A Man and His Elements, James Nisbet 1920-2009
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.
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