Bouwdata

This week on LinkedIn, subsequent to a post of Rik Neven, I read a number of articles about the VRT building written by Jozef Hessel and Philip Adam.
There were both sensible and nonsensical things in them. So I cannot resist shining my light on the matter as well and stating, ‘no, budget management is NOT part of the essence of the architect profession’.

I read in Jozef Hessel’s article that ‘architects can all too often hide behind errors in bill of quantities, underestimates, exceeding deadlines and so much more’.

Now let these be things that are not part of the architect’s core business!
Their expertise consists in translating a client’s needs into a good concept that fits the client’s operating model and the social fabric, helping the client obtain a building permit by consulting beforehand with urban planning, the fire brigade, regulations regarding disabled persons, heritage, etc. , and monitoring quality on site during execution.

For all the things reported in the above quote, he is not trained and clashes the kind of personality you need to have to be good at what is listed above, as the ‘core’ of being an architect.
Managing data requires a certain degree of OCD and some autism can’t hurt either.
The client must also be prepared to take responsibility and pay realistic fees, allocate matters to parties with the necessary expertise for that item and, in one move, also throw issues such as maintenance and sustainability into the debate.

An architect cannot do this alone, you have to do it with a whole team.

It is high time that we bring the preparation of bill of quantities, budget control and unit costs for subsequent projects to a professional level.

And this brings me to another quote from Jozef Hessel: ‘An architect often relies on other projects where post-calculation was applied in order to generate figures.’ And that is exactly where the problem lies!

A classic design-bid-build in Belgium has the following ‘peculiarities’:
– Measurements are done by the architect but responsibility for checking fixed quantities lies with the contractor. In the case of presumed quantities, the principal puts his wallet on the table. This leads to carelessness on the designer’s side and opens the door to speculation on the contractor’s side. In other words, it is a source of settlements.

– Drawing up the bill of quantities is part of the architect’s ‘creative freedom’. As a result, the estimator has to deal with different bills of quantities each time, making cross-project knowledge accumulation almost impossible.

– A cost estimator’s job description states that he/she must estimate the indirect costs and ‘judiciously’ divide them among the items reported in the bill of quantities. Depending on the project, this amount, together with the overheads and the profit/risk percentage, will be 18% to 30% of the direct production cost. The allocation will be made according to the tenderer’s commercial judgement. In other words, the actual composition of the cost price is known only by the tendering contractor.

So where should we evolve to?

Over 10 years ago, I discovered a quote by ir Otto Sluizer in one of the STABU bulletins from the Netherlands and it has been my professional life motto ever since:
‘Ideally, all parties in a concrete construction process would be so professional that they would humbly know their place in that process, thereby recognising the professionalism of the other parties and, in mutual trust, be able to merge their own interest with the general interest of the project. It sounds too good to be true, but it has already been demonstrated in practice.’
Or to summarise it in Corona terms: architect, stop wanting to be boss of the lot and focus on what you chose to do as an 18-year-old: make the world a more beautiful and pleasant place. It is up to the builder to take responsibility and find a party that can assist him/her to keep his/her budget under control.

In other words, I agree with Joseph Hessel when he states, ‘And for the architect. Now come out of your cubicle and straighten your back, stand firm in your shoes …’ but I would add “and fight for your creativity”.