Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
E12: Design and Delay in Construction
80 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Carlos and Jason chat about the chaotic reality of what it's like for teams delivering real projects.
They also delve into delay in construction, and how the approach and execution of the design phase plays a critical role, before discussing the 2-year delay announced for HS2 in the UK.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Construction and Technology Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone and welcome to episode 12 of the Offsite Podcast where we chat all things construction and technology.
Roles in Project Delivery and Team Software
00:00:06
Speaker
My name is Carlos and I spend most of my days talking to construction teams about how they deliver projects. And I'm Jason and I help build software that construction teams use to deliver their plans. How are you doing Carlos? I'm good thanks. How are you? Birthday boy? We don't talk about the birthday after a certain age.
00:00:27
Speaker
I was going to sing it all to my own. Happy birthday, but we'll save that for another day.
00:00:32
Speaker
I will insert that here.
On-Site Chaos vs. Simulations
00:00:34
Speaker
No, no. Busy. The last two weeks I've been on site a lot, which is good to get out of the office and remind yourself that what it's like to deliver a construction project. You immediately have the feeling comes back of the chaos and the amount of things that are happening all at the same time and the amount of things that are going wrong all at the same time and a good reminder that
00:01:02
Speaker
When you're away from that and you're building tools or software or whatever you're thinking about and you're thinking about a persona doing this or that, you can kind of forget and block out all of the other stuff that's going on in their day. And yeah, it's a chaotic day.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, last year I went to a site and obviously we were so focused on like this Gantt chart with our map page and like where people are working. When you actually go out of sight and see how congested it is, you're like, how the fuck do they actually do this? Like there's so much going on. So you forget how, yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
particularly in cities the the amount of space you have actually to work with is crazy super impressive how they actually tackle it to be fair but um yeah always good yeah it's what gets me a lot about like uh you know like the 4d schedules and and bimmer stuff and how it all feels like a like a beautiful version of like the sims or sim city or something yeah you get out there it's like it's just people screaming at each other honking uh you know fucking it's not it's um
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's much dirtier and grimier and chaotic than it looks like in a simulation. Yeah, 100%. You can't just grab and drop with that hand or crane into position and suddenly it's there and you're using it. It's like a full operation.
Design Issues and Cost Spirals in Construction
00:02:21
Speaker
Right, so today we're going to be talking about some of the latest news related to High Speed 2's two-year delay. But first up, we're going to chat design.
00:02:32
Speaker
Now, we all see in the news projects that are being cancelled or delayed due to spiraling costs. And that is often driven by design. So a lot of these contracts, you're sort of refining the design, you then try to agree cost for the client, sometimes that doesn't happen. Or due to spiraling costs, you have a redesign, and you try and make things work with the budget at hand. So I guess Jason,
00:02:59
Speaker
What is it about the design phase on large infrastructure projects that you think causes the most grief for teams? Yeah, where do you start? So I wrote about this recently and I wrote about it because I couldn't work out why it wasn't
00:03:17
Speaker
extremely obvious to everyone why all of them end up in that in that situation because every major infrastructure project that had a design and constructor an EPC type element to it has followed for me and I you know maybe I'm in this minority of very unlucky outcomes but for me everyone has followed the similar playbook like
Complexities in Infrastructure Design and Tendering
00:03:38
Speaker
as a contractor, we sort of signed up to some design and construct scope where in our scope was some development or completion of design. And so you tender on like almost unknown unknowns, you know, like you're going to build a house, but what's the, you know, what's the house supposed to look like? How big is it? What's the roof? You know, there's so many unknowns when you tend to that, that it's, it's impossible to get right. And so you start with that as your starting point.
