This section may be boring for some, so if you don’t enjoy the excitement of building skip it.
Architects, over the last twenty or so years, have lost control of the building process which is now often done by a new breed of consultants called ‘project managers.’ The project managers I am discussing are not those who work within a building company but those who have set themselves up as experts in managing the construction of buildings and co-ordination of other experts including architects.
Project managers filled a gap left by architects who either did a bad job of contract administration or did not do it at all. Many architects who have graduated over the last twenty years never conceived that an architect would be expected to do contract administration and were happy to leave it to someone else. What they fail to realize is that when someone else does the contract administration of their building they lose control and things get changed and in many cases the design is ruined and the architect gets the blame.
What actually happens is that the project manager is not trained to and does not recognize the later implications that a change might have on details of the design that follow. Often a client will say “your design does not work, look how what you have drawn can’t be done”. When you analyse the problem you find that it can’t be done because they have changed something, that they thought didn’t matter, earlier in the construction process. Clients often request changes that will not work for the design and the architect has to persuade them not to make the change.
The Architects’ Registration Boards of Australia realized that architects were loosing it when it came to contract administration so they made a rule that graduate architects have to pass an examination on Office and Contract Administration before they could become registered but it was too little too late.
I would recommend to young architects now to do a post graduate course in project management so that they have the skills to maintain control over the building process.
While living in Palm Cove in 1985 I did some freelance work for Gary Hunt’s practice in Port Douglas but Gary sold to Woodhead Australia who were rapidly expanding at the time. Christopher Skase was getting his Mirage project started.
Heather’s mother broke her hip and was not recovering well so we moved to Adelaide and lived there for the whole of 1986 where I did a little work here and there.
In February 1987 Woodhead Australia were good enough to offer me a job doing ‘quality control’ on the construction of the Mirage condominiums for Christopher Skase.
The construction of the entire resort was managed by Project Managers.
Under this system of construction management the architect is under the control of the project manager at the same level as the other specialist consultants like civil engineers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical and hydraulics engineers, security consultants, landscape architects and interior designers. Normally (before project managers) all of these consultants would be selected by, briefed by and co-ordinated by the architect.
On the Mirage project sub-contractors were interviewed and selected by the project managers without any input from the architect and the result was that many times the sub-contractors selected were unsuitable and I often had to reject their work, then they would be sacked and not paid. This caused bad feelings and some did a bit of sabotage like dropping a beer can down a sewer pipe which caused serious problems that did not show up until the building was finished and occupied.
None of the other consultants had to take any notice of the architect so to make the whole project workable I worked with those of them who would co-operate on a ‘private basis’. (on side without reference to the PM)
Many problems occurred because the various consultants selected things in isolation. The interior designer selected the taps from an over-seas supplier and they would not fit the installed plumbing selected by the hydraulics engineer.
The interior designer selected the gold plated door handles which did not work with the locks selected by the security consultant.
I seemed to have to take a lot of responsibility but had no power to control what happened.
Then one day the project manager over ruled one of my instructions of how to run a storm water drain within the building and I thought this was too serious to let go. I wrote a letter saying in effect that we recommend that this not be done as they wanted and if it is we will not take any responsibility if it fails. I never saw anyone do a back flip so quick, they obviously needed us for our professional negligence insurance but I now knew how to get their serious attention. If the project manager wanted to do something that in my opinion was bad practice I would refuse to take responsibility for it and they would back off.
Since coming to North Queensland I have often carried out the contract administration stage for Gary Hunt and Partners- Architects on buildings that they have designed. Before taking on such a job it is important to ensure that you choose the type of building contract that is going to be used because your duties, responsibilities and powers are defined in this contract.
The first of this type of job I did for Garry Hunt was a block of 29 units for Reef Terraces (later Radisson) where Gary had already chosen the contract and when I wanted to change it he said “it’s too late now, it’s all signed” I should have refused to do the job, the contract was AS2124.
This building contract started life as a Civil Engineering Contract and because, in the early days, most project managers were originally civil engineers they were using it as a building contract. It is now called AS4000 but the basic philosophy is the same and no architect should use it.
The builder was large, Melbourne based and hard nosed and there were many incidents when I could not force him to do what I knew should have been done because under this contract I did not have the power. The final and most significant part was when I found that the builder was not paying the sub-contractors who were mostly small and local. I requested from the builder evidence that he had paid the sub-contractors and they said “under this contract we don’t have to and we won’t”. Under a proper building contract if the architect finds that the builder is not paying the sub-contractors there are procedures they can follow to correct the situation.
