Back in the 60's, we bandied about Marshall McLuhan's phrase 'The Medium is the message' (we may even have suffixed it with 'man' but that's just plain embarrassing now).
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.
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.
From 1st April BCIS has taken on responsibility for the Industry's Formulae Price Adjustment Indices from BERR.
These indices were originally introduced in the 1970's to reduce the time and effort in allowing for fluctuations in labour and materials in contracts with a Variation of Price clause.
When I was a young surveyor this saved me the chore of checking the price of the hundreds of individual materials listed by the contractor in the back of his tender. So trust me at the time it was a visionary and revolutionary innovation.
The Committee that developed the Civil Engineering Formulae was Chaired by J W Baxter and the Building formulae by J G Osborne so they were referred to as the 'Baxter Indices' and 'Osborne Indices'. They were published under the auspices of the National Economic Development Office for construction, so were also known as the 'NEDO Indices'.
The Formulae method of calculating fluctuations and the indices were an industry initiative so BCIS is pleased to take responsibility for them on behalf of the industry.
Since they were first issued the industry has found many uses for the indices both in contracts and in economic analysis.
Over the next year we will be reviewing the indices and will update them if appropriate. We will also be publishing a guide to the indices in due course.
I have been asked about the relationship between the Standard Form of Cost Analysis (SFCA) and the first volume of the New Rules of Measurement for order of cost estimating and elemental cost planning (NRM).
Happily I can report that they get along very well.
The original objective of the NRM was to produce a coordinated suit of measurement rules for construction by reviewing those rules that existed and filling in the gaps.
The rules for measuring buildings in the Code of Measuring Practice were already being reviewed and comments from the steering group were incorporated and the rules for gross and net floor area incorporated into the NRM.
Rules for measuring elements existed in the SFCA and again the element definitions were under review. BCIS and the NRM steering group ran a series of workshops with practitioners reviewing the element definitions and measurement rules and these were published in the third edition of the SFCA in 2008.
The agreed elemental definitions were then starting point for the drafting of the rules for detailed cost planning.
The measurement rules for buildings and elements are reproduced in the appendices to the NRM.
An element is defined as 'a major physical part of a building that fulfils a specific function or functions, irrespective of its design, specification or construction' this makes them a powerful tool in producing an estimate before the design has started.
'New' new rules were then needed for the development of a cost plan as the design develops.
However in its development the NRM has become much more than just rules of measurement. This is something that I shall return to another time.
Comment posted by Barry Allsopp:
Do NRM, The Code of Measuring Practice or the Third Edition of the SFCA change the traditional, and long-held, definition of 'Gross Floor Area' of a building?
Joe's Response:
'Gross Floor Area' is not a term used in any of the documents. The Code of Measuring Practice defines 'Gross External Area' (GEA), 'Gross Internal Area' (GIA) and 'Net Internal Area' (NIA).
The SFCA and the NRM reproduce the GIA definition, but refer to it as 'Gross Internal Floor Area' (GIFA) and I assume this is what you are referring to.
The basic definition of GIFA remains unchanged as 'the area of the building measured to the internal face of the perimeter walls at each floor level.'
The definition clarifies what is included and excluded. The Code is available on the RICS members website www.rics.org
When supply exceeds demand, prices will fall. Contractors make profits when prices are falling and go bust when the market turns up...
A couple of
truisms:
When supply
exceeds demand, prices will fall
Contractors make
profits when prices are falling and go bust when the market turns up
I am sure that
both of these are true, problem is that everyone else knows it too.
The client knows
it, so they expect prices to be cut.
The Quantity
Surveyors know it, so do they factor them into their advice?
The contractor
knows it, so have contractors factored them into their bids? Do current tender
prices reflect the contractor's assumptions about how much lower his supply
chains' prices will be when the contract starts, rather than the prices that
the subcontractors have supplied now?
Demand is falling;
consultants, contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers are keen to secure
work. Experience in other recessions suggests that some will be overly keen and
get carried away.
Contractors can
only cut prices by cutting margins, passing on reduced costs from others,
improved efficiency, cutting corners or putting in sub-economic prices. And
this is true right down the supply chain.
The challenge is
how to agree a price that takes advantage of the first three without exposing
the client to the last two.
There is a risk
that resource costs will not fall as fast as the contractor expected or that
the upturn will begin before the contract ends.
So one other
truism: The Quantity Surveyor really earns his money when he advises a client
that a bid is too low. A loss-making contractor is no good for project delivery
and a bankrupt contractor is no good for anything.
About Joe
Joe has been responsible for setting up and developing the BCIS information databases for capital and running costs of buildings, including the BCIS Online service which provides online access to price information on over 16,000 projects.
Joe is also involved in development of the UK National Key Performance Indicators, the UK supplement to the ISO on Whole Life Costing, English Partnerships Carbon Challenge, and RICS eTendering.