00:04:08
Speaker
And then once you start trying to deliver the job, well, you need to like, okay, you start with this schedule that says we'll do the design and then we'll do the construction. And then once you, in that schedule, you make some assumptions that like we'll do a design, we'll send it to the client to review. They'll review it. Maybe they'll approve it. Maybe they'll have a few little comments and then we'll submit it again and we'll go off and build it. And then when it comes to the actual delivery of the project,
00:04:38
Speaker
You do the design, you send it to the client, they rip it to shreds, you redo it again, and then you submit it again, and then it gets ripped to shreds, and you do like three, four, five different reviews. These projects are so complex in their requirements that you end up in situations where
00:04:59
Speaker
It might say that I used this example in a previous conversation around like the thickness of a wall or glass or something and then another performance requirements that needs to have a certain thermal performance. And so you do the design once for the thickness and then another requirement comes and changes that like supersedes that.
00:05:20
Speaker
So the point is the design phase is so complex and the whole time you're trying to do it, you've got this sort of democles hanging over your head that you're supposed to start construction in two months or something or three
Flawed Design Schedules and Construction Delays
00:05:35
Speaker
months. And if you don't, the whole schedule's late from the start. And put on top of that, the design phase is unlike the construction phase, one where as it starts to slip,
00:05:51
Speaker
those looking at the schedule can find it easy to rework the logic of how we were going to deliver the design. And so what I mean by that is
00:06:02
Speaker
In a construction phase, maybe you're going to build a building and you're going to go levels one, two, three, four, five. And if one's late, you really don't have many options to do three before one's feature. But in the design phase, if like a certain package of the design is late, it's very easy to just like break all the logic in the schedule and say, well, we'll just keep doing things concurrently.
00:06:29
Speaker
or what also happens is you break the design into all these mini sections. So you might have had a schedule that said, we'll do package one, two, three, and design, and then build package one, two, three. And then they start getting late, and okay, what we need to do is get a part of one started. So let's try and break one into one A and B and see.
00:06:54
Speaker
and break it like one, then what happens is like three packages of design go into nine packages of design. And now all of a sudden you've got the same set of designers doing like nine times the amount of work, nine times the amount of three times if I get my math right, three times the amount of reviews. And so this like cycle starts to spiral because breaking designs into smaller packages
00:07:22
Speaker
kicks you through that review process more times. The more review processes, the more comments. And then ultimately, construction starts on site, then issues start coming from the site, or changes from the construction team where they're trying to value engineer something. And just all of this complexity and chaos is all just builds and builds and builds through the phase. All the client issues and other instructed change.
Ripple Effects of Design Changes
00:07:51
Speaker
And this just keeps building and building and building through this phase to the point where on so many projects I've been involved on, the design phase is still going past the planned construction end date. I don't know if you had a similar experience on Crossrail or previous jobs. Yeah, I think one thing that really makes me feel stressed and I'm glad I never worked in a design team.
00:08:13
Speaker
is the knock-on effect or the ripple effect from changing one thing and it changes everything. It must be so difficult to keep balancing everything because of little changes. If we tie it back to design, if Rob changes the spacing on something, that needs to change on the entire product. It's the same idea that you have to check everywhere. That's why there's so many reviews and teams and
00:08:39
Speaker
checkpoints because everyone has their specialism and they need to check for their part of that aspect of the design which I'm sure technology should be able to help in a big way at some point to reduce that. Yeah and it's really hard because like you've got your points exactly right where you make one change and it changes in so many different places and that's difficult if you were just doing a complex design on its own.
00:09:09
Speaker
If you then add on top of that, that's like your three quarters into the design and a third of what you've designed has already been constructed. Suddenly the thing that you've changed is not just changing like the design in a bunch of plots. You've now got to like bore a hole through a wall. And then the team goes to put the hole through the wall and then something else goes wrong. And that's getting more change. Like it's just a complete death spiral. Yeah. Can't say it any other way.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's a nice way of putting it. When it comes to schedule as well, there's no way they're going to win a tender, assume the amount of back and forth, because you're just not going to win that tender. So there's never enough allowance for completing these design. They just say, right, contract says response in 14 days, there's 14 days done, they're not going to assume like that's going to happen six times. So that already is straining schedule. I remember on Crossrail, we get to the point where
00:10:07
Speaker
It's basically a design saying, yeah, that's probably not going to change. But they haven't got to construction status drawing. They weren't still on P, which is kind of remember what P stands for now. The client won't actually give you an instruction to proceed. So the contractor's going at risk, and then they build something. And then they go, oh, shit, I forgot about this. And then you tear it down. And it's just
00:10:30
Speaker
Like, the materials, the labour, the costs, the programme, everything is just blown out because you're constantly battling this desire to progress the drub, but there's just too much. The ripple effect of that change, it's
Premature Building and Future Delays
00:10:47
Speaker
chaos.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's ignoring the real consequence, right? Because like you said, it feels good to progress the job. And from a schedule perspective, okay, in right now in the short term, if we get this concrete pour, theoretically, like the schedule, we're on schedule. Yeah, we're not late. The bit that's not yet hit the schedule is the fact that like, we've just built, we've just built a problem that in like six months time is going to fucking pop up. And yeah, add another two months or something.
00:11:16
Speaker
And so it's no wonder like why so many big mega projects are like, okay, and kind of on schedule until they're about a year from completion. And then it's like, actually, it turns out with three years late or whatever, because so many of these problems just like get pushed.
00:11:32
Speaker
out until the sort of back end of things. And yes, no matter how much technology or whatever's involved, so much of the constraints on these designs and the little decisions made about, ah, you know, OK, we can probably get away with like a hole here because later on I'm going to do like so much of that stuff in someone's head. But you also you get the reverse negative effect of. Because design is not complete when you start,
00:12:01
Speaker
The more you build, you're effectively reducing your options later because you're adding more and more constraints because you've actually built something. So you could get to the end and have what could have been an option to have a huge positive effect on the project. You can't do it because you've already built everything else. And now you've only got this small window to do whatever you were doing. So it's, yeah.
00:12:25
Speaker
not thinking it all the way through and obviously they think it all through to a level of detail but not going detailed all the way through before and we understand why they can't do it because we don't want 40 year construction projects but it's uh yeah it's pretty poor in terms of its effect
00:12:42
Speaker
And your, your, yeah, your point again is like totally right. Like you, as you build things, you, you take away your options, but, and oftentimes the first few things that you build, like the first like 25, 50% of the job is like big, chunky civil things, right? We're going to whack some piles in here. We're going to do the box here and.
00:13:02
Speaker
They're like finding the space that you have. Yeah. And they're like the real easy things to like, not easy things to build, but like, they're not usually where a lot of the complexity comes. It's like when you're trying to do commissioning systems and, um, but they're also the things that are real hard to move if they're wrong. So you're, you're really boxing yourself in.
00:13:25
Speaker
The options and ability to improve gets drastically smaller as you go, whereas that's probably actually at the most important end of how that structure or building will perform.
00:13:35
Speaker
The quote that really reminded me of this on one, I won't say the project or the team, but talking to one of the core fit out teams that were on one of the sections of this major infrastructure project in the UK and sort of asking them how the delivery of the project went over the last few years.
00:13:57
Speaker
The comment was, it actually would have been all right if we didn't have to take, we didn't have to install every panel four times. And they did like the math on, on the fit out of this project and worked out that on average, they installed each panel two point something times.
00:14:17
Speaker
because they would do something, then some part of a system design would get completed for Minigate 8B or whatever it was. And then you'd have to rip all the panels off and run new cable. There's no, you just can't build a job like that. You need to finish the design before you start building, I think. Yeah. There's also the other part, which is certain parties wanting to hit certain milestones to release bonuses and things like that. And they'll do that.
00:14:47
Speaker
yeah that's that's all there's yeah it's yeah alignment of incentives are a massive part to this you know getting to certain uh you know anyone can hit a milestone if you reduce enough of the scope what can be done probably obvious um and the obvious thing design before you construct uh i think that's off the table is this is a fair statement
00:15:14
Speaker
I think that that's one big key part to it, which is having a strategy for the delivery of the design and saying we've got to get these certain packages of work designed to some percentage of completeness or some stage of completeness before we, and that needs to be a very clear red line or a gate that we go through.
00:15:36
Speaker
these things need to be signed off as not changing and agree. Yeah, we confirm it works in this space given or whatever that sort of milestone is. Yeah, whatever it is. But you know, I don't think it's feasible to get 100% design completion before you start construction. That's not really that that's not going to give you the most effective program. But
00:16:00
Speaker
But yeah, having a much clearer design delivery plan and being really rigorous when the nibbling starts, I'm like, oh, you're basically there and we've only issued four different changes this month. You could probably get going on that. Having a clear like, no, this is gonna potentially impact something that is a clear line. So definitely that's one part of it.
00:16:29
Speaker
I suggested in the thing that I wrote some like two other ideas that I don't know how they're kind of like amorphous and not really tangible and I'm not really sure how much I believe in them but one was like thinking about whether
00:16:46
Speaker
Going back to the alignment of incentives in Carlos, I thought about whether there was a different contract model that tried to align the incentive of all the parties living the project so that there was less of an incentive to sort of...
00:17:01
Speaker
invent change that then came back as design change that encouraged certain teams to start different construction works before other bits of the design was completed.
00:17:18
Speaker
a better way to align incentives. I'm not really sure in the detail exactly what that would look like and it would probably be different for a lot of projects. And then the other idea was just breaking the projects into smaller pieces. So having a project that got a design to a certain percentage complete for structural or something and then breaking things into smaller pieces so that when it does get delayed,
00:17:42
Speaker
there's just, there's really not even the option to just horse on building something because that's a separate contract or like that, you know, you can, your problem complicates so far. Basically detailed design usually sits as a subcontract to the main contractor. So it's the main contractor is basically getting it in the air from the client and they're incentivized to try do both at the same time. If the, if the design contractor was directly employed by the client,
00:18:12
Speaker
then got this contractual wall which is safer because the contractor won't do anything until they know that they're not going to rip it down which will be a loss to them. Yeah and that might be there's an argument for design and construct so that might be a bit extreme to just take the design out but
00:18:31
Speaker
the the other approach is to just split the construction scope smaller so instead of like station box construction and fit out and systems and commissioning or something like box construction so that way even if the um there is a problem that's building that you lose the incentive for someone just horse on fitting it out even though the design's been delayed yeah because the con that's that there's like a firm end to that contract
00:19:00
Speaker
Again, there are pros and cons to that.
00:19:03
Speaker
So the good news is we're seeing more and more design teams using AFex. At least they're actually starting to have plans that people get access, because design programs are always a bit of a tough one to locate, shall we say. So yeah, there seems to be an improvement in that space. You're not going to, with that such an obvious plug, Carlos, you're going to also insert the like, use my link slash Carlos for a discount this month. Would you like a demo today? Yeah.
00:19:32
Speaker
Right, so, so my voice is still getting from earlier in the week. HS2, about, where are we?
The Impact of HS2's Two-Year Delay
00:19:42
Speaker
Three to six months ago, they announced that they were going to delay certain section of the scheme for two years. And it's pretty much the section that runs from Old Oak Common to Euston. So they have this race for the trace, which is Birmingham to Old Oak Common, keep that to time.
00:20:01
Speaker
and get rid of the section to Euston for now while they can sort of option a Euston station because the cost went up and focus resource on the main sort of part. Now this two-year delay at the time we thought was a bit odd but actually sort of improve anything because they're just going to off hire loads of staff, they're going to mothball sites
00:20:24
Speaker
really disruptive for the contractors, especially after ramping up so many team members over the previous two years. It's just come out in the news that the two year delay is actually going to cost an extra £360 million, which we kind of saw coming pretty poor that we're actually seeing that confirmed, which means that number is probably bigger than what they're saying. Absolutely nuts considering the disruption and the fact that we're delaying. Yeah, I don't know where to start.
