Fragmented by design: what happened to joined-up construction?

It is not news that architecture and construction are becoming ever more fractured and ever more disparate industries. For another writing project I am working on, I have recently been considering the make-up of the project team. It starts simply enough: client, architect, quantity surveyor, contractor, sub-contractors, structural and MEP engineers; then come the almost essential nice-to-haves for projects of any scale - project manager, fire engineer, planning consultant; then I remember the statutory necessary roles - CDMPD and BRPD.

On top of this, the list of other specialists I have worked with begins to grow and grow - waterproofing consultants, façade and acoustic engineers, accessibility advisers, retail enlivenment consultants(!) and façade access consultants. I won’t continue, but I could fill my column word count with consultant lists alone.

Is it too much? Have we fragmented the main building professions too far? Or should we welcome the deep expert knowledge we can now find for every niche of our unendingly complex industry?

For me, much of the joy of construction is this complexity, and the range and diversity of passionate specialists we can call upon… but is it any wonder it is taking longer to build things? Or that small-scale clients get easily overwhelmed?

Well-intentioned bureaucracy has combined with the increasing professionalisation of the industry to make it an unwieldy behemoth. I would never call for the return of construction to the master mason/architect… but I do sometimes wonder if this is all a bit much.

This has been the story of the last few decades in construction, though. Through the 1980s and 90s government-sponsored reports, notably the Latham Report, called for greater integration in construction to overcome problems in an industry that Latham referred to as ‘ineffective’, ‘adversarial’ and ‘fragmented’. The solution offered at the time was D&B procurement routes, the thinking being that the consolidation of both design and construction risk would force closer collaboration between these two ‘sides’ of a project team.

Of course, this was not the silver bullet that had been hoped for. D&B is a popular procurement route, with the RIBA Construction Contracts and Law Report in 2022 reporting that 34% of respondents used a design and build procurement route, with 56% traditional and 3% management.

Wherever the procurement and legislative trends of the next five or so years take us, there remains a clear need for stronger cooperation and integration between the design and construction sides of the project team

However, noted failures and reports of ‘race to the bottom’ on quality have led many client organisations and architects to be sceptical. Without turning this into a column on procurement, suffice to say it is not universally loved and has not solved the fragmentation problem.

Interestingly, Sarah Lupton and Manos Stellakis note in the same RIBA report that the growth of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and modern methods of construction (MMC) over the last two decades is encouraging a trend towards earlier design certainty. Both traditional and D&B routes are being flexed towards this, with the growing use of contractor design portions (CDP) within traditional contracts, and the increasing fixity of Employer’s Requirements (ER) in D&B contracts, leading them to argue that the two procurement routes are converging.

The stipulations of the Building Safety Act seem only to be encouraging this trend, as Gateway Two requirements seem to point towards specialist contractor information being necessary earlier in the process than would be typical.

Wherever the procurement and legislative trends of the next five or so years take us, there remains a clear need for stronger cooperation and integration between the design and construction sides of the project team. Though was there ever a point in history when this was not the case?

So, what should we be doing to encourage this integration and collaboration? I was discussing this recently with the Building Centre, whose charitable aim is to create a hub for the built environment and a platform for the exchange and development of knowledge. Is there a way that design and construction professionals could be brought together in a lower-stakes, perhaps more playful way than we usually meet?

Over a coffee, our plan formed, ‘Confessions’ - a light-hearted evening utilising the Chatham House rule where architects, engineers, consultants and contractors share lessons learned, things that went wrong, and near misses over a drink. For the pilot event on 20th November at the Building Centre, I will be joined by Charles Saumarez Smith to discuss what he has learnt in his time as a client on major institutional capital projects, and the anonymised ‘confessions’ submitted by those attending.

Will it solve the fragmentation of our industry? Probably not. However, perhaps it may be a step in the right direction, and I hope to see many of you there!