ROUND TABLE REVIEW 23
it would “give real power to whoever is taking that role, because they can say ‘this detail is approved, and if you change this now, the least you get will be a 12 week delay.” Hannah Pinsent of Tate & Co Architects said that for smaller practices, it was about “honest and open conversations with clients; we’re following the standards and using them as guidelines, we’re just not signed up to the same platforms.” Pinsent said that while most clients are “quite open to it and happy to pay the extra fees,” there are “some that push back.”
Richard Harrison warned against roles and responsibilities being too separate: “If you silo all of the roles, you’re going to end up in failure, and it’s not in the interest of the client. Clients have to realise their interests served by actually planning and managing projects properly right from the start, and getting on board.” Stephen Hamil asked whether there was potential of bringing Principal Designer and Principal Contractor together as a combined entity, “with some kind of firewall between them?” In terms of information on products, there was some consensus that the Building Safety Act’s new Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI) brought welcome clarity to rating product testing data from manufacturers, as Paul French of Saint-Gobain Interior Solutions confirmed: “It gives the confidence around the governance that sits within those organisations, the competence of people who provide the information, and the avoidance of ambiguity in terms of claims made for application and performance.” He warned however that he was “concerned about the lack of traction in the industry so far.” Chris Hall of Siderise concluded that a cynicism towards high-risk early investment from the cost-cutting of the past was beginning to change, however admitting that value engineering had impacted manufacturers’ “willingness to invest in early design, when they get nothing out of it at the end.” He said: “The dial is moving back towards ‘let’s do it right, and let’s do it early.”
Conclusion
The round table saw general agreement on the need for the Golden Thread to bring rigour to future projects; but challenging questions such as how much of the approach and its responsibilities can and should be enshrined in contracts. Architects may be returning to the hot seat as guarantors of quality, but short-term whether they are prepared to take responsibility for other peoples’ design decisions may be hard to see currently. In time, there’s a chance we will see architects back as the arbiters of quality in projects, but what will this do to contractors’ interest in high-risk schemes? The Golden Thread wraps up so many benefits; rigour, supply chain control, and robustness of specification, which could revolutionise how buildings are procured and made. But as the magnifying glass is held up to every aspect of projects in this new environment, will the clarity be too much for some parties in the chain to bear, when it reveals the real costs of doing things properly?
The full report, with more detail on the second half of the discussion, can be downloaded for free as a white paper, at https://
insights.netmagmedia.co.uk/round-tables
We would like to thank our sponsors Siderise, JELD-WEN and Saint-Gobain Interior Solutions for their participation in Building Insights LIVE.
ADF MAY 2024
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE ROUND TABLE
• Lucy Craig, Mace Group: We need to look at the fee structure around design – you pay for what you get, and we need detailed, prescriptive design
• Peter Sutcliffe, AECOM: We have a duty to make the Golden Thread accessible, and to consider how it’s going to be used by the client, FM and future occupants
• Chris Hall, Siderise: If you design as early as possible, the knots or breaks in the Golden Thread should be fewer, and the whole process should be a lot easier
• Richard Harrison, Association of Consultant Architects: • A framework alliance contract could bind all of the bodies together and dedicate them to work collaboratively
• Glyn Hauser, JELD-WEN: Simplicity and consistency of data, and third-party certification of products to dispel some of the uncertainty
• Stephen Hamil, NBS: Take the Principal Designer role seriously, they need to get the design responsibility matrix correct, particularly around specification; also manufacturers need to follow the CCPI principles
• Hannah Pinsent, Tate + Co Architects: Use the formal guidelines but set up your own procedures. Admit you’re not always the expert, and have honest conversations with everybody at the early stages to make sure you’re getting the right information
• Ben Wallbank, Trimble EMEA: The BIM standard IS19650 will help, and I would try and standardise around good practice
• Chris Lees, Data Clan: Stop looking at everything associated with the Building Safety Act as an ‘additive’ – look at the big picture, and learn what good looks like for data management
• Paul French, Saint-Gobain Interior Solutions: CCPI should help identify supply chain partners operating in a responsible way
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