BYTNAR - TALKS
EPISODE: 001 - PLAN OF WORK
This episode is for people who want to know more about the process of project design and delivery.
If you ask yourself questions:
How are architects and engineers approaching project design and definition?
What are the RIBA Stages of Work?
How do they do it differently in other countries?
What should I think about when planning a construction project?
This episode should give you a broad idea of how it is done in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction.
Engineer takes on construction episode one hi I'm P Bytnar each day I help my clients plan and design building projects through Bitner limited a Consulting Charter Structural Engineers practice my biggest passion and the Cornerstone on which I've built my business is finding clever solutions for construction projects I am a chartered Str engineer and a bing software developer so you can rest assured that I will strive to talk about the best practices and the use of new technologies in the industry and if you're embarking on a construction project or are involved in planning designing and building the world around us you'll find this podcast useful this episode is about the process of building project development aka the plan of work hello you thank you for tuning in to this podcast it was long time in brewing and it is this year's resolution that I intend to stick to hopefully you won't end up like one of those physically important ones that ending up costing your wallet rather than improving your lifestyle I trust that in a year's time I'll be able to revisit this one and say wow we went a long way but let's not get too much ahead of ourselves and deliver this one you you've listened to the intro you more or less know who I am and what I stand for and what I want to talk about in this podcast you see on a daily basis I enjoy having conversation with my colleagues clients fellow professionals some of these conversations are heavy and important some are light and fous but with all these interactions I come out richer on the other side and I hope this podcast will be like one of the conversations that after several minutes or several dozens of minutes you end up enriched with with something new or maybe different perspective on the aspect of your everyday life that you you haven't thought about before it may not be the first conclusion that pops to to one's mind you see but the conversation is a tool of a personal and professional growth for me I realized that I would love to share my take on the architectural engineering and construction industry with you and use this podcast to improve myself as a speaker and in the process give you some food for thought I hope this podcast will start many conversations opinions and I hope you'll not hesitate to share with me either commenting on this material or sharing it with your colleagues perhaps even popping me a little message on LinkedIn I do not bite and I very much love like to hear from you either in person through social media LinkedIn whatever I really don't care let's use these tools to to start a conversation I do not want this to be a lecture though I I want to talk about important things in simple terms many construction teams ass are assembled for the first time on any given project and usually the last time with all of those different people contract designers Architects Engineers mes whoever and clients meeting for the first time going through the project and then that's that end of story maybe we work on the other project together maybe not it really depends but but generally speaking it's usually the case that it's one one off and then we come back on any other projects with different sort of mix mix of people heill expertise most investors embark on the construction for the first time and the only time in the money management Endeavor from the intro you know who I am but not many people know that I am also married into plastic manufacturing family and with the ongoing research and development project in AI for aec that's architectural engineering and construction I'm a proponent of visionary thinking with well defined processes which can be changed or improved upon things like Toyota way that revolutionized the manufacturing industry and his application to development and operations of software or manufacturing processes concept of H and Candi and Kaizen using Canan to visualize work the sort of ideas the sort of approach to Everyday running of business everyday running of project delivery or project definition it somehow evades the a industry how about construction project is there anything iik to to what I just mentioned well kind of you see all of those that process is thinking how to approach the the whole definition of the project is a little bit of a hidden miss our B Royal Institute of charted Architects did see that as an issue in the last century and devised Reba plan of work which throughout the years has developed to what is now called Reba plan of work 2020 which this podcast this episode will concentrate upon funny with with River plans of work when I started my careers um 10 years ago as a engineer that just finished hnc program and starting my bachelor's degree but working in the same time I wanted to know it all it wasn't enough to know you know hook slow or ul's equations all that engineering talk you know stiffnesses and bending moments and Sh I wanted to know more in my perspective when I was joining the industry I thought come on it's simple it's bloody buildings right it's it's roads it's stuff that been doing for thousands of years now it should be simple someone should have a good grasp of it and doing a good job day in and day out I soon realized that it isn't the case and most of the businesses most of the projects most of the designs and deliveries of these projects are are a little bit hid and miss and when I approach my then former director and the business owner talking about the stages of work on one of the projects I got the disdained look at me saying what stage three stop talking like an architect just get on with the job design it and push it out of the office so that I did later on listening to symposiums going on to the trade shows and such listening to the professionals at The