00:20:54
Speaker
It's like the worst returns policy. You know, you get those really dodgy retailers where it's like, oh yeah, you can definitely return this, but we'll charge you shipping, a restocking fee, like transaction fees. And in the end, like you spend 50 quid and you get back like five quid or something, they're returning the item.
00:21:14
Speaker
uh you claim to have called this uh i i know you said you claimed to have called this on a previous podcast that you predicted it so if that is true Carlos Olu is going to find that clip and insert it here if not though he's going to insert this out like a duck noise or something um and so people will know that in like now so yeah we'll know the truth
00:21:41
Speaker
I was just going to say, as a former QS, you probably know better than most that for a quantity surveyor, math is a creative expression. Can you see how that outcome could have been come to?
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think first of all, if we look at some of the sections of HS2, they weren't removing stuff. They were just putting them elsewhere on the job, especially since it's only a two-year period. If you off-hide them all 12 months later, you're rehiring them all. So it's a too short period of time to actually sort of get rid of everyone.
00:22:16
Speaker
You're then spending time, money, materials, resources, actually getting site to an actual point that you can leave it. You can't just sort of stop work and leave it for two years, you can have all sorts of issues. So you're then doing months of work to prepare for this delay. And then you're going to have to mobilize the site again, basically 12 months later, you're delaying the scheme by two years, two years of prelims is way more than the cost of reducing the team for a section of it. So, like, that is massive.
00:22:46
Speaker
So you're going to be paying for whatever team that you reduce down to. You're going to pay for them twice. So you'd have to reduce the team by more than half just for the prelims alone to be worth it. And you're definitely going to be paying off
00:23:01
Speaker
I don't know what contractual mechanisms they'll have for supply chain, but they're not just going to go, okay, cool. Yeah, we'll see you in two years. There's going to be, there's going to be a cost associated with that loss of earnings, like all sorts of things. So it just didn't make sense how that would actually save money. The thing that could actually end up saving the most money is if they redesigned Houston, so it's not four and a half billion, they get it back to the two. So that is a big
00:23:26
Speaker
meaty bit of money, and maybe it gives them enough time to actually do that design, which is kind of in line with what we were just speaking about. So that could be the positive outcome. But yeah, yeah. But do you not think that this is just really like a bit of a bit of a move?
Future of HS2 and Its Implications
00:23:43
Speaker
to give them cloud cover to can the stretch to Houston, like try to delay it to revisit it, that's going to increase the cost. And it's really just like our only logical outcome now is to cannon. If they don't take it to Houston, I won't use it. There's no way I'm traveling to Old Oak Common to get to get a 15 minute change.
00:24:14
Speaker
You're going to lose at least 50 quid a year in transfer fees because Carlos won't use it.
00:24:23
Speaker
I speak for most Londoners and I tell you that the time it would take to get past Euston to Ardent Common already removes the time saving to use HS2 where you can get on a train which goes into the middle of Birmingham and HS2 doesn't go into the middle of Birmingham so you've got travel at the other end.
00:24:41
Speaker
There's no benefit from going to Old Oak Common and getting Iceby 2 to Birmingham when you can go to Euston and get a fast train anyway, which goes right into the centre of town. So, yeah. There's my other prediction. Well, you've heard it here. There's a boycott of all the South Londoners that live in. They won't use it. Yeah. Yeah. Most people haven't even heard of Old Oak Common. I guess you have to say Wilson and then he goes, what the fuck? That's not in London.
00:25:08
Speaker
But anyway, maybe I'm special and I won't be in the view, but I'd bet on it. That's for sure. Right. So that's a good answer. That is all the time that we have today. So as always, thank you very much for listening.