I have recently come across the Get it Right Initiative (GIRI) which is ‘a group of industry experts, organisations and businesses dedicated to eliminating error and improving the UK construction industry.’ It’s no surprise that they have focused on wastage during the design phases of a project and I’m sure this will resonate with many of our Members in both public and private sectors.
The route cause of errors are only established after additional costs have been incurred, providing us with painful lessons for the next time. Ask yourself a question – on the last scheme you were involved in, how many of the items below look familiar?
• Inadequate planning (from task through to project level)
• Late design changes
• Poorly-communicated design information
• Poor culture in relation to quality
• Poorly coordinated and incorrect design information
• Inadequate attention paid in the design to construction
• Excessive commercial (financial and time) pressures
• Poor interface management and design
• Ineffective communication between team members
• Inadequate supervisory skills
There are tools out there that can help us to eliminate such waste and GIRI have developed a best practice tool to achieve the right level of quality in construction design. The tool itself is really simple to use, and not that time consuming and will help you to control both costs and quality. I’d be interested to learn if any of you have any direct experience of using this particular tool as part of your design process.
In the meantime, I would like to test this tool with a little more rigour and report back on findings. If the findings are positive, we will make the tool available through our website.