Canadian Construction Association targets poor-quality plans

The Canadian Construction Association (CCA) is focusing on the poor quality of plans and specifications as a major problem in the construction industry that causes errors, cost overruns and owner indecision.

REGINA

“The problem is that tender documents are often produced to the 80-95 per cent stage then put out to bid, without being properly co-ordinated,” CCA standard practices committee chairman Serge Massicotte said during a recent CCA board meeting in Regina.

“This means a lot of the co-ordination takes place as a result of the estimating and bidding process.

Massicotte said when estimators look at the documents and find certain things are not included in the drawings, they ask the consultants for further information.

The consultants respond by issuing additional details and documentation, which could come in the form of new drawings, documents, details and corrections to drawings by way of description.

Ideally, all the missing items and changes would be incorporated into a new construction drawing and issued to the contractor once they arrive on the job site.

“More often than not, this is not being done,” said Massicotte, president of Vanier, Ont.-based Massicotte Construction.

“If items are not identified during the bidding process, then it creates problems when construction begins.”

“The contractor ends up cutting and pasting all the addendums to the drawing to get an idea of what things really look like,” said Massicotte.

“This is the responsibility of the consultant.”

According to Massicotte, the use of qualifications-based selection (QBS) is a possible solution to this problem.

QBS is a two-stage qualification process that puts most of the weight on quality and then looks at price.

Consulting firms submit qualifications to an owner, who then evaluates and selects the most qualified firm. The owner then negotiates the project scope of work, schedule, budget, and consultant fee.