Design debate: Interpreter who speaks contractor

Photographs: Bohdan Cap

When CM was invited to the Islington offices of architect Bennetts Associates to discuss the practice’s approach to working with contractors, we found a critical part of the story in the kitchen. There, making a coffee and evidently very much at home, is Alan Crane – past president of the CIOB, and a former chief executive of Bovis International and civils contractor Christiani & Nielsen. Now a consultant to a practice that has a reputation for striking, successful, but eminently sensible designs, Crane is helping to shape a pragmatic approach to architect-contractor relations.

But as one of the few people in the industry with instant name-and-face recognition factor, it’s not just CM that’s done the Bennetts Associates double-take. As Crane recounts, the practice was once due to play host to a senior manager of a major contractor it was working with. “He was coming to our office to harangue the guys over the design schedule. He walked in, saw me, and had a change of heart!”

Crane and founding director Rab Bennetts have a long combined history, first working together in the late 1970s and then rekindling their professional relationship around 10 years ago. Bennetts casts him in the role of “interpreter” between the different mindsets, making an invaluable contribution in translating both ways. “He tells us, ‘don’t draw too much, you’re drawing too much!’ But then he’ll say ‘don’t draw too little either!’ To have someone around who’s actually been in contracting is fantastic. We also get Alan along to contractor interviews, and if we’ve got an issue with a particular contractor, chances are Alan will know someone who works there.”

As a regular presence in the 75-strong design office, project staff also know that an experienced contractor’s opinion is just a few steps away. In fact, the arrangement seems to work so well, it’s surprising that other large architects’ practices haven’t also hired experienced ex-contracting staff to advise them on “speaking contractor”, whether in the arranged marriage of design and build projects or the long-term relationship of contractor-led bids. But as Crane says: “Some members of both professions aren’t that keen on integration, they think it undermines their professionalism. We’ve got no time for that, it’s much better for reducing costs, and reducing risk – for all parties.”

The discussion on design management was prompted by Rab Bennetts’ blog on the variable experiences on working with major contractors’ design managers. “One particular contractor’s design manager said we were just about the best they’d worked with, so he wanted to go for a drink to ask what we thought about their design management – he felt the industry doesn’t always get it right. But I told him that the number of contractors who do get it right, you can count on the fingers of one hand.”

Crane chimes in: “They tend to issue schedules of design requirements and detail requirements, and enormous great tracking schedules – they think process management, mechanistic techniques. Whereas what the good contractors do is sit down with the designers and go through their ideas, then bring in the key supply chain contractors and get all the parties developing the design together. Without that, it’s just process-driven.”

On the fundamental split of roles and responsibilities in design and build contracts, the duo are in no doubt that architects as lead designers should coordinate the input of engineers and other design consultants, and take the lead on coordinating with subcontractors on design detail. But as the pair warm to their theme, a picture emerges of the difficulties of marrying up a non-linear design process – which will include visits to planners, input from clients and endless feedback loops – with contractors’ Gantt charts and element-based approach.

“You can take a team of five or six people and you can judge how long it will take to get the information out – perhaps a couple of months. So a well-ordered design programme is necessary,” says Bennetts. “But we’ve had cases where contractors give you a design programme that makes the dates suit their estimating department, with three-weekly intervals between each package, because that suits their estimators.”

Crane hones in on an area he says throws up the most problems: detailing the joints between building elements. “When architects design a building, they don’t separate the floors from the walls or think of it indistinct elements or packages. If you try to design it that way, chances are you’ll get the joins wrong. But getting that message across to contractors is extremely difficult.”

Bennetts offers an example where contractors could apply intelligent design and procurement management: in a building with a facade made up of stone spandrel panels and glazing. “The contractor will typically bid those elements separately. But they could opt to have the stone specialist as a subcontractor to the glazing firm. Or split them up, but there’s a fantastic risk and double the amount of effort for the design team.”

But the architect is even-handed in his critique of the industry’s shortcomings. “There’s an awful lot of designers who don’t perform particularly well in producing the right type of information. They get over-involved and draw too much,” says Bennetts. “Architects aren’t very well trained in working directly for contractors.”

The pair describe an industry that has become more fragmented over the years, and where the synthesizing processes – design and build, design management and now BIM – struggle to replicate the collaborative approach they remember from the 1970s. At the time, Bennetts worked in a multi-disciplinary team at Arup Associates and Crane was at Bovis. “In a multi-disciplinary team, before the day is out, you’d get the drawings out [to the contractor],” Bennetts recalls. Crane adds: “And the design manager sat in the middle of the room, and did all the dates and programmes.”

There’s been many gains since then, and the passage of time tends to place past triumphs in sharper relief than today’s challenges. But it’s still striking to hear the pair describing the high point of collaborative working in construction as being the 1970s. So what went wrong? Bennetts smiles wryly. “In the 1970s, it was simpler. A lot of it was talking, not emails. A conversation can cut across dozens of emails.”