For built environment professionals, safety must be underpinned by quality at every stage of project design and delivery.
Here RLB Partner, Vincent Pegg talks to Construction Management magazine about how quality must be the new paradigm of safety.
Over the last few years, our industry has experienced a profound recalibration in how it views safety.
From the introduction of the Building Safety Act to the recent appointment of interim chief construction adviser, Thouria Istephan – safety has rightly become front and centre.
Yet safety alone is not enough. It must be anchored by quality, because genuine, lasting behavioural change in our built environment will only occur when quality is as non-negotiable as safety itself.
What the industry must learn and unlearn
Grenfell, inefficient oversight, flawed workmanship and substandard materials are all stark reminders of what happens when quality is neglected. Dame Judith Hackitt’s Building a Safer Future report described how “the regulatory system covering high-rise and complex buildings was not fit for purpose”, adding “we have seen further evidence confirming the deep flaws in the current system”.
The Get It Right Initiative (GIRI) first published its major research into the cost of quality (or cost of error) in 2016, finding that direct costs of avoidable error typically amount to between 5% and 25% of a project value, or up to £25 billion per annum – roughly seven times the industry’s total profit.
Root cause analyses from GIRI identify recurring drivers, including inadequate planning, late design changes, poor coordination, weak culture around quality, financial/time pressures and inadequate supervisory capacity.
Those of us working in the industry know the dynamic well: as time and cost pressures intensify, quality, alongside building safety, may become the casualty, often with a long list of ‘agreed’ rework to resolve post completion.
Reimaging quality as core, not optional
So how do we work collaboratively to ensure stricter competency for all dutyholders, including designers, contractors and building managers?
1. Cultural shifts through education and mentoring
We must adopt stricter baseline requirements, not just for principal designers and principal contractors, but also for building managers and regulatory stakeholders.
Understanding ownership and accountability for quality needs to be embedded from day one so that everyone knows their role and owns that responsibility, not just the onus falling on a select number of roles, such as the clerk of works.
Working closely with the building regulations principal designer, there needs to be a holistic approach with a strong governance and approach to quality in the design processes and communicated through detailed, performance-based specification. At every step, key stakeholders should be involved in any change to this specification to ensure that quality is not compromised.
2. Make the golden thread a living reality
The golden thread of information, a continuous, trusted digital record of a building’s specification, change history, test data and maintenance regime, must move from an ambition to a reality – and to all buildings, not just higher-risk ones.
Adopting the principles of the golden thread across our estates as the norm will support risk management strategies, the clients’ ability to utilise and maintain the building and help it achieve its mandatory and regulatory requirements in the future.
3. Recast value engineering
Instead of defaulting to cost cuts, value engineering should be understood as designing for maximising quality at optimal cost.
Quality can play a vital role in the value engineering process, collaborating with building safety and assurance professionals to take a holistic approach to assess how any change, or series of changes, affects the overall quality of the project.
4. Leverage technology, wisely
Digital tools, AI and automation are powerful enablers when aligned with intent, not just used as red flags at the end of delivery.
We also need any integrated technology to be streamlined and intuitive, ensuring that it is usable and effective on site so that data collection is a by-product rather than a focus. This will help prevent the system becoming overly complex, burdensome, or worse, neglected altogether.
5. Move the mountain – early, often and together
Adopt the ‘move the mountain’ principle that advocates for inspecting quality early in the project and remedying issues alongside construction, ensuring that the mountain never becomes insurmountable.
Above all, work as one, with each individual, each organisation and each part of the process working seamlessly, to promote collaboration, communication and quality alongside health and safety.
Quality as living proof of design and build
The word ‘quality’ is often bandied around, but the ultimate validation of quality is living proof of how a building performs, how issues are handled, how longevity, safety, sustainability and occupant satisfaction result over time.
Just as safety is now an industry imperative, quality must become the bedrock of how we build. It demands that every stakeholder acknowledge their role and actively foster a pre-emptive, proactive approach to quality management.
Quality is no longer optional. It is the credibility, trust and integrity of the built environment.
This is an abridged version of an article that first appeared in Construction Management.
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