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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | FOREWORD IS HOW HARDER
THAN WHY?
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As this journal attests, it is a continuous challenge
to explain and promote why architecture is
important to our built environment – indeed, “why
architecture matters”. Although the “why” question
is central to the future survival of our profession, the
Realpolitik of most projects, and with most practices,
is in the “how”. The “how” consumes the majority of an
architect’s time and resources, and has a significant effect
on the design success of a project. In particular, the most
important of these “how” issues is what goes under the
contemporary rubric of “procurement”, which always
sounds like something you do to get yourself into
a court of law, and is, in fact, equally adversarial.
The procurement of projects, the commercial
delivery to completion, is under continuous change
in Australia – and these changes have had, and more
importantly will continue to have, a significant effect
on the ongoing quality of the design of our built
environment, and therefore on the long-term benefit
to the wider community.
The history of procurement in this country has
largely been based on conventional or traditional
contracting approaches – two parties bound by the threat
of penalties rather than the encouragement of incentives.
The cultural effect of this history has been to create an
adversarial mind-set – contracting by conflict – mate,
it’s the Australian way, a bit of biffo. This adversarial
approach is like a bleak ghost floating over each of
the current forms of contract used in Australia, even
some of the more enlightened ones, such as the use of a
managing contractor. Its track is well worn, to the point
of boring most participants in the industry; low margins
are increased to acceptable profit levels by driving
adversarial wedges between subcontractors, proprietors,
consultants and their insurers.
At the core of this industry malaise is a debate about
risk allocation in the procurement process, or more
precisely, risk shifting. The proprietor shifts their risk
to the delivery “vehicle” or contractor, who in turn shifts
the risk to the consultant, and the consultant in turn
shifts the risk to … well, the family home goes under the
partner’s name. At its worse excess, there is an absurd
shifting of risk, almost comical if it weren’t so serious,
onto parties who have neither the capacity, nor the
expertise, nor the legal obligation to cover that risk.
I think most sane people in the construction industry
would agree that a successful project is delivered if
three variables in a three-cornered contest – time, cost
and quality – are kept in some form of equilibrium. In
reality most projects are likely to fulfill only two of these
three outcomes, and poor risk allocations put significant
pressure on this equilibrium – generally only delivering
one of three, if any.
If the agreed aim of a project is to have a quality
design outcome (which unfortunately is not a uniform
attitude across the industry), then fair risk allocation is
essential. To achieve this the industry must move away
from traditional adversarial procurement processes
toward those with an emphasis on sharing fair risk,
otherwise known in plain English as a partnership. Even
current models within the industry that aspire to such
objectives, such as the managing contractor approach,
have serious flaws that impact on design quality – and
therefore on the immediate and long-term benefits to
public and private sector clients.
The industry needs to explore new forms of
contracting based on genuine partnerships – including
the so-called alliance model. This will be particularly
relevant as the industry develops new building
information modelling technologies (under the banner
of integrated practice), which will radically redefine
how risks are allocated. In the most optimistic picture,
if a virtual model of a project is used and agreed to by all
project participants, including contractors, consultants,
subcontractors and suppliers, then the delivery process is
simply one of replicating the virtual model in the “real”.
In doing so the project can be de-risked to the extent that
risk allocation on design matters becomes irrelevant.
Of course this future nirvana will be achieved only
a bit at a time, but architects and the wider industry need
to focus on the idea of fair and real partnerships, and in
doing so take the exhaustion out of the how, and put the
energy back into the why.
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“... contracting by confl ict
– mate, it’s the Australian
way, a bit of biffo.
This adversarial approach
is like a bleak ghost
fl oating over the current
forms of contract ...”
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Copyright © 2010 Architecture Media Pty Ltd
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