Effective consultation can make a world of difference when executing construction projects.
What you don’t want to do is adjust your plans after they have been designed, that is always expensive. Usually, the reason for such adjustments is a lack of sufficient consultation during the early stages of the process.
Sometimes, managers who are consulted do not realize the importance of the information that they are being asked to provide.
The consultation process needs to be mutually educational. Managers across the organization must be made aware of the critical need to provide guidance to the project team.
They also need to understand that changes will not be made lightly once the final design is approved.
However, it is critical for the design team to seek out the information that is necessary to achieve a successful and comprehensive design. It is never too early to ask staff, especially departmental and divisional managers, what they need in a new facility.
This aspect of consultation needs to be realistic. Little progress will be made if all one receives is a wish list.
It is advisable to make it clear that there will likely be tradeoffs. Managers should be asked to rank what is most important to them and to identify what they are prepared to give up in order to get it.
Even when a checklist of preferred features is identified, it is best to discuss costs of features with design consultants before they begin work on the design.
This should be done not only with a view towards eliminating those features that are too costly, but also in the hope of finding cheaper functional alternatives that may offer the same or nearly the same level of performance.
Often one will discover that many features that can be built into the design of a project have a substantial cost to them.
One has to be skeptical when assessing whether the benefit is sufficient to justify the expense. As an example, the cost of a multi-storey parking garage is in the range of $20,000 per parking space.
Obviously there is a benefit in having adequate onsite parking, but for a city hall-type facility, you need to look at the total cost for overall parking spaces required.
It is critical that the ultimate decision-makers understand the cost implications of the decisions that he or she is being called to make.
If that person is presented with the question do you want adequate parking, then the response will almost certainly be yes. There is no such guarantee if they are presented with a proper costing for that type of facility.
Concerns regarding features need not be entirely Philistine in nature. Buildings such as city halls, trade convention centres, central libraries and sports stadiums are often designed to be landmarks.
Incorporating adequate parking, not just for staff, but also for expected visitors into a sports stadium has obvious implications for the esthetic value of the stadium.
Since public buildings are intended to serve a public use, it is important to consider the functional aspect of the design, not just what it looks like. Government buildings differ from most private sector buildings of a comparable nature in that there is usually a need for easier access and for more open, public areas.
The meetings are far less likely to be held in a private office building such as First Canadian Place than in Toronto City Hall. Those public meetings that are held in First Canadian Place will generally be smaller than the kind of mass rallies that a city hall attracts.
It is important to make sure that draft designs are subjected to rigorous critical review at early stages by the people who represent a variety of perspectives.
These are unique problems that public sector facilities need addressed.
Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at swbauld@purchasingci.com.
Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed