Industry news

We believe there has always been a compelling business case for implementing the ACCEDE construction defect management system. There is an excellent return on investment plus intangible benefits such as improved quality and improved customer satisfaction – not so easily measured in financial terms.

Recent policy changes by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) provide additional commercial and risk management support for making ACCEDE a key component of every principal contractor’s project management policy and procedure.

From 1 June 2015, all subcontractors will be held accountable for any defective building work they perform.  This change reduces the obligation of principal contractors to provide comfort that all project work complies with applicable Australian standards, codes and manufacturer specifications.  Whilst Queensland is leading the way with these changes its likely other states will adopt similar policies in due course.

Critical to this change is being able to prove that all work completed by subcontractors has been properly supervised.  If a principal contractor hasn’t or cannot demonstrate they have adequately supervised the work they may still be subject to action.

The ACCEDE construction defect management system records invaluable data which can be easily retrieved in any dispute process.  ACCEDE captures all data necessary to establish the principal contractor’s position in a construction dispute.

ACCEDE enables accurate and complete project data to be recorded on a real-time basis that can be easily recalled and produced at any time, avoiding the all-too-common practice of reinventing project chronology (either by memory or trawling through emails, diary notes, smartphone photos etc), which is inefficient and can be very costly.

Even though solid commercial relationships with subcontractors are key to avoiding disputes, sometimes these fail.  If they do, and commercial negotiation fails to bring satisfactory resolution, the ACCEDE construction defect management system is the principal contractor’s best friend – supporting your legal position and protecting your bottom line.

For further information refer to the Accountability for Subcontractor Defects Policy published on the QBCC website or consult your legal advisor.

We hope this provides information useful to your business case for implementing a construction defect management system.  For more information please contact us and request demonstration or free trial.

In September and October 2013, ACCEDE with the support of Construction Manager, conducted a survey on defects management to find out what the end-users really want.

 

We are pleased to provide a summary of the snagging survey findings and announce the recipient of the iPad Mini for completing the survey.

Summary Snagging Survey Findings

On four out of ten projects, defects add over 2.5% to project construction costs

Despite the potential to streamline processes and cut costs, the annual ACCEDE Snagging Survey also finds low use of mobile data capture tools.

A survey of UK construction professionals responsible for defects management or ‘snagging’ suggests the cost impact of construction defects can be between 2.5 and 7.5 per cent of the overall construction value on four out of ten projects. The ACCEDE survey of construction quality managers carried out in September and October 2013, with the support of Construction Manager, also found low current use of mobile devices for defects data capture.

Estimates of the cost impact of defect management ranged from under 1% to over 5% of the overall capital value of a project. Forty per cent of the sample said defects added 2.5% or more to the cost of a project.

The scale of the challenge appears to vary according to an organisation’s role on a project. Estimates of the number of defects ranged from ‘under 50’ (perhaps reported by specialist subcontractors snagging just their own work packages) to ‘thousands’ (likely to be main contractors looking at projects as a whole). ACCEDE will investigate this further in future surveys.

As might be expected, respondents tended to believe defects data was recorded and tracked accurately or fairly accurately, and felt it was either a key task requiring the expertise of an experienced professional, or a moderately important task requiring some experience.

Just 13% said they used mobile defects management applications; over two thirds (68%) managed defects using paper-based processes, email and Excel spreadsheets.

Asked about potential mobile data capture, respondents stressed portability, preferring medium-sized tablets (Apple iPad mini or similar) and smartphones to larger tablets, netbooks or laptops (Android and Apple were the preferred operating systems).  However, existing reporting preferences remain focused on outputs to spreadsheets, PDFs or Word documents rather than using web-based reporting and tracking tools.

ACCEDE’s Director of Operations (EMEA) Brett Winstone said:

“Getting a clear view of how snagging or defects management is handled in the UK can be difficult. Numerous different individuals and different disciplines can be involved, and the task is rarely discussed in detail at professional conferences (unlike, say, design or project management, where practitioners often gather to share experiences). So getting more than anecdotal feedback is a challenge. We got a small sample but it gives some powerful insights into what snaggers want.