When the building was almost complete the builders were declared bankrupt, none of the small local sub-contractors were paid and some were bankrupt as a result. This has a large effect on the economics of a small community like Port Douglas.
When I first started working at Hassell and McConnell in the early fifties, the building contract edition 4 was just being phased out and I suppose edition 5 as well because we were using edition 5b.
One reason why E4 had to be superseded was that some lawyer won a case by saying that there had been a variation to the contract therefore the whole contract was null and void. So a clause had to be put into E5b that said basically ‘no variation shall vitiate this contract’. I notice that that clause no longer appears in building contracts and wonder how long before some lawyer will try it again.
Building contract AS2124 (now AS4000) makes no provision for an architect but refers to ‘the superintendent’.
When you tell this to a project manager he says that is not a problem you just define superintendent as meaning the same as ‘architect’. That is the big problem because the architect does not superintend the works, the builder does. All proper building contracts have a clause that states ‘The builder shall superintend the works’. The architect can superintend the works but that entails the employment of a clerk of works, who spends all day every day on site, something that is never done these days.
The basic philosophy of the contract AS 4000 has derived from the way civil engineers (and government departments) work. The civil engineer goes out into the construction site with their measuring tapes, lazar levels and theodolites and gives the civil engineering contractor , measurements, levels and lines for the works and having done that superintends (supervises ) the works. In a proper building contract those are the responsibilities of the builder.
There are many other problems with AS4000 such as the architect has no power to object to a sub-contractor nor to request proof that the builder is paying the sub-contractors, there’s no provision for nominated sub-contracts.??
The use of nominated sub-contractors has been discouraged by the Institute of Architects, I believe for the wrong reasons. They say that if an architect nominates a sub-contractor and that sub-contractor fails in his duty to perform either in quality or time then the architect is held responsible. Within the building contracts that I prefer to use, although the architect nominates a sub-contractor the builder has to agree to taking on that sub-contractor and once he does he becomes a sub-contractor to the builder in the normal sense and the builder is responsible for his discipline. Like wise the nominated sub-contractor has to agree to abide by the builders requirements.
For the architect the use of nominated sub-contractors is a good way to control the quality of that part of the works.
I used to always make specialist building services like electrical and mechanical services (air conditioning, lifts etc.) nominated sub-contracts and I believe this is still the best way.
I would get the specialist consulting engineers to call separate tenders for these services and to asses the tenders when received to ensure that they complied with the design requirements, the architect or the builder is not qualified to do this, only the specialist consultant is..
One of the difficulties in persuading the Institute of architects to approve of nominated sub-contracts is because government architectural departments have a slightly different definition of ‘a nominated sub-contract’. Their definition matches more the private architects’ definition of a ‘separate contract’ over which the builder has little control.
In my experience there are two types of organizations that build buildings and my definitions are:
1. Builders
2. Contractors.
Builders are the traditional organizations that take the responsibility for and pride in their work and the work of their sub-contractors. Some employ their own tradesmen some employ mainly sub-contractors but they would not employ a sub-contractor they believe would not deliver the standard of work they require. Basically they take responsibility for quality. In order to control quality the architect has to have the authority to object to a sub-contractor he knows habitually delivers poor quality.
Contractors are organizations that organize the necessary sub-contractors to build a building. They usually just accept the lowest price of each sub-contractor and if their standard is bad they will not take the responsibility. One such contractor actually said to me “that is what the sub-contractor has produced, what can we do about it?” Contractors never give the architect the opportunity to object to a sub-contractor.
My above definitions are not strictly true because there are some very good building companies that call themselves contractors, you need to know their philosophies and what they actually do. The choice of contract is of paramount importance.
After the debacle of the complex of 29 units called ‘Reef Terraces Two’ and a few days before completion the builder (from Melbourne) was declared bankrupt and I found that they had not paid any of the local sub-contractors. The developer, John Morris was most displeased about this and so when he decided to build ’Tree Tops Resort’, which consisted of 300 rooms I was able to convince him to use a construction method called ‘Construction Management’. Construction Management is a method of building best described as “sub-contracting” but employing professional persons to manage the process. Not to be confused with ‘project management’ or ‘cost plus’ which a lot of people seem to do. When I asked the Institute of Architects if they had an approved standard contract for ‘Construction Management’ they sent me one for ‘Project Management” which was not satisfactory, so I used a contract produced by the Master Builders Federation and added to it the pages from the contract JCCA which spelled out the responsibilities and powers of the architect.
