Project team defends tightly controlled Welsh Assembly job

The £49.3m new Welsh Assembly building involved under 100 design changes during its construction, compared to the 15,000 that blighted the £430m Scottish Parliament building.

Figures revealed to QS News by the building's project manager TPS show a much more tightly disciplined project, built under a D&B contract, than the Holyrood job. The latter scheme was built under a construction management contract and faced severe cost overruns.

The figures show that around 80 project manager instructions were issued during building. A quarter of these were value engineering changes while the rest related to integrating the IT equipment and services into the building.

The figures came as the scheme's client and the project team defended claims that the project was more expensive than the Scottish parliament building in terms of pounds per square metre. A source at the team stressed that the comparison was unfair as the Welsh Assembly was only the public face of the parliament, with no offices, in contrast to the Scottish job. "This was the jewel of the complex while the Scottish parliament was the whole development," the source said.

The Welsh building opened to the public last week and is due to be officially launched on St David's Day on 1 March.

A consortium led by Taylor Woodrow and including the original architect Richard Rogers Partnership, signed the D&B contract in early 2003. The price was set at just over £40m although this included extra contingency funds, some of which are expected to be used up by the client.

TPS worked with QS Northcroft on the project. Northcroft's team included director Stewart Pitteway, final account surveyor Wayne Ganderton, cost planning director Graham Grabski, cost planning surveyor Julie Wood and M&E specialists John Gray and Mike Omasta. Pitteway said he was proud of the project and "what we had done to get it delivered".

• QS News understands the final account for the £430m Scottish Parliament building will not be completed until May. The account was expected to be finished by the start of this year.