majority of the survey respondents recognize the key benefits associated with e-tendering, the use of web based e-tendering portals increased very little.

There is still a huge amount of wasteful re-keying of information in the industry where documents, that are intended to be completed by the contractor (pre-qualification questionnaires, pricing documents, etc), are supplied in hardcopy.

The strangest result is the means that firms are choosing to communicate the electronic documents. There has been a welcome move away from e-mail but a strong growth in the practice of sending them on discs through the post. This must add four to five days of non-productive time to the tender process.

The main barriers perceived by the respondents are cost and lack of client interest ― seemingly with little appreciation of the possible savings.

The RICS eTendering service provides sophisticated web-based tendering solution for £500 per tender, which will save more than the cost in tender analysis alone.

I am not quite sure what the client has to do with it. Surely, the efficiency of the profession is a matter for the profession, from which the clients will benefit.

Full results of the survey are available from www.bcis.co.uk/etendering

Details of RICS eTendering are available at www.ricsetendering.com