B. M. Culley, professional construction managers, were offering their services in North Queensland and I got John Morris to commission them. The usual difficulty in using ‘Construction Management’ is that the client has to pay all of the bills and so has to have an account with all building material suppliers sub-contractors and manufacturers but this was not a problem for John Morris who was part owner of some.
Gary Hunt had designed the Tree Tops Resort and prepared basic working drawings but John Morris commissioned me separately to get it built.
Because it was now my job I could change the design providing John Morris agreed but I would always keep the integrity of the design concept in tact. I redesigned the North wing to save and include a stand of large trees including a curtain fig tree. For the same reason I redesigned the three restaurants and the boardwalk and swimming pool down the centre.
The structural engineer, originally appointed by Gary Hunt, was young and inexperienced and would not consider alternative footing designs that in my opinion would be more effective and greatly less expensive. So I commissioned the engineer, Bob Colefax, who I usually use, to do an alternative design. His redesign saved approximately $150,000 on the cost of the structure.
That young engineer later used Bob Colefax as a consultant to advise him on the most economic ways to design his structures.
I changed the exposed structure of the reception and administration buildings from exposed timber to exposed structural steel because timber over large spans becomes bulky and messy and costs more than steel.
Because the construction of the concrete block walls would have to be done during the wet and I foresaw many delays caused by rain and a muddy site I changed them to ‘lift slab’ concrete walls (walls cast on the ground on top of each other and lifted into place by a crane). I had the builder make temporary canvas covers over the casting beds so the production of walls could continue no matter how much it rained.
The hydraulics engineer would not change his sewer design which I requested him to do because his design would have required a stand of some twenty large trees to be removed which would have put us in breach of our planning consent. I discussed the problem with the sewer inspector who simply instructed the plumber to change the sewer design.
Gary Hunt was a bit perturbed about all the changes I was making but when he looked into it said to me “I think it will be a project of which we can all be proud.”
The young man employed by B M Cully as accounts manager and I devised a simplified system of issuing architects instructions, contract variation orders, and amounts paid and retained and the resultant end cost all on one sheet of A4 paper for each sub-contractor which was very efficient. Using this method it was easy to make as many adjustments to the extent of work or methods of construction as you liked to maintain the end cost. We were able to add into the project an emergency generator paid for by savings we made during construction.
John Morris paid me a $15.000 bonus for getting the project finished on time and on budget.
While we had the ‘system’ running he also built a block of 14 town houses in Reef Park called Jacana.
The Japanese restaurant in Port Douglas was designed by Roger Mainwood when he worked with me at Woodhead Australia and I was the site architect in charge of contract administration. The contractor was Solander Construction who had just employed about three project managers who previously worked for Concrete Constructions, national Contractors (not builders).
About three days before completion Solander were declared bankrupt and Gary Hunt immediately called a meeting with the client’s lawyers and accountants which he asked me to attend. Gary was still a director of Woodhead.
They quickly decided to hand the building contract over to the liquidators but I did not agree.
“The building is almost completed” I said “and I believe our duty is first to our client.”
If I issue a certificate of ‘Practical Completion’ the client has immediate possession of the building and can use it for its intended purpose”. We should also immediately terminate the employment of the builder (as you can under the contract) because he can no longer trade and we could complete the works using sub-contractors and/or day labour as the contract provides.
The meeting agreed to follow this procedure.
I was able to persuade the sub-contractors to complete their work by explaining that the client would pay them for the work they did from this point on but they had to claim for previous work from the builder’s liquidator.
There was one who would not agree to complete, Haden Air-conditioning, unless the client paid the full amount the builder owed them. The client had already paid 80 percent of the contract sum to the builder but the builder had paid nothing to this sub-contractor.
I told the Air Conditioning contract manager that we would complete without them and he replied “we will disable the air conditioning plant.”
I replied “I will call the police because that would be illegal”.
He realized his mistake and said “what I mean is, the master control unit is faulty and we have to remove it and get a new one”.
I suspected that they would try to take the master controller early next morning so resolved to get to the site early to prevent any such sabotage.
I set off from oak Beach at 7.00 AM in my white RX7 but got stuck behind a road maintenance truck which travels slow looking for pot holes in the road.
Now I have had experience with travelling behind these trucks and you get spots of bitumen all over your car so I kept well back awaiting a chance to pass.
At Pebbly Beach there used to be a short strip where you could pass and I dropped back a gear and floored the accelerator peddle.