Pick of their careers doing massive projects it seems like it's similar case to what what the smaller ones do although at the much much larg scale so without further Ado let's talk about the plan of work shall [Music] we so H project definition and delivery process that's a good one right if you work on a small project everyone just get on with it maybe on a more complex one there's a little bit more of the organization skills there but seems like everyone just push on the papers push on the specifications down the line until yeah we got a hole in the ground and then we there is a building standing upon that home and hopefully at the end of the process the person who pays for it is happy with it or actually makes money off of it the troubles with the approach to the to the whole thing is that it's greatly disjointed you see for the plan of works I've pondered a lot how to how to begin talking on this subject I think it's sort of seems a little bit removed if you don't get the context of of how how important it is in the context of of planning designing and executing a construction project so so I realized that it would be best to to talk about it in six points the point number one will be about how the projects are defined and delivered in different places in the world there is a great table at the beginning of the introductory guide to RBA plan of work which you can find on the RBA website right and I'll use that to reflect on on differences between the world and here then I'll move to the point number two to talk about how things look like in general in Britain on projects up to 1 million pounds this sort of projects are my bread and butter and I'm very often included within the design and execution team at all sorts of different stages I have a breath of knowledge and experience delivering such projects and I can I can tell you that it is a wild wild west very often out there then I'll talk about similar thing but on the slightly larger projects projects that go over1 million pounds perhaps go to 5 10 million pounds I've worked and advised on all different aspects of of delivery of such projects from different perspective and they're not as often occurrence in our office as of yet but nevertheless I see a big difference between those that are under 1 million pound to those that are up to 10 million pounds then I'll move on to say what the PL plan of work is what are the stages of it there there are eight of them to predesign definition of the project then there are several that treat about defining designing the actual actual projects and then execution hand over and use I'll talk a little bit about history of the plan of Works briefly mention the changes and then gets to the current the current plan of work 20120 which which is the one that that our industry is current working and finally with point six I said a couple of words about how the process should look like starting from stage zero all the way to Stage zero and I know that will Intrigue you but you'll find out why soon so how things look like in the world historically delivery of of building projects were done by rules of a Thum empirical approaches usually defined and guided the build Builders or Architects if you like of the past I wouldn't hang myself too much on the word architect as architect describes anyone who deals with definition and and build of of the project so it's not per say novad definition of architect of a person who's registered with with the boards of architect it's not the point architecture is a broad broad science and a science of creating spaces useful spaces for people when I talk about architecture historically that that's what I pretty much mean and architecture was was pretty much that throughout the ages using empirical rules that were passed from Master to master either by written records or or just by Word of Mouth some forgotten then rediscovered then forgotten again then rediscovered again a little bit a little bit of a circumstance we got now although we we claim that we so much better now with all of the with all of the IT solutions all of the computerized ways of doing things Ai and whatnot but we we tend to We tend to do the same same thing we tend to forget good ways of working then we rediscovered them we reapplied them and funny enough we've been building for quite some time now several thousands of years maybe longer if you ask your archaeological friends but we didn't go that much ahead of our ancestors we still build buildings that are simple that are protecting us from from the environment they may be a little bit leaner when it comes to to the use of materials but they're not that lean as one would like them to be they're not optimized per se for most of of the time we we've been building buildings on a whim if you like and then came the time of industrialization and make putting processes in and thinking thinking about delivery of of either man manufacturing bits and Pops or or buildings per say in a well and structured way obviously Britain is in in the Forefront of such thinking being one that started the industry industry Revolution but it wasn't until 1963 that that we had a first plan of work in place and it's still the case in many countries around the world that projects are being conceived in a hurry herrid or whimsical fashion designed quickly or quickly and roughly or slowly and painstakingly but still in between this this country between these regions of the world things are being delivered a little bit differently to one another however one can easily see that there are some sections of the project delivery that are the same for for everyone we can find that most of the construction project development processes can be divided into what I call four four sections the first section is pre-design stage where business case or a personal need arises and it's found to be best fulfilled by a building construction project when that's defined when that's defined and and we know what sort of project more or less we'd like to go forward with we go into the design part section of of the process which obviously can be more or less detailed then after design part of it we get to the construction part of it which which forms the actual construction and the interface between