Task D - Individual Evaluation PDF

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Full answers to Methods of measurement to Individual coursework - Task D. Acheived 79% in this coursework. Lecturer Lisa....

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Task D - Individual Report

Individual evaluation of measured quantity information generally within the construction industry. The individual submission based on task D must be a correctly structed report, (With contents page, introduction, summary, etc) Including at least the following: The uses of measured quantity information within the construction industry The importance of accuracy in measured quantity information. This ection can consider the need for accuracy, and examples where an obsession with accuracy would be inappropriate ( Such as where spending to much time trying to get an accurate measurement on a low value item would be uneconomic. Observations on differences between approaches of SMM7 and CESMM and relative merits. Any recommendations to the industry for improving measured quantity information. This can be anything that you could think of, based on your experiences with measured quantity information so far. It is in the interest of everyone that measurement is carried out consistently and there is therefore a continued need for a standard method of measurement and therefor need for measurement skills Most peoepl agree that accurate measurement is important not everyone agrees that the SMM7 is the best way of achieving this Consultants estimate that they prepare measurement for tendering purposes on 55% of projects compared to 23% of projects for which contractors believe that they will receive measurement. SMM6 is still being used Some feel that SMM7 does not nessacarly focus on the factors which influence price Some feel that SMM& is open to interpretation and therefore often subject to misunderstanding. Where SMM7 bills of quanitites are prepared consultants measure mechanical and electrical services only 15% of the time Approximately 10% of consultants were opposed to any changes to the current standard method of measurement Respondents emphasisise the detrimental effect incomplete design information has on accurate measurement at pre tender stage Some consulatant feel that SMM7 is complex and perhaps unnecessarily complicated. They also feel that current fee levels often do not support or justify the production of full BQ’s Software billing systems Some contractors regularly amend the standard method of measurement as there were area where SMM7 did not match there estimating conventions. Some projects where th eocnsulatants have not been employed to prepare measurement as part of the procurement process, they will prepare approximate quantities in order to provide a pre-tender estimate.

Electrical communication – Bills can be submitted electronically very few are. This can be done by email cd rom or websites. Most do hard copies making digital versions of request only. To make a bill word processing files or spreadsheets are the most commonly used. However they can be made using constructions industry trading format or ASCII text files. ALL FROM:…. Introduction What does the report focus on? Contents

Historically, the formal form of Bills of Quantities was introduced in the United Kingdom after the Industrial Revolution in the 19th Century. They were mainly used by master tradesmen for paying their workmen and claiming payments from building owners by submitting it as partisan Final Account. BQ are widely used in most of the Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, the Middle Eastern countries etc. particularly in the traditional procurement system. BQ are mainly used for cost estimating and more importantly, as part of tender document for use in soliciting competitive tenders from contractors. They are also compiled together with contract form to form a contract document. However, as construction industry evolved and changed technologically, economically, legally and procedurally, so is the use of s in construction projects. It has been the subject of scrutiny and criticisms by the construction community. It was highlighted that the use of BQ in the UK construction industry is declining and it is possible that they will vanish from the industry in the near future. In 1991 the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors revealed that between 1984 and 1989 the usage of s in building works in the UK declined in value to almost 10%. Several reasons were given for such a situation. These include the lack of use by the project teams, its limited use after the tendering process and the increased use of more “advanced” non-traditional procurement system by the industry. That was the situation and prediction made twenty years ago. The question now “What is the situation in our construction industry today? Are BQ still relevant today, especially when more and more projects are contracted out using the non-traditional procurement systems? Are they still useful to the clients, architects, engineers and contractors throughout the construction process? This paper looks at the issue of BQ, their weakness and potential in the construction industry It led to the emergence of formalised Bills of Quantities or BQ in 1859. In those early days, BQ were prepared by “measurers” or were also known as “custom surveyors” or “surveyors”, who acted for the master tradesmen or known today as trade contractors. They measure and quantify the work after completion and frequently submitting it as partisan Final Account to the building owner to claim for payment.(ASAQS, 2006). Since then BQ has become an important tool for project costing and obtaining tenders from contractors. It is also a document for architects and other consultants to have a sense of control of their projects, in term of cost and finance. Today BQ are also used for cost planning; projected cash flows and budget, for valuation of interim payments and variation orders and for settlement of final account. In the contracting Padang 21-24 June2006 1 Paper presented at International Conference on Construction Industry 2006, Padang, Indonesia, 21st June – 25th June 2006 organisations, they are sometimes used for preparing material schedules or bills of materials. The two classifications of contractor were referred to as specialists and nonspecialists. The nonspecialists stated a strong preference for their pricing documentation to be in a quantified format