The RX7 takes off like a rocket, I passed the truck quickly, glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure I was clear to pull back into the left lane, looked ahead and there was a dog in the middle of the road eating road kill.
The road was wet, I was on a bend and stupidly slammed on the brakes.
The car spun around about 100 degrees and smashed sideways into a clump of small trees cutting two off at ground level.
The passenger door was pushed in against the consul with the passenger seat crushed, the car was banana shaped, the windscreen was all cracked but still in place. I looked back at the dog which was trotting off totally unconcerned.
The door would not open, to get out I would have to lower the drivers window.
They were electrically operated and the controls were in the consul.
The control panel was missing,
I found it among the wreckage on the passenger side and to my great relief it still worked.
I was struggling to get out through the window when the guys from the road maintenance truck arrived and helped.
I had two cracked ribs and was four hours too late to stop Hadens from disabling the air conditioning.
The client had organised an opening party for the restaurant with people important to them coming from Japan and Sydney and they did not want to postpone or cancel because they would lose face.
Every thing was finished except the air conditioning and it was December, hot and very humid.
I found an old refrigeration mechanic who maintained the refrigeration and air-conditioning on prawn boats, explained our problem and asked if the air conditioning plant could be manually monitored and controlled for the night. He said he could do it so I offered him a good hourly rate and an invitation to the party where he could drink as much as he liked. It worked and the party was a success.
We later got a new master controller from the manufacturer of the air conditioning equipment.
As far as I was concerned the project was nicely finalized but the client’s solicitor got a barrister from Brisbane to ‘wind up’ the contract and when I started to explain to him how this building contract works he cut me off and said “I know all about building contracts” but it turned out that he may have known about some building contracts but he obviously knew nothing about this one. He made such a difficulty out of the fact that the value of each trade in the ‘trade breakdown of the ‘lump sum contract’ was not the same as each actual sub-contract price that the builder had originally accepted to make up his contract sum. Although I had explained to him that in the ‘trade breakdown’, that the builder gives the architect at the beginning of the job, each trade value is made up of the sub-contractors price plus the builder’s overhead costs and plus his profit margin, he could not conceive the difference.
The barrister wrote to our client’s solicitor saying that he thought Mr. McPhee was incompetent and that she should deal with a different architect from Woodhead Australia. The solicitor sent a copy of the barrister’s letter to Woodheads and Gary Hunt gave it to me to respond. So I simply wrote back explaining again using words of one syllable why the two sets of figures are not the same. I heard nothing more.
I find it is always easier to keep solicitors out of building contract disputes and to make an effort to resolve it with the builder and client.
Although Australia appears to be identical throughout when you get into the details of building some building methods that work well in one area might not work well at all in others. Some differences are due to perceptions and attitudes of locals, some due to local skills or lack of, or availability of certain materials and some to climatic conditions. Working in the country and remote areas is quite different to working in the cities. If you normally work in the city and you get work in a remote area it is wise to make use of local trades and knowledge as much as possible.
As I mentioned before although I could get good results with off form and pre-cast concrete in Alice Springs I would not attempt it in Far North Queensland.
The way you work with consultants also varies. Structural Engineers for example, I always consult early in the concept stage of the building design because in my designs I always try to make the design an honest expression of the structure. In North Queensland the attitude of structural engineers is ‘you finish your design and drawings and we will design the structural elements to fit it’ which is not acceptable to me. If you are not careful when working in Queensland you will have your first meeting with your engineer, leave him with your preliminary drawings and a month later find he has done nothing because he is waiting for your final drawings. “We do nothing until we get the final drawings because something might change” they will tell you. My drawings can not be finalized until the structure is known in detail.
I am very disappointed that the management of building contracts and building sites is now less efficient and more chaotic than it was in the 1960’s. The introduction of ‘Work Place Health and Safety’ controls has done more to confuse the proper organization of building sites than it has to prevent injuries.
Contractors more-so than Builders have bad onsite management procedures that result in bad relationships between the Main Contractor and the consultants and consequently the client and they use bullying tactics with sub-contractors when they should use open and fair written sub-contracts. Procedures for processing contract variations, site instruction and fair costing are not in place for some quite large builders and contractors even although the use of computers make all of the above comparatively easy and accurate.
I am now retired and live on the beach at Oak Beach where I have good friends, where family and friends visit for holidays every year. I have a loving life partner, Jillian, who has revitalized my life, two little dogs, Jessie (who Heather gave to me), Louis a precocious little Maltese and Jill’s dog Meg who I call Nutmeg.
At Oak Beach with Jillian and Jessie.
