Interview CIBSE president
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environmental objectives need to be incentivised as much as cost, time and build quality. ‘Over the last 15 years, the procurement process has
Rob Manning
CV
Education: Born 1950. Attends South Bank Polytechnic as an undergraduate.
Career: 1972 – As part of university work experience, joins Oscar Faber and becomes full time, involved broadly in design and construction processes. 1982 – Moves to a contracting company in Zimbabwe, then later to Botswana. 1987 – Works for building services consultancies in the UK. 2003 – Rejoins Faber (now AECOM) and works on healthcare projects. Becomes chief engineer. 2010 – Head of healthcare sector.
Personal: Married with two grown-up daughters and a son who is working as a civil engineer in Libya. Lives in the Cotwolds and is an avid hill walker. Other interests include golf and wildlife.
become contractor-led,’ Manning says. ‘Once upon a time we used to be appointed as designers by the client. We would produce a design with the structural engineer, the architect, the quantity surveyor. We would go to tender and appoint a contractor. ‘We would then act on behalf of the client – the
end-user of the process – to monitor the performance of controls, of commissioning, and so on – in other words, make sure what was specified was actually delivered. ‘Both consulting engineers and architects have
handed on to contractors and specialist providers the job of providing the services. Now what happens is that the contractor leads the procurement process – the client goes direct to the contractor. Indeed, Private Finance Initiative schemes are a good example of contractor-led procurement.’ The upshot, says Manning, is that: ‘In a lot of
procurement processes the designer has become divorced from delivery. This means that the designer, while still able to learn what went wrong, is not involved enough in the project to know why these things went wrong. When designers are isolated in this way, there isn’t a feedback loop for them to learn the lessons of what they have done. ‘As a result, there’s also a tendency for the front-end
concept designers to put forward ideas that can’t in the end be translated into reality.’ ‘Passive’ engineering is essential to the delivery of
green buildings, and the industry now needs to bring the ‘active’ engineering aspects of the process – the specification, installation and testing of the actual equipment – back to prominence in the procurement
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CIBSE Journal May 2010
chain, says Manning. ‘Every day CIBSE members do green engineering – when we select or install the systems, equipment, controls, fans, and so on. As colleagues we have to get together with the other institutions – the architects, structural engineers, the leaders of industry – to try to find a way to get back to focusing more on and incentivising the environmental objectives.’ Manning concedes that it will be a huge challenge
to try to push the industry towards this holy grail of collaboration, particularly when, in a recession, the ‘let’s look after number one’ mentality is uppermost, and contractual litigation has long been the accepted way to resolve differences. ‘I believe we need to change the fundamentals of
the procurement process before we can successfully develop collaborative working between members of a project team to deliver low carbon objects,’ Manning asserts. ‘The way our contracts work is a showstopper for green-building delivery.’ However, he adds, there are practical tools now
being developed that can, in themselves, foster more joint working between professionals. A hobby horse of Manning’s – he has already written about this in the Journal, in January 2010 (‘Model activity’, page 48) – is building information modelling, BIM. This process, he says, provides a model that isn’t just about structures but also encompasses equipment and services. ‘BIM provides an opportunity to manage information
through the creation of a 3D drawing model, into which you put all the service information – for example, of a boiler’s operation, maintenance and safety requirements. And you can’t build that model unless everybody collaborates.’ The new CIBSE president concedes he has no easy answer to breaking down the barriers between the
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