 “We have recently launched the ACCEDE mobile defects application in the UK and wanted to get a view of what the market wants. There are clearly opportunities to streamline the data capture process, speed up defects resolution and reduce the impact on construction budgets.”

Detailed snagging survey findings were as follows:

Technology use – Currently, the survey suggests, most defects information is recorded by conventional paper-based processes, email and Excel spreadsheets. Just over two thirds (68%) said they used these, with only 32% capturing defects information via mobile devices. Only 13% said they used a mobile defects application; others used mobile devices, but output the information to email and/or Excel.

Accuracy – Most respondents (58%) said their defects data was recorded and tracked “fairly accurately”. Less than a fifth (18%) said it was accurately managed. Almost a quarter (24%) said defects information was poorly managed or not managed at all.

Scale of challenge – Asked how many defects might typically be reported on a single project, answers ranged from less than 50 (perhaps reported by specialist subcontractors snagging just their own work packages) to “thousands” (reported by contractors looking at projects as a whole). Any future survey will try to investigate this more thoroughly.

Cost impact – Estimates of the cost impact of defect management ranged from under 1% to over 5% of the overall capital value of a project. 70% said the overall cost impact was between 1% and 5%.

Professionalism – Perhaps predictably, almost all respondents (97%) felt defects management was either a key task requiring the expertise of an experienced professional, or a moderately important task requiring some experience.

Mobile device preferences – Asked which device(s) they would prefer to use to capture defects information, most respondents opted for medium-sized tablets (ranking 4.24) or smartphones (3.73), ahead of 10” tablets (3.38), netbooks (2.24) or conventional laptops (1.41). Android apps were marginally favoured ahead of Apple apps (ranking 4.03 and 4.00 respectively), ahead of Windows (3.27), Blackberry (2.00) or web-browser tools (1.70).

Reporting – In terms of outputs, respondents tended to favour Excel spreadsheet reports (66%) ahead of  PDFs (42%), Word documents (26%) or any kind of web-based reporting (18%). (Totals exceed 100% as respondents could select more than one option).

Winner of the iPad Mini

Survey respondents were entered into a prize draw to win an Apple iPad Mini, and the winner was Steve Fisk, Site Manager – Braintree of Croudace Homes.

 

 

On 2 July, I attended the inaugural Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) Construction Special Interest Group (ConSIG) conference entitled “What Happened to Construction Quality?”.  It seemed appropriate that I should hear the latest industry views on construction quality given this is one of the major aims of our ACCEDE quality assurance system.

What a great conference! We had great industry representation and lots of interesting presentations, especially those from Crossrail’s Jon Elliot and Professor Jon Oakland.

Even though evidence is easily found throughout London, I hadn’t fully appreciated the scale of Crossrail (Europe’s largest construction project) and was pleased to learn of their objective of leaving a legacy for the industry, starting with a quality training programme developed in conjunction with, and delivered by, the CQI to meet the need for quality managers in the UK market.

For me the highlight was Professor Jon Oakland’s masterclass on change management. He emphasised quality, challenging and encouraging attendees to lift the profile of quality in their organisations.  Anyone in the industry with responsibility for quality should check out Jon’s presentation slides which contain many interesting facts and case studies, in addition to some excellent models for change management.

Can we create a trusting, collaborative, and right-first-time quality culture?

After a few sandwiches and a coffee for lunch, the conference concluded with an open forum discussion that highlighted many of the challenges the UK construction industry faces. Historical and long-standing rivalries have created, at times, an adversarial relationship between key project stakeholders, and a silo mentality.  While encouraged by the willingness with which the parties seem to want to fix what doesn’t work, there is much work still to be done before the holy grail of a trusting, collaborative, and right-first-time quality culture is achieved throughout the industry.

There is an opportunity for innovative industry players to move fast and reap the significant benefits that do exist (see Jon Oakland’s case study on Sutton’s Eden Medical Centre).

At the end of the conference (and wearing my accountant’s hat), I volunteered for a ConSIG focus group planning to develop a simple quality costing model for the industry. This aims to clearly demonstrate to company executives why quality deserves a higher profile in their organisations.

For further information on the conference, the CQI and ConSIG, click here.