House designed for Lydia and David Edwards at No. 13 oak beach.
House at N0. 7 Oak Beach Built in 1996
Architects, over the last twenty or so years, have lost control of the building process which is now often done by a new breed of consultants called ‘project managers.’ The project managers I am discussing are not those who work within a building company but those who have set themselves up as experts in managing the construction of buildings and co-ordination of other experts including architects.
Project managers filled a gap left by architects who either did a bad job of contract administration or did not do it at all. Many architects who have graduated over the last twenty years never conceived that an architect would be expected to do contract administration and were happy to leave it to someone else. What they fail to realize is that when someone else does the contract administration of their building they lose control and things get changed and in many cases the design is ruined and the architect gets the blame.
What actually happens is that the project manager is not trained to and does not recognize the later implications that a change might have on details of the design that follow. Often a client will say “your design does not work, look how what you have drawn can’t be done”. When you analyse the problem you find that it can’t be done because they have changed something, that they thought didn’t matter, earlier in the construction process. Clients often request changes that will not work for the design and the architect has to persuade them not to make the change.
The Architects’ Registration Boards of Australia realized that architects were loosing it when it came to contract administration so they made a rule that graduate architects have to pass an examination on Office and Contract Administration before they could become registered but it was too little too late.
I would recommend to young architects now to do a post graduate course in project management so that they have the skills to maintain control over the building process.
While living in Palm Cove in 1985 I did some freelance work for Gary Hunt’s practice in Port Douglas but Gary sold to Woodhead Australia who were rapidly expanding at the time. Christopher Skase was getting his Mirage project started.
Heather’s mother broke her hip and was not recovering well so we moved to Adelaide and lived there for the whole of 1986 where I did a little work here and there.
In February 1987 Woodhead Australia were good enough to offer me a job doing ‘quality control’ on the construction of the Mirage condominiums for Christopher Skase.
The construction of the entire resort was managed by Project Managers.
Under this system of construction management the architect is under the control of the project manager at the same level as the other specialist consultants like civil engineers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical and hydraulics engineers, security consultants, landscape architects and interior designers. Normally (before project managers) all of these consultants would be selected by, briefed by and co-ordinated by the architect.
On the Mirage project sub-contractors were interviewed and selected by the project managers without any input from the architect and the result was that many times the sub-contractors selected were unsuitable and I often had to reject their work, then they would be sacked and not paid. This caused bad feelings and some did a bit of sabotage like dropping a beer can down a sewer pipe which caused serious problems that did not show up until the building was finished and occupied.
None of the other consultants had to take any notice of the architect so to make the whole project workable I worked with those of them who would co-operate on a ‘private basis’. (on side without reference to the PM)
Many problems occurred because the various consultants selected things in isolation. The interior designer selected the taps from an over-seas supplier and they would not fit the installed plumbing selected by the hydraulics engineer.
The interior designer selected the gold plated door handles which did not work with the locks selected by the security consultant.
I seemed to have to take a lot of responsibility but had no power to control what happened.
Then one day the project manager over ruled one of my instructions of how to run a storm water drain within the building and I thought this was too serious to let go. I wrote a letter saying in effect that we recommend that this not be done as they wanted and if it is we will not take any responsibility if it fails. I never saw anyone do a back flip so quick, they obviously needed us for our professional negligence insurance but I now knew how to get their serious attention. If the project manager wanted to do something that in my opinion was bad practice I would refuse to take responsibility for it and they would back off.
Since coming to North Queensland I have often carried out the contract administration stage for Gary Hunt and Partners- Architects on buildings that they have designed. Before taking on such a job it is important to ensure that you choose the type of building contract that is going to be used because your duties, responsibilities and powers are defined in this contract.
The first of this type of job I did for Garry Hunt was a block of 29 units for Reef Terraces (later Radisson) where Gary had already chosen the contract and when I wanted to change it he said “it’s too late now, it’s all signed” I should have refused to do the job, the contract was AS2124.
This building contract started life as a Civil Engineering Contract and because, in the early days, most project managers were originally civil engineers they were using it as a building contract. It is now called AS4000 but the basic philosophy is the same and no architect should use it.
The builder was large, Melbourne based and hard nosed and there were many incidents when I could not force him to do what I knew should have been done because under this contract I did not have the power. The final and most significant part was when I found that the builder was not paying the sub-contractors who were mostly small and local. I requested from the builder evidence that he had paid the sub-contractors and they said “under this contract we don’t have to and we won’t”. Under a proper building contract if the architect finds that the builder is not paying the sub-contractors there are procedures they can follow to correct the situation.
