Step forward QSs

But why is he so frustrated? It is partly because only 2% is invested in IT for our architecture/engineering sector compared with 11% in industry generally. Even the number crunching banking sector invests an average of £22,000 per person per year in IT compared with the construction poor relation of just £800.

BIM is a new term but thank goodness there have been initiatives by the likes of Graphisoft ArchiCAD - of both model generated procurement of construction and building lifecycle management - with their all inclusive approaches to model-based architectural design and production.

The requirement for local authorities to produce 3D models of every borough seems an age away, yet BIM could become an adjunct to this overall initiative if the leadership were there. With the current prominence of energy usage, environmental concerns and the all-embracing changes to Part L and F of the Building regulations, there are opportunities to improve the proportion of IT resources diverted to the built environment sector, so that we can catch up with the rest of industry.

From the early days of CAD in the 1970s it was obvious that such a mechanistic approach to design would, by its very nature, generate quantities. By the 1980s, such programmes were available and we all received training. The trouble was that the training was uneconomical, and the hardware and software so expensive and gigantic. Generating even basic quantities proved more long-winded than creating images, and different parties to the project needed alternative ‘layers' of drawings and information with complex add-on programmes. We were light years away from simulating and integrating even basic standard methods of measurement that would have been an obvious means to total project co-ordination.

Nor did the technology necessarily improve the quality of the information going out to the extended design team. If the information in the design drawings was contradictory, this method meant that team members would just receive bad information more quickly. Different professionals needed alternative sets of documentation, often in various file formats. Can you blame the QS and various engineers for regressing to their familiar traditional stances in order to protect their own backs? The QS/tendering process in particular needs to access many types of drawings and documents before achieving cost and contractual certainty.

By manipulating a BIM model, an owner/occupier can extract the cost of maintaining a building over its expected useful life. Using quick ‘what if' design options, teams can anticipate good facility management and become active in both proposed designs and post-build management.

Could we at last be entering an age where construction professionals will be enabled to think once/build once while still maintaining quality, speed, accuracy, accountability and certainty?

The answer is yes, provided there is real collaboration among the various skills that make up the design and constructors' teams. This is often lacking and was so cogently illustrated by Klaschka when he mentions transposing information backwards and forwards. It is a dangerous process and one which does indeed make ‘prefects' of the body ultimately responsible for measurement, cost, contract documentation and on-site accounting, while at the same time being able to dodge liability for the all important quality and design functions. It is the way that we work in this country.

Step forward QSs - the blinkered ones who can only be motivated by counting and physically scaling two - preferably one - dimensional objects and transposing the results onto paper and contract documentation. Therein lies the power, income and status of a profession. No wonder there has been a recent name change by the RICS construction faculty to bring the ‘QS' title back into focus. It could be a short-sighted move compared with the more sensible RICS guidance note on e-tendering.

Conversely, modern QSs are very capable of branching out and using their training to diversify, to think in the round, contribute value and thereby assist not only the design process but wider project management issues. All is not lost.

Hopefully more surveyors will want Klaschka's quantities having seen how it works for the Muslim Centre.

John Sparkes, chartered architect, project manager & QS