the construction and the client and the person who conceived the idea and put the money for the execution of it which is called her over and do the part that's called in use and sometimes end of life that called a use part of it obviously nowadays we like to extend the life of the of of the building project as it's much better utilization of material it's much better for the planet than everyone else around it to reuse the building rather than to demolish and build a new and with the clever engineering architecture it can be it can be achieved very easily and the existing buildings use can be changed and buildings are very Mal malleable and they can be changed in use to to anything human conceivable well maybe not from the hotel to nuclear power station but you know you get the gist and in this four section predesign design construction and use different countries in the world treat about them differently so in Britain you obviously have a well-defined predesign stages in Europe they're sort of treated as a one whole Bunch United States do not recognize it at all neither does Russia or Spain and there are some some type of understanding of this part of of the process in other countries when we get to the design stages of buildings three main sections in Britain there are four in Europe two in Spain but generally they tend to follow similar similar approach and even if there are less stages the amount of information still need to be delivered in in similar fashion to similar detail at the end of that section of of the process then we get to the construction which so sometimes solely concentrate on the act of delivery of the actual building Road or Bridge or whatnot without considering the Handover stage of things but in Britain there is Handover stage of things as is in global perspective however Russia New Zealand Australia don't really recognize this stages as important and then we have inuse part of it which most of the countries do not really bother with but which is very important and and this part actually I'd say this part is most important part of all of the other parts of this part in forms about about the building about the construction about its use how good it is how environmentally and sustainable it is throughout his life cycle which can be then fed in and and to improve the whole process without this one we basically we we push our we push our project from the production line and we forget about it we don't care about the client we don't care about the impact it has we just we we solely concentrate on pushing the project projects out pushing the buildings out mostly concentrate on PR marketing and and how much money we can all make out of it when concentrated in use and end of life cycle of the building we can actually Define better buildings for future most of the countries do not recognize end of life stage of of the building neither does RBA however I would argue that end of use should be considered within inuse after all what happens at the end of the building process is sometimes as important as what happens when when it's been used and when it's been delivered just look at the nuclear power stations how long it takes to plan construct operate and then de commmission what how long are these periods and how cost the are so I hope you you you get a just a bit of appreciation there sections of of process that are considered in Britain and other part of the of the world they are a little bit different at the end of the day in all other places in the world they still build buildings sometimes to the better definition and better standard than than over here however looking at the amount of british-based design offices and their influence around the world I think we doing something pretty good away here the plan of work generally goes from the point zero strategic definition through to preparation and the brief stage two concept three developed design four technical design five construction six hand open and close out and seven in use it's eight stages that Define the process in Britain and how we think about it having all of that defined is is really helpful although as I mentioned beforehand when I started in the small practice and I mentioned this stage three reports would be would be nicely received if we prepared such in our office I was laughed so you can imagine how how it all works to be honest with with onset of Technology all of the possibilities we got now we don't have to go into the minute details of of reporting on every single calculation we do or specification as is quite standardized nowadays you think that the that the building project will will be well forth through from the W go all the way to to the use but it's not the case most of the projects under the 1 million pounds things are quite messy from the beginning to the end it usually begins with someone going on the whim oh I like a house that will do that will have all all of the bells and whistles you know beautiful beautiful big glazings plenty of light but in the same time energy efficient and smart with internet of things everything to be interconnected and such push for the maximum without breaking the bank without really knowing how the whole that how the process looks like without knowing all of those eight stages that usually should be thought about for for the good definition and for the good outcomes of the project usually in most of the cases of projects under 1 million pound you cannot really see this eight stages they are mixed up sometimes people go few stages forward then we then you find out that you need to redo something else I think the easiest example to to illustrate that would be would be simp simple project of of house extensions which which sometimes in a bigger remodeling project would be over 1 million pounds but but generally go down to 2002 200,000 or or there about and there is this weird weird thinking that that the Builder who's been building same thing for the last 10 years would be the best place to to give the advice on the best solution and a Way Forward people somehow are reclusive or reluctant rather to invest in a good process and employment of Architects Engineers people who could Define the projects they need in better terms very often it's been considered that all that all of these professionals do a a drawings and anyone can draw a building and you know people sometimes do try to do it on on their own which is very often less successful than 10 KN unfortunately most of this sort of project do save on well on good definition on this stages 0 2 to four and then when it comes to construction at the stage five project suffer project suffer on Myriad of problems which are very often cleverly concealed and maybe not even cleverly concealed you see people that that are delivering this projects they resourceful resourceful bunch at the end of the day they just want to get that project done the easiest way to do so is to push forward so how do you push forward when you got IL defined projects at the construction stage well you try to find people that do have an answer and you really go back to the people that Define the projects so very often they are not qualified to to design the projects to start with usually architectural designers people that do indeed concentrate on the appearance of the of the building rather than about all of the building regulations and Engineering issues that need to be included as you go and Define the project and they try to find answer answers as El where most of the time directions for the delivery of such projects can be found for free online and they are called approved documents and because they are freely available people think that just copying the ideas from them is enough the sad fact and sad truth of it is that there is plethora of misunderstanding or misconception about all of all of the information that's written within those documents they're not that easy to read even well vered professionals sometimes struggle to do so but nevertheless so far before the Advent of building safety act people were plowing plowing through all those bad designs all those misinformation all all those bad informations all that good information that need to be applied well to be useful and to be to be safe so I guess what I'm trying to say when the project got to the stage of the building getting on site the Builder they just went on with it trying to find you know some some sort of consensus with building control they usually went with building notice knowing more or less what to do they were expecting building control to come around and correct them whatever whatever needed building control sometimes did sometimes did it some private inspectors were never on site just receiving some pictures and doing giving their judgments upon these so you see it's quite messy and if you don't know what you're doing you may not even see that's that's the problem you may be just sometimes when the issues appear you you be brushed away with the statements oh it wasn't on plan so I made a made the decision but you know we had to plow through otherwise boys would stand would do nothing so now we need to redo it now you need to pay more or we need to do this because it wasn't involved in the plans to start with well of course it wasn't cuz it was never never approach in the right way many good places that deliver on this type for this type of clients they usually try to be safe on on the safer side side of specific ification of things as if you don't go on to be in control of what's built on on the building side you never know what what actually will from the personal experience and I've in my professional career I think I delivered around 450 design projects of varying sizes and on very few were when I went onite they were actually built according to specifications at the 1 million 1 million and Below projects the the plans all of the documentations that you do it actually never leaves the van so I argue if there's even sense of preparing any of them whatsoever when your contractor most likely won't use them as they will go on their experience and the way they know how to build buildings and that's fine in many cases and that's how they used to be delivered back in the days and well what I need to persuade you whether it's a wasteful way of doing things or not well you may decide for yourself on your next project if you think to skip on all of those professionals that that actually want to help you to Define to mold your your projects to the best of what it can be and then a Shore is actually delivered this way and no corners are cut when it comes to a slightly bigger projects of of over 1 million pounds or several million pounds there's generally enough in Cent clients understanding that the that that it will be worthwhile to actually Define many things before the more involved design stages begin there's more time and money and scope for side investigations on existing buildings where are changed changed for use or extended or or changed in layout there there's usually good case for geot geotechnical evaluation which helps to find the best found found ation solution for for the project on this project there's generally enough interest to save a lot of money by defining the projects well the actual clients already find out that if they are spending that much money it's well worth spending 5 10 15% of it to well evaluate all of the constraints issues that may arise during the construction over the way things that are are not yet found like soil conditions so with the good Consultants on board you will be taken on the road through all of those different investigation works that will inform the projects better and we allow to save money save carbon and deliver project that will be successful that's one close to the B budget that's two and three which I think is very very important as close to being optimized as possible and therefore economically sustainably [Music] better all right so what on Earth is that plan of work is it a devious way of Royal Institute of British Architects to make our life miserable and make us pay through the roof for the consultations and the work of people to spend all of our money on not needed processes and involvement of people that shouldn't be charging charging as much for the for the services or is it a way of trying to organize and systematize and making building environment and defining the building projects and delivering the building projects better well I hopefully you'll be able to answer this question at the end of this podcast but the plan of work as I've mentioned earlier is been developed and Brewing since 1963 with its first edition it had several changes during the years like 91 and 20 07 where the stages of Works have been expanded with the eighth one called post occupancy evaluation which is now called use stage it's been updated during 2013 edition at the 2013 edition with all subject beam related and now with its fifth iteration the plan of work 20 20 is the one we're working with and the one that we treating as a foundation for the good product delivery or at least the way to look at the project in more systematized in more organized way the reer plan of work is typically divided into stages when I talked about delivery of the processes through in globally generally globally I said that when you look at the life cycle of a construction project you can see four different sections of it which which are pre-design design construction and use and within that sections the Reba plan of Works divides that further so at the pre-design stage of of it you have stage zero which is a strategic definition what that means is the time when a need appears whether you a homeowner and you need that extra bedroom because the family is growing or you have a production facility and you need that additional space for new Machinery or storage or the current road system cannot handle the traffic and you need to define a new Crossing or bypass through through the section of the city river or otherwise or basically it's a part of your business model and you you deliver flat housing for people to live in or people to to casually pop into like hotels or hospitals once you go through this stage stage one called preparation and brief it means you assemble all of the information require to Define your projects all of the expectations that you need you got your team that will help you define all of these as you may be more or less ready to do so by yourself you define all of the key aspects of it and such and after having all of this information handy you can move on to the design stage design section of of the plan of work we start with stage two and and ends with stage four stage two is the stage where you explore your ideas concepts for these designs possible solutions the way what sort of buildings you want to build how many how many stories or what what sort of layer can there be you're trying to Define you're trying to mold your idea into the into the actual expression on paper so everyone can appreciate it it's not only about writing about things now it's it's about defining them following the concept stage design you move into a special coordination where all of the different parts of the design team come together trying to put the building sometimes apart when is an old one and then reassemble it in the right way or simply to put all of the aspects of the building so it does not collide with one another so all of the aspects of the building can live happily together so the building is safe and usable at this stage it really isn't now all about making the building the most economical possible however very often at that stage the tender documents are sent over and when they back the client realize they have not they don't have enough money to cover the project so it comes back on the drawing board to to be re-evaluated and and redone once you're happy to move forward and you you sort of sure that that there's enough money there's enough design and that design is that everyone's happy with that design including the planning office you can move forward to technical design and closing all of the other aspects of the building project all of the all of the more minute details that are safety critical and we'll need to form part of the building regulation submission obviously the there are more legal requirements and such but I'll talk about this one on my following podcast when I'll be taking each and every single one of these stages apart so you can appreciate it in more detail and in all different type of projects and scenarios once that's done you can move on to manufacturing construction which is stage five as it says on the 10 at that at that stage the the heavy machinery all of the people and all of the Dust is being raised as as the building is being built or the construction project is being delivered at that stage there shouldn't be much of the design work to be done but yet again going back to my previous points usually on stage on the buildings underneath 1 million pounds there still be plenty of design to be done which haven't been covered by anyone beforehand and there'll be a lot of problems with it but it shouldn't be they should be they should be specialized items maybe staircases railings and auxiliary architectural elements that are being designed at this stage and coordinated with with the rest of the design team but following this technical design it all should be allra true and well put in place before the construction on some projects it it still may not be as I say but yeah I'll talk about that a little bit more when when I put that into a separate podcast then following the construction we get to the stage six which is hand over and close out which generally involves completing the construction works and handing over the building to the pay to the person who's paying for it to the client ensuring all the necessary documents are are in place and handed over to to the client in simple buildings there's not many of them that need to be handed over but on more complex one there is a plethora documents sometimes including beam sometimes including clones of the buildings in building information model that contain most of this or all of this information for future management of the building and to make making sure that the building is ready for occupation there's time for snagging to check and to to fix any issues that that could have Arisen or may not have been done the way they should be done but this generally should be small and and easy to handle and then we go to the stage seven in use which I claim to be the most important part of it as you know throughout the the centuries of of human existence we've been building billions of buildings and construction projects but not much of the feedback ever came back from it and nowadays I think we should should realize the wealth of knowledge and data storage and use that to inform our choices for future and that generally ends stage seven in use generally ends the the consideration moning of the building and and its performance you know and seeing what sort of issues arise from from use of that building including change of use during use it's it's very often that building made as an office can become a hotel can be become Hospital can be can become all sort of other things during its lifetime can become flats and and so on and and how was that building and its layout how useful was it the way it's been originally built and designed for all of those changes and how how did that look like the feedback is very very very important you including the feedback from occupants and all of the sensors that could be placed in the building as well to inform inform Us in future I've said that the stages go from stage zero to zero and now I'll explain to you why volume stage seven in use if we don't go back with all of that feedback to Stage zero to define the better standards we won't use this feedback and won't develop better standards check that against what we do in the office how we approach building design and construction all of that information although thought about will be lost and unfortunately on very many occasions it still is still being the case only the best offices that charge adequately can do that as you see not many clients see much of the use from pain for this for the stage seven as is very often is the first project in life and most likely the last one so they don't really care how evaluation of that building will feed into the design and delivery of the next one however it will and being shortsighted in this stage not involving that in your business in your design and building operation it's not only costing you money in the long run and clients it's also costing the actual client or the next client and the environment as you're not drawing the right conclusions from the whole process and you again allowing the whole process to lay wasted and I think that's that's that's that's very important and that's why we we haven't really well not only that cuz you know the the whole process is very fragmented and there PL different specialisms and different stakeholders that actually take part in definition design and construction Handover and management of the building there's many people and many many organizations involved usually in this sort of circumstances but but it's very important to to contractually have access to all of that information all of that data and to f it feed in that back to the operation of your own office whatever you do otherwise however smart we are however clever our AI Solutions will be they will not be that clever at all if that data won't be fed back into the model whether that is your business operational model or your AI model now how should the process look like well it is a tough one it is a tough one because there's so many different products cops there are so many different needs and businesses however I believe I am a firm believer that the that the project should begin with the stage zero using all of the input gathered throughout the existence of one business or one practice and fit all of that in into the advice of a client at a stage zero stage zero and stage one both of these stages they they're non design stages these stages are stages to Def Define the project Define the need asking the question whether building project or construction project is the solution for the needs and for the problem sometimes it may not be or sometimes the project may be the case that may maybe the need of the business or the individual but the place and the scope of it and the feasibility for the delivery of it won't allow it to happen and may need to be reevaluated and this can be defined at stage zero it's very important stage in my opinion the most experienced and clever offices should take part in in this stage and the and the client shouldn't shy away from from reaching out to to appropriate individuals or firms to become part of their decision making process especially when your project is one of a kind or or your project is your first one and likely the last one or or the second or third if you not doing that day in day out you will soon find out that no matter how how much of an Internet you browse through Google won't have all of the answers and and soon the Excel spreadsheet will stop making sense when you when you get to the to the next stages of it and at this part this part of it it's if you if you got the right people at the right place you can rest assure that the next stage steps will be the steps that you want to take and if you do re realize that the building project is the answer you can move to stage one where you can evaluate it a little bit further where your advisers can tell you all the parts and parts and things that need to be considered including taking the sites you got how you going to deliver the project if you want think about how you going to deliver the project including you know side delivery side organization Logistics I'm not saying about like Nitty Gritty of it but but in general it can it can influence it can make or break your project and can or rather make or break your bank if you if you decide wrongly how to approach it at this stage at this stage you you should be informed about all of the things that you should do it is I think a good parallel here would be to compare this this stage to the purchase decision process when you need to buy something right you realize there is a need for it then you need to educate yourself so to what sort of solutions are out there and that's that's where your where your advisers come with their experience and special knowledge then once you choose one of the ways forward you can dive a little bit deeper you find information how to deal with all of the other aspects of it you you get all of the people involved that could help you with this now this this could be also s the things I mentioned how how to deliver the project what sort of budget you can you can do you know what will be the the approach to sustainability of that project what sort of materials could be used here what sort of materials are available near you if you are quite remote and there are no concrete works there how we going to deliver it you know is it makes sense to actually bring Salon over and and mix it on site or maybe get pre-done elements and and modularize the whole build or or maybe get get Timber Solutions in or Ste so you see there all sort of different aspects that can be looked into and should be looked into at this stage and once that's done you can move into the concept design stage of things and and you'll find out and so find out in the preparation of the brief stage it's May transpire that the project actually is a little bit over maybe a little bit over the budget after all so you may need to go back to this strategic definition and maybe re-evaluate your needs and and make some concessions there then go back to the preparation and brief and once all that set in stone move into the employment of the design team your Architects Engineers me engineers and such now from that it gets to the design stage of it which design section of the plan of work which consists of three stages concept design spatial coordination and Technical design consecutively stages two three and four here at the concept design you start drawing start molding all of the expectations taking in consideration all of the feasibility studies and project briefs you know into into consideration to get the idea of of how the project should look like and if you define the brief well this shouldn't be much of the problem because it's pretty much putting this this brief putting those expectations and realist putting this realistic expectations into into physical into the conceptual designs models preliminary specifications of of things design stages here now are again iterative CU you'll get to the concept stage of things concept design stage of things you set your layouts General look of things of you know General look of building or construction projects or the way you want to do it whether be Bridge or you know or or a tunnel and then you get your special coordination where you need to work out with other designers is how to put all of those things together so you actually can use the space the way you wanted to to use it at the first place and at this point it may transpire that there are some problems there and then you may not be able to use the space the way you wanted to to use it and that indeed may may cause problems and this this spatial coordination part of things may return an error message if you like which will say okay we need to get back to the concept design now cuz there are some things wrong with it now like well there is a column in the middle of the room and we wanted to have a bed over there but taking the layout if we take that column away from there we could build another few rooms and so if you want think about changing the layout you'll pay through the roof to push it without this column and whether that makes sense or not if you don't have time now to get back to the concept design stage and then from that concept design stage maybe to to vary the brief even go stage behind design or change the concept design to address those issues then you begin the downward spiral of wasteful design behavior and specification so now it would be the time to go back to the concept design change it and iterate it back into the spal coordination and if that's that works well move it forward to the stage four to ironing out all of the details you see you may have a you may have a column column shown on that drawing in the middle of the room as I said but now you've changed the layout and that column is hidden within the room but when it comes to the technical design it transpired that the connection of this column to the beam will stick out from the ceiling so you need to either think about how to change it so the connection is different and is not seen in the ceiling or make the ceiling lower or embellish it in some some different way so that's technical design once all of that's done you can move move into the manufacturing there should shouldn't be much of of design happening at that stage as I mentioned before is is rarely the case as as usually those those definitions are quite Mery but in the ideal circumstance you should have a all of the information ready to go and once you go there only maybe some issues during the works you know some mistakes done by people on site or miscommunication between specifications drawing and the people executing the works that will need to be rectified or or maybe or maybe design ever so slightly changed so the mistake isn't that bad of a of a circumstance after all so so that' be it and and obviously well there will be design but design on the temporary work part of things you know how to deliver the building safely you know so you need to you need to think as you construct the building you need to think how to do it safely and and you know what sort of in what sort of stages in what sort of you need plan it you need to plan it when you get to the construction stage of things which is stage five it's it is pretty much too late to to vary design at this stage if you need to vary design at this stage you usually have two three 5 10 20 people already on site and if you stop at that point and get things back to the designers and they will have to coordinate everything and they get back to you and you have two three four five week or two weeks standing around imagine what sort of cost are is for the for the construction for the construction crew for the for the main contractor it's not really a case of of bad design it's not really a case of you know of of being to quick and going on into the construction without having all of the information handy is usually is usually the the worst practice ever however sometimes projects are are long winded are overly complicated but you need to start as quickly as possible so so that design stages and construction stages May interact with each other but they should be done in a stage basis so one stage or one part of the building should be closed and ready to go for the con instraction with all of the documentation before the next one's being issued so we