When the building was almost complete the builders were declared bankrupt, none of the small local sub-contractors were paid and some were bankrupt as a result. This has a large effect on the economics of a small community like Port Douglas.
When I first started working at Hassell and McConnell in the early fifties, the building contract edition 4 was just being phased out and I suppose edition 5 as well because we were using edition 5b.
One reason why E4 had to be superseded was that some lawyer won a case by saying that there had been a variation to the contract therefore the whole contract was null and void. So a clause had to be put into E5b that said basically ‘no variation shall vitiate this contract’. I notice that that clause no longer appears in building contracts and wonder how long before some lawyer will try it again.
Building contract AS2124 (now AS4000) makes no provision for an architect but refers to ‘the superintendent’.
When you tell this to a project manager he says that is not a problem you just define superintendent as meaning the same as ‘architect’. That is the big problem because the architect does not superintend the works, the builder does. All proper building contracts have a clause that states ‘The builder shall superintend the works’. The architect can superintend the works but that entails the employment of a clerk of works, who spends all day every day on site, something that is never done these days.
The basic philosophy of the contract AS 4000 has derived from the way civil engineers (and government departments) work. The civil engineer goes out into the construction site with their measuring tapes, lazar levels and theodolites and gives the civil engineering contractor , measurements, levels and lines for the works and having done that superintends (supervises ) the works. In a proper building contract those are the responsibilities of the builder.
There are many other problems with AS4000 such as the architect has no power to object to a sub-contractor nor to request proof that the builder is paying the sub-contractors, there’s no provision for nominated sub-contracts.??
The use of nominated sub-contractors has been discouraged by the Institute of Architects, I believe for the wrong reasons. They say that if an architect nominates a sub-contractor and that sub-contractor fails in his duty to perform either in quality or time then the architect is held responsible. Within the building contracts that I prefer to use, although the architect nominates a sub-contractor the builder has to agree to taking on that sub-contractor and once he does he becomes a sub-contractor to the builder in the normal sense and the builder is responsible for his discipline. Like wise the nominated sub-contractor has to agree to abide by the builders requirements.
For the architect the use of nominated sub-contractors is a good way to control the quality of that part of the works.
I used to always make specialist building services like electrical and mechanical services (air conditioning, lifts etc.) nominated sub-contracts and I believe this is still the best way.
I would get the specialist consulting engineers to call separate tenders for these services and to asses the tenders when received to ensure that they complied with the design requirements, the architect or the builder is not qualified to do this, only the specialist consultant is..
One of the difficulties in persuading the Institute of architects to approve of nominated sub-contracts is because government architectural departments have a slightly different definition of ‘a nominated sub-contract’. Their definition matches more the private architects’ definition of a ‘separate contract’ over which the builder has little control.
In my experience there are two types of organizations that build buildings and my definitions are:
1. Builders
2. Contractors.
Builders are the traditional organizations that take the responsibility for and pride in their work and the work of their sub-contractors. Some employ their own tradesmen some employ mainly sub-contractors but they would not employ a sub-contractor they believe would not deliver the standard of work they require. Basically they take responsibility for quality. In order to control quality the architect has to have the authority to object to a sub-contractor he knows habitually delivers poor quality.
Contractors are organizations that organize the necessary sub-contractors to build a building. They usually just accept the lowest price of each sub-contractor and if their standard is bad they will not take the responsibility. One such contractor actually said to me “that is what the sub-contractor has produced, what can we do about it?” Contractors never give the architect the opportunity to object to a sub-contractor.
My above definitions are not strictly true because there are some very good building companies that call themselves contractors, you need to know their philosophies and what they actually do. The choice of contract is of paramount importance.
After the debacle of the complex of 29 units called ‘Reef Terraces Two’ and a few days before completion the builder (from Melbourne) was declared bankrupt and I found that they had not paid any of the local sub-contractors. The developer, John Morris was most displeased about this and so when he decided to build ’Tree Tops Resort’, which consisted of 300 rooms I was able to convince him to use a construction method called ‘Construction Management’. Construction Management is a method of building best described as “sub-contracting” but employing professional persons to manage the process. Not to be confused with ‘project management’ or ‘cost plus’ which a lot of people seem to do. When I asked the Institute of Architects if they had an approved standard contract for ‘Construction Management’ they sent me one for ‘Project Management” which was not satisfactory, so I used a contract produced by the Master Builders Federation and added to it the pages from the contract JCCA which spelled out the responsibilities and powers of the architect.
