As an industry, we are too often guilty of letting the client (and sometimes ourselves) think what he would like to in the early stages, rather than telling uncomfortable truths, being nervous of unsettling clients and losing the job. There is too often a willingness to turn a blind eye to awkward issues until the client is fully committed and they can no longer be ignored. Clients don't help, of course, often seeming unwilling to hear bad news, and all too likely to believe competitors who will tell them exactly what they want to hear - however improbable.
Under Design Led Construction™, the philosophy is that it is better to lose a job by being honest than to win one and then have to go through a terrible confidence dip / crisis / finish with an unsatisfactory result.
Design Led Construction™ is a long term business commitment to a way of working that seeks to minimise unpleasant situations late in a project by making the most realistic possible assessment of the situation at the outset, and this means that the project inception/feasibility stage must be taken very seriously. Under Design Led Construction™, a client who is not willing to spend a little at the outset to put the project on a firm footing will be a client who goes elsewhere. Under Design Led Construction™, it will be better to advise a client that a project is non-viable as proposed at the outset (at the same time, of course, as suggesting what could be viable), than to go forwards in blind hope that something will be salvaged later on.
Projects vary immensely, of course - particularly at the beginning, but the likely content of a feasibility stage will include:
- Brief testing/development;
- particularly, working hard to identify the real needs of the client that underlie what they say they want. It is sometimes necessary to write the client's brief for them, or to re-write it in clear terms, and re-present it. It is a truism that good briefs make for good projects
- testing budget information / conditions
- testing timing information / conditions
- Examination of all the practical and statutory conditions that will set the parameters for the project
- Working up of one or more concept options, communicated and described in the simplest possible way, usually to include;
- a proposal that meets any hard budget or other conditions identified
- a proposal that satisfies the brief but may call for other conditions, often budget, to be challenged
- and often, additionally, proposals which perhaps go beyond these, if valuable design or other insights have been developed by the team
- Costings and programme implications of these options
- Commentary/recommendations/conclusions
Of course, there is a reason for this - an unholy alliance between clients nervous of spending money early and sections of the industry that work by offering free or under-priced work at early stages.
Can Design Led Construction™ eliminate his problem? Probably not; but we can hope to carve out a reputation and a rationale for approaching projects on a thorough basis that will win work from sensible clients. The aim of Design Led Construction™ is not to take over the industry, but to develop a well understood route that will attract the right sort of clients with the right sort of projects that can make our working lives, our productivity, our rewards more reliably positive.
Perhaps there is one thing that is relatively uncommon here though, and that is the requirement, under Design Led Construction™, to have a contractor as part of the team at this stage, so that budget figures, programme and construction risk commentaries are founded in reality, not only professional opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment