Grand designs

Helen Dunderdale deconstructs the building process, from conception to completion.

University estate teams must forge the right partnerships to embark on large construction projects for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that enable projects to be completed on time, within the designated budget, to the appropriate quality standards and safety requirements. This task is highly complex. It is also one that is reliant on your estates team, and on the other university teams involved in the decision making process, to create effective and consistent pathways of communication between yourselves and the companies that are designated to these large projects of work.

To investigate the process of selecting the right design team and for tips on how to be the best university based client for undertaking such projects, we spoke to Amy Thatcher, Market Manager of Stride Treglown, and to Gordon Tero, who is currently managing one of their projects within the HE sector.

Stride Treglown, one of the largest architectural practices in the country with offices across the UK, has a vast amount of experience and expertise in designing facilities for the HE sector. One of their latest projects, designing new student accommodation for the University of Liverpool, is a contract that was gained through the Official Journal of the European Union’s procurement rules (OJEU). This process is a legal requirement for projects when sources from the public purse exceed a certain threshold, and require HEIs embarking on large construction projects to send a ‘contract notice’ open for bidding to the OJEU.

The purpose of the EU procurement rules is to “open up the public procurement market and to ensure the free movement of supplies, services and works within the EU. The EU rules reflect and reinforce the ‘value for money’ (vfm) focus of the Government’s procurement policy. This requires that all public procurement must be based on vfm, defined as “the optimum combination of whole-life cost and quality to meet the user’s requirement”, which should be achieved through competition, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary… The rules are enforced through the Member States courts, and the European Court of Justice (OJEU).”

The publication of the contract notice can generate hundreds of expressions of interest in your project. Companies then respond by submitting a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ), which consists mostly of standard questions to comply with the rules of the process, but also of personalised questions that a university can formulate independently. It has been noted that some of these questions could provide more informative responses if phrased with a different emphasis. Thatcher expands on this opinion.

“This is the client’s first opportunity to start finding out about potential consultants and what they have to offer. Unfortunately, all too often, PQQs get taken over by the need for ‘corporate’ information; company accounts, quality assurance accreditations and training policies, etc. Although these are useful, and help the client establish the stability of the company (which is especially important at the moment), they don’t really tell you much about the ‘heart’ of the company, its philosophies or its staff, things that, it could be argued, really matter when deciding who you want to work with. This is where it can be much more useful to ask questions about a practice’s approach, what they think they could bring to the scheme, how their team would work with the university to deliver the building, etc.

“So think about what’s important to you. It is important that these questions are clear and if necessary give extra information to explain what you’re looking for. This will help the companies complete the questionnaire so that you get the clear and concise answers you are looking for.”

Tenders
Once the team at your HEI has sifted through this first stage, this will generate a short list of approximately six to 10 companies that will then be invited to tender. The usual route is the ‘restricted procedure, under which a selection is made of those who respond to the advertisement and only they are invited to submit a tender for the contract. This allows purchasers to avoid having to deal with an overwhelmingly large number of tenders’ (OJEU).

The tender process leads to the presentation of a more qualitative account, Tero tells us. This consists of an interview where a financial proposal is raised. It can also consist of a mini competition, where the initial design thoughts and the way the design process will unfold is discussed, including how work will be done together to further define the brief.

For the multimillion-pound project in Liverpool, where Tero represents Stride Treglown, the timescale for detailing up the design, the planning and working out exactly what the brief is will be approximately 18 months in the making before the work gets to site. Tero has found his work with Liverpool a highly successful experience due to a fantastic process of communication: “Liverpool have been excellent at working through everything with us and defining what they need and how it fits in with the overall strategy and ethos of the university.”

Tero explains that Liverpool had previously prepared a detailed feasibility study to establish how the facility would best be utilised and to see how the new build would fit with the longer term plan of their needs. They partnered with a provider to help funding for their project, who will construct and manage the facility to the university’s specifications, then offer it as a service to the university for an annual fee. The provider employs their own contractor. Constant consultation between all parties involved occurs in order to ensure that the facility will reach completion on time and within the budget.

Construction
Effective communication is obviously then one of the key elements of the construction process. Thatcher provides us with further tips on how you can be the best client for those to whom you designate your projects. “We know when we work with estates teams on university schemes, it is everyone’s aim to deliver the best building possible, but some journeys are easier than others and we have identified certain factors that will always help. We believe that to get the most out of any project, it all comes down to getting the brief right; the best projects are those with the best briefs! A key factor in this is providing the design team with access to the right people at the outset, and putting in extra time at the briefing stage will prevent problems later in the process as things run more smoothly and clearly.

“University buildings are usually complex, not least because they are required to meet the needs of several diverse groups. We will always want to meet with all stakeholders and especially academic staff early on to ensure that we understand what all parties want from their new facility, and then manage these expectations so that everyone is delighted with the result.

“Once a clear brief is identified, with clear sign off and change control procedures, it’s vital that these are adhered to! Although this may be stating the obvious, the delivery of a new university building is a long process over which time personnel may change so it helps to have something to refer to as things move forward.

“An unambiguous brief also eliminates what we call ‘brief creep’, where requirements change through the life of a project but it’s unclear whether this is a deviation from the original brief or not. This can result in discord between the client and consultant teams and unforeseen costs.

“We would also like to see more use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within the sector to measure performance. We work to these with many of our private sector clients and they really do focus everyone on improving efficiencies. A good client will keep us on our toes!” (KPIs are financial and non-financial measures that assist in evaluating an organisation’s progress towards long-term goals.)

For many universities at present, new construction projects have been put on hold due to the current financial situation. This insight into the construction process reveals that there is still work to be done. Having a temporary respite can provide the time to plan an improved process for the careful formation of projects and set up efficient communication pathways for when things do get back on track, which will assist in ensuring that the projects your HEI undertakes are protected from any unnecessary expenditure.