After reading the news story ‘Are you wasting time on redesigns?’ (EMC, October, page 11) with some interest, I totally agree that there are many millions of hours and pounds wasted in redesigning and redoing works after the project has commenced and is under construction.

I was not sure if the story was referring to design-and-build projects or those pre-designed by others. However, I give my thoughts and findings on both.

With reference to design-and-build projects, we would expect there to be an amount of redesign while the development of the design takes place up to the point of the frozen design, which represents the agreed contract sum and client brief.

However, from this point on, we experience changes of design and variations to the agreed contract works on every project, so changes to drawings and calculations are required.

These amended works add about 25-50% of additional design and engineering cost associated with rescheduling works and materials etc. In these instances we claim for our additional engineering, design and quantity surveying cost, and under these contracts we would not expect our claims for additional costs to be disputed on any projects.

With contracts where the design is carried out by others, our responsibility for design is only limited to the ‘as installed’ drawings, and the extent of this work depends on whether the designer instructs the changes by issuing a revised drawing or by a written instruction.

However, as above, variations and changes would add about 10-15% of additional cost for engineering and QS cost. We would expect that most of the cost would be disputed.

Variations and changes to the works during construction cause immense disruption to the site and add workload for engineers.

It would be great if the ‘professionals’ could budget for and design the works correctly, perhaps with some added expertise, before the works commence, to justify the royal charter they enjoy. This would eliminate the waste.

In general, the success of our claims for additional costs for redesign, engineering and QS costs will depend on the experience and equitable- mindedness of the clients’ appointed project quantity surveyor, and how the terms of the contract are interpreted by him, along with how hard we put forward our points and arguments for extra payment.

I will be interested to read the results from your survey.

Source

Electrical and Mechanical Contractor

Postscript

Allan Wells, MD Guy & Son (Verwood), via email

Alan Wells wins this month’s drinks voucher