B. M. Culley, professional construction managers, were offering their services in North Queensland and I got John Morris to commission them. The usual difficulty in using ‘Construction Management’ is that the client has to pay all of the bills and so has to have an account with all building material suppliers sub-contractors and manufacturers but this was not a problem for John Morris who was part owner of some.
Gary Hunt had designed the Tree Tops Resort and prepared basic working drawings but John Morris commissioned me separately to get it built.
Because it was now my job I could change the design providing John Morris agreed but I would always keep the integrity of the design concept in tact. I redesigned the North wing to save and include a stand of large trees including a curtain fig tree. For the same reason I redesigned the three restaurants and the boardwalk and swimming pool down the centre.
The structural engineer, originally appointed by Gary Hunt, was young and inexperienced and would not consider alternative footing designs that in my opinion would be more effective and greatly less expensive. So I commissioned the engineer, Bob Colefax, who I usually use, to do an alternative design. His redesign saved approximately $150,000 on the cost of the structure.
That young engineer later used Bob Colefax as a consultant to advise him on the most economic ways to design his structures.
I changed the exposed structure of the reception and administration buildings from exposed timber to exposed structural steel because timber over large spans becomes bulky and messy and costs more than steel.
Because the construction of the concrete block walls would have to be done during the wet and I foresaw many delays caused by rain and a muddy site I changed them to ‘lift slab’ concrete walls (walls cast on the ground on top of each other and lifted into place by a crane). I had the builder make temporary canvas covers over the casting beds so the production of walls could continue no matter how much it rained.
The hydraulics engineer would not change his sewer design which I requested him to do because his design would have required a stand of some twenty large trees to be removed which would have put us in breach of our planning consent. I discussed the problem with the sewer inspector who simply instructed the plumber to change the sewer design.
Gary Hunt was a bit perturbed about all the changes I was making but when he looked into it said to me “I think it will be a project of which we can all be proud.”
The young man employed by B M Cully as accounts manager and I devised a simplified system of issuing architects instructions, contract variation orders, and amounts paid and retained and the resultant end cost all on one sheet of A4 paper for each sub-contractor which was very efficient. Using this method it was easy to make as many adjustments to the extent of work or methods of construction as you liked to maintain the end cost. We were able to add into the project an emergency generator paid for by savings we made during construction.
John Morris paid me a $15.000 bonus for getting the project finished on time and on budget.
While we had the ‘system’ running he also built a block of 14 town houses in Reef Park called Jacana.
The Japanese restaurant in Port Douglas was designed by Roger Mainwood when he worked with me at Woodhead Australia and I was the site architect in charge of contract administration. The contractor was Solander Construction who had just employed about three project managers who previously worked for Concrete Constructions, national Contractors (not builders).
About three days before completion Solander were declared bankrupt and Gary Hunt immediately called a meeting with the client’s lawyers and accountants which he asked me to attend. Gary was still a director of Woodhead.
They quickly decided to hand the building contract over to the liquidators but I did not agree.
“The building is almost completed” I said “and I believe our duty is first to our client.”
If I issue a certificate of ‘Practical Completion’ the client has immediate possession of the building and can use it for its intended purpose”. We should also immediately terminate the employment of the builder (as you can under the contract) because he can no longer trade and we could complete the works using sub-contractors and/or day labour as the contract provides.
The meeting agreed to follow this procedure.
I was able to persuade the sub-contractors to complete their work by explaining that the client would pay them for the work they did from this point on but they had to claim for previous work from the builder’s liquidator.
There was one who would not agree to complete, Haden Air-conditioning, unless the client paid the full amount the builder owed them. The client had already paid 80 percent of the contract sum to the builder but the builder had paid nothing to this sub-contractor.
I told the Air Conditioning contract manager that we would complete without them and he replied “we will disable the air conditioning plant.”
I replied “I will call the police because that would be illegal”.
He realized his mistake and said “what I mean is, the master control unit is faulty and we have to remove it and get a new one”.
I suspected that they would try to take the master controller early next morning so resolved to get to the site early to prevent any such sabotage.
I set off from oak Beach at 7.00 AM in my white RX7 but got stuck behind a road maintenance truck which travels slow looking for pot holes in the road.
Now I have had experience with travelling behind these trucks and you get spots of bitumen all over your car so I kept well back awaiting a chance to pass.
At Pebbly Beach there used to be a short strip where you could pass and I dropped back a gear and floored the accelerator peddle.
