|  | If anyone can 'Egan'
Have you noticed just how liberally peppered my fellow AEC trade titles are with the name of Sir John Egan?
Six mentions in six separate editorial pieces: I know, I counted. (Yes, I know, I should get out more - I actually thought it was seven mentions but I mistook 'Elgin' for 'Egan' and briefly wandered why the heck Sir John was having a set of marbles named after him!) Recognizing my mistake, I too decided to take the 'Egan muse' on board and examine how this man is both lorded and criticized by an industry attempting to implement the principles set out in Rethinking Construction and particularly those principles where technology has a major role to play.
First a re-cap on the five key drivers of change that were identified in Rethinking Construction (if this isn't a re-cap for you - just where have you been for the last four years?) They were: committed leadership, focus on the customer, integrated processes and teams, a quality driven agenda and commitment to people. (Is it just me, or are these drivers applicable to a multitude of industries?).
Technology has a huge part to play across the board in responding to these drivers, but is especially relevant to delivering those all important integrated processes and teams. Then there are the thornier issues of how technology can link or partner the supply chain and finally, help measure the hoped for performance improvements in quality and efficiency in the industry.
The Web has played its part. In the first instance, it has done what the Web does best: the dissemination of information. It has made easily available the very words of wisdom, practical advice and example case histories that have tried to make Rethinking Construction a reality to the entire construction industry at the click of a mouse.
Staying with the Web, construction information and portal sites are generating huge traffic, with materials information and price sourcing taking a matter of minutes as opposed to days. Egan's own involvement with portal Asite, fosters integrated supply chains that can share the savings that technology brings to the procurement process.
And then there are the efficiencies of online tendering. However, what Egan and the industry hadn't bargained for was 'reverse auction bidding.' Reverse auction bidding is a system in which firms tender for contracts online and in real time. The firm that puts in the lowest bid after a set period of time wins the work. The system has set various parties scurrying to defend themselves against the spread of this evil with the 'trusty shield of Egan' and the 'sword of value.'
"Reverse auction bidding flies in the face of all good Egan initiatives," claims Rod Pettigrew, legal advisor to the Heating and Ventilating Contractors Association. "Services cannot be treated like products - you have to maintain quality," says Graham Manley of M&E firm Gratte Manley. Contractors such as Maxell Stewart will quite simply "not compete for projects procured in this way as it is contrary to Egan principles".
Oscar Wilde once said that a fool knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. What does it matter if the tender is done on paper or electronically? Making the wrong choices for the wrong reasons can be just as likely electronically as with any other method. In the end delivery at the right price with the right quality will be the only way of securing future contracts. And clients abusing the system may learn to their cost that quality partnerships are not built on cost alone. Just as Egan said.
Project collaboration extranets are headline dominators and integral to the vision of fragmented teams working in an integrated way and taking a team-based approached to design and delivery of construction projects.
Egan urges collaborative working from the early stages of a project to insist on higher standards, better training and more safety conscious design. So health and safety is another area where technology should be helping. I say should be, because clearly technology, along with a whole load of other things, isn't helping and people are dying. The three 'Rs' of Rethinking Construction: recruitment, retention and respect for people are all non starters if in Sir John's own words the industry "keeps killing people."
Safer construction may mean a much greater emphasis on using standard components and much more emphasis on off-site fabrication. "Designers should surely aim for as much as possible of the process of construction to take place in the controlled, safe conditions of a factory", says Egan.
This all seems sensible but these ways of working have their critics.
Firstly, Egan has been criticized for proposing a greater role for planning supervisors and the creation of ICCAs (Independent Construction Client Advisors). Colin Harding, Chairman of Bournemouth-based contractor George and Harding, comments that Egan is proposing "two additional layers of parasitic consultant," the very people whose role he originally sought to eradicate from the construction process in the first place.
Secondly, Gus Alexander, who runs his own architectural practice in London, questions "Egan-style clip-together non-specific buildings that fall apart before they're finished," referring to the stifling of unique project design leadership by a supposed move towards "a cost-cutting, tender-winning, assembly-kit construction world".
Similarly, I suppose the technological building design advances epitomized by parametric building modelling, or the 3D building visualization aids incorporated in the latest CAD packages, that take a fraction of time and the cost to produce versus the traditional cardboard model, are a 'no-no' to those architects who feel they still "need to pick up a pencil to design a building and properly understand it." No chance here of the technology tail wagging the architectural dog! That would apparently be about as welcome as a wobbly bridge to an engineer.
So what of measuring improved performance in the construction industry? Another area where technology has a considerable role to play. Enter stage left KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.
Their purpose is to show how a company's performance in areas such as safety, profitability, client satisfaction and defects, compares with the average achieved by the industry. By collating data from many different projects, the Construction Best Practice Programme has been able to benchmark the average. So if a company scores say 45% against a particular KPI, then 55% of companies have a better record against this particular performance indicator.
Now, I went to KPIZone.com - the construction-benchmarking gateway and was stunned by the list of seventy available benchmarking tools. The industry tell you that this measurement fervour is again down to one man - guess who? Yep, Egan.
Many parties are afraid that companies are wasting time and money on indiscriminate benchmarking instead of choosing the overall critical measures. In this case, technology had spawned an industry in its own right. But it seems to me that the industry can't complain about reverse auctions and the like if they are not prepared to measure the performance value they offer by using KPIs. So, I say live with it.
Rethinking Construction II will apparently be available by June 2002 latest, before Sir John becomes president of the CBI on 21st May.
I for one can't wait. |
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