can address any issues if they arise but but that be that that would be it following the manufacturing and construction part gets to the moment that that building is finished or approaching being finished and you start collecting all of the documents all of the information about the building making all of the surveys done by the clients to to prove that youve done a good J shop hopefully but very often trying to prove that yeah there's so many snugging that you need to that they need to retain part of the money and you make it right the the manufacturing and construction stages and and Handover stages that they usually overlap a little bit at the end of the project and from there you get into the use and the evaluations of the building as they stand which is a vital part of the whole building process but often neglected often skipped often not considered in quoting for the Professional Services for making the whole process all that poorer in definition so how should the process look like we going from strategic definition finding out what we need to build what we want to build going to stage number one preparing a brief preparing all of the information that are required including budget plans construction stages and Visage construction stages Etc we get to the concept stage from the concept stage once we know what we want to build we go into spatial coordination in special coordination if everything's fine we go to technical design if not we return back to concept design and sometimes from the back to the brief if need be and then regit take that and goes again back into the concept and reiterate the spal spatial coordination from there we go to technical design which sometimes requires going back to spatial coordination concept and brief but that should be less of an issue as people at the early stages should be more or less aware of what will happen at the technical stage design and and try to design out any issues that that that could possibly Arise at that at that point from there all of the documentation specifications and contracts are are done with the main contractor in stage five they the contractor manufacture and build the project for us and hands it over once the project is handed over to to you to the client you got to with the help of the professional information about the use of that building throughout it lifetime so you see it's pretty simple as you could expect at the very beginning it is easy well you just want to build a building you design it you build it you use it that's done but in truth taking in consideration how many people how many different practices and organizations are involved in defining defining the need defining the brief defining the design and con constructing the building and how then people are using it or reusing it or changing the use of it it becomes all that much more complicated and it's very important that at the end of it all we can draw out lessons and apply them back into the process again so with little and incremental improvements we can make the process better as you see it's hard to define it straight away but thinking about the construction Building Development or Construction Construction initiatives holistically and in the process like Mana in the process like Loop I'd say we can make the industry and the approach a little bit better year after year and who knows maybe after another several thousand years we'll finally get the and be on a par with manufacturers but perhaps this will come with an advent of all encompassing Consulting offices rather than disjointed Crews or maybe software that will join us all together only time will [Music] tell thank you very much for listening I hope you I hope you've enjoyed it I hope it wasn't too long for you to listen through all of all of that maybe maybe it was a little bit too much but with the next podcast I will I will come back to it I will quickly recap it then and then concentrate on every single stage of the of the plan of work Reba plan of work 2020 so it will slowly start to make sense as we go today we talked about how things look like in general in the world and Britain how the process looks like on Project smaller costing less than1 million pounds how things generally look like on projects more expensive than1 million up to5 10 million what is the plan of work and its stages a brief history of of its development and then how should the process look like I hope you've enjoyed it thank you for sticking around till the very end I hope you've enjoyed the content I intend to carry on in this way having simple conversation about the difficult topics of construction I appreciate not many people may be familiar with the idea of plan of work and how to apply it to the project therefore I will continue in the following podcast concentrating on each part particular stage of work as defined in the RBA plan of work 2020 giving you some personal perspective which I hope you'll find useful if you have suggestions or topics that you would like to hear me threaten about I want to know it let have the conversation that you care about if you are industry professional and would like to share your take on the industry or share your expertise with the things you're involved in I'll gladly have a coffee with you and record our conversation for the listeners to benefit from for now that's it toodloo!
Piotr Bytnar BEng (Hons) MSc CEng MIStructE
Chartered Structural Engineer who deals with the Architecture of buildings. His Master's Studies led him to an in-depth understanding of risk and contract arrangements in construction as well as specialist knowledge in soil mechanics.
He and his team help homeowners and property developers to design and deliver construction projects reducing waste in time and the cost. He believes that the construction project is an iterative process that can be well managed and it is best managed if all the aspects of the project definition and management are dealt with in-house or coordinated by one organisation. His team works to all stages of RIBA and ISTRUCTE stages of work and enables contractors to deliver projects on-site providing risk evaluations, methodologies for execution of works and temporary works designs.
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