The RX7 takes off like a rocket, I passed the truck quickly, glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure I was clear to pull back into the left lane, looked ahead and there was a dog in the middle of the road eating road kill.
The road was wet, I was on a bend and stupidly slammed on the brakes.
The car spun around about 100 degrees and smashed sideways into a clump of small trees cutting two off at ground level.
The passenger door was pushed in against the consul with the passenger seat crushed, the car was banana shaped, the windscreen was all cracked but still in place. I looked back at the dog which was trotting off totally unconcerned.
The door would not open, to get out I would have to lower the drivers window.
They were electrically operated and the controls were in the consul.
The control panel was missing,
I found it among the wreckage on the passenger side and to my great relief it still worked.
I was struggling to get out through the window when the guys from the road maintenance truck arrived and helped.
I had two cracked ribs and was four hours too late to stop Hadens from disabling the air conditioning.
The client had organised an opening party for the restaurant with people important to them coming from Japan and Sydney and they did not want to postpone or cancel because they would lose face.
Every thing was finished except the air conditioning and it was December, hot and very humid.
I found an old refrigeration mechanic who maintained the refrigeration and air-conditioning on prawn boats, explained our problem and asked if the air conditioning plant could be manually monitored and controlled for the night. He said he could do it so I offered him a good hourly rate and an invitation to the party where he could drink as much as he liked. It worked and the party was a success.
We later got a new master controller from the manufacturer of the air conditioning equipment.
As far as I was concerned the project was nicely finalized but the client’s solicitor got a barrister from Brisbane to ‘wind up’ the contract and when I started to explain to him how this building contract works he cut me off and said “I know all about building contracts” but it turned out that he may have known about some building contracts but he obviously knew nothing about this one. He made such a difficulty out of the fact that the value of each trade in the ‘trade breakdown of the ‘lump sum contract’ was not the same as each actual sub-contract price that the builder had originally accepted to make up his contract sum. Although I had explained to him that in the ‘trade breakdown’, that the builder gives the architect at the beginning of the job, each trade value is made up of the sub-contractors price plus the builder’s overhead costs and plus his profit margin, he could not conceive the difference.
The barrister wrote to our client’s solicitor saying that he thought Mr. McPhee was incompetent and that she should deal with a different architect from Woodhead Australia. The solicitor sent a copy of the barrister’s letter to Woodheads and Gary Hunt gave it to me to respond. So I simply wrote back explaining again using words of one syllable why the two sets of figures are not the same. I heard nothing more.
I find it is always easier to keep solicitors out of building contract disputes and to make an effort to resolve it with the builder and client.
Although Australia appears to be identical throughout when you get into the details of building some building methods that work well in one area might not work well at all in others. Some differences are due to perceptions and attitudes of locals, some due to local skills or lack of, or availability of certain materials and some to climatic conditions. Working in the country and remote areas is quite different to working in the cities. If you normally work in the city and you get work in a remote area it is wise to make use of local trades and knowledge as much as possible.
As I mentioned before although I could get good results with off form and pre-cast concrete in Alice Springs I would not attempt it in Far North Queensland.
The way you work with consultants also varies. Structural Engineers for example, I always consult early in the concept stage of the building design because in my designs I always try to make the design an honest expression of the structure. In North Queensland the attitude of structural engineers is ‘you finish your design and drawings and we will design the structural elements to fit it’ which is not acceptable to me. If you are not careful when working in Queensland you will have your first meeting with your engineer, leave him with your preliminary drawings and a month later find he has done nothing because he is waiting for your final drawings. “We do nothing until we get the final drawings because something might change” they will tell you. My drawings can not be finalized until the structure is known in detail.
I am very disappointed that the management of building contracts and building sites is now less efficient and more chaotic than it was in the 1960’s. The introduction of ‘Work Place Health and Safety’ controls has done more to confuse the proper organization of building sites than it has to prevent injuries.
Contractors more-so than Builders have bad onsite management procedures that result in bad relationships between the Main Contractor and the consultants and consequently the client and they use bullying tactics with sub-contractors when they should use open and fair written sub-contracts. Procedures for processing contract variations, site instruction and fair costing are not in place for some quite large builders and contractors even although the use of computers make all of the above comparatively easy and accurate.
I am now retired and live on the beach at Oak Beach where I have good friends, where family and friends visit for holidays every year. I have a loving life partner, Jillian, who has revitalized my life, two little dogs, Jessie (who Heather gave to me), Louis a precocious little Maltese and Jill’s dog Meg who I call Nutmeg.
With Louis and Jessie on Oak Beach
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