and for this to be prepared for them. In contrast, the specialists preferred to carry out the task of measurement themselves and did not The Standard Method of Measurement (SMM) is published by the Royal Institute of CharteredSurveyors (RICS). It was first published in 1922, superseding a Scottish Standard Method of Measurement which was published in 1915. It is now in its seventh edition (SMM7), which was first published in 1988 and revised in 1998. SMM7 provies detailed information, classification tables and rules for measuring building works. It is important that there is a uniform basis for measuring building works in order to facilitate industry wide consistency and benchmarking, to encourage the adoption of best practice and to help avoid disputes. SMM7 is typically used in the preparation of bills of quantities, documents that provide measured quantities of the items of work identified by the drawings and specifications in tender documentation. Bills of quantities are issued to tenderers for them to prepare a price for carrying out works. SMM7 is accompanied by the Code of Procedure for the Measurement of Building Works (theSMM7 Measurement Code). Whilst SMM7 can have a contractual status on a project (for example in the JCT Standard form of Building Contract), the Measurement Code is non-mandatory. Work sections within SMM7 are classified according to the Common Arrangement of Work Sections (CAWS). CAWS creates a consistent arrangement of work sections for specificationsand bills of quantities. It was first published in 1987 and was updated by the Construction Project Information Committee (CPIC) in 1998 to align it with the Unified Classification for theConstruction Industry (Uniclass).

Phasing out SMM7 has been replaced by the New Rules of Measurement volume 2 (NRM2) which was published in April 2012 by the RICS Quantity Surveying and Construction Professional Group and became operative on 1 January 2013. SMM7 should not be adopted on projects after July 2013. NRM2 is accompanied by two additional volumes:  NRM1: Order of cost estimating and cost planning for capital building works.  NRM3: Order of cost estimating and cost planning for building maintenance works.

A tender document produced by a Designer at the design stage which translates relevant information on construction drawings into bill of quantities (BQ) that fully describes the quality and quantities of work to be carried out by a Contractor or Principal Contractor during the construction stage. It is basically a list of work items with brief detailed descriptions and firm quantities for different elements of work to be carried out.

The main purposes of a BQ are: 

To provide the same information to all tendering Contractors or Principal Contractors, that enables them all to prepare their tenders efficiently and accurately based on the same information

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When a contract has been entered into, to: Provide a basis for the valuation of completed work for the purpose of making interim payments to the Contractor or Principal Contractor Provide a basis for the valuation of variation work

Why are written descriptions required for a bill of quantities? A BQ requires clear and concise written descriptions in order for tendering Contractors or Principal Contractors to price the work properly. The essential parts of a clear and concise descriptions are:  All information required by a Contractor's or Principal Contractor's estimator to build up a realistic price

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The first few words in a written description should indicate clearly the nature of work required to be

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completed Order of stating dimensions should be consistent and generally in sequence of length, width and depth (where sequence is not appropriate or where ambiguity could arise, dimensions should be specifically identified)

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If a item of work cannot be accurately or fully described, reference should be made to the appropriate constucution drawing

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The written description must be concise and not to lengthy, can be shortened by references to the specification

What content should be included in a bill of quantities? A BQ should contain basic information presented in elemental format that is clear, concise and easy to understand and price, such as:

Short bit about preliminarys and preambles

Uses of measured quantity information

A BQ can be prepared using various alternative methods of measurement The ability to measure construction work in an organised and useful way is a core skill of the quantity surveying profession. Whilst the job title quantity surveyor seems to be confined to those countries which have been influenced by the United Kingdom (often referred to as the Commonwealth countries), those tasks which we might describe as the quantity surveying function take place in the construction industry of most countries of the world. It was said that the use of BQ to comes to an end when the contractor has been selected and the contract has been signed. It cannot be used for any other purpose once the tendering process has been completed. The priced and completed BQ tend to put away in a cabinet or sent to the store room to collect dust. has mentioned that BQ were not fully utilized by the project teams. It was said to be self perpetuating because many were not able to relate BQ to the everyday project development processes. The variety of potential uses of the BQ were fully realised, it is probably beyond most people’s knowledge and experience. the main services provided by construction cost consultants is the production of pre-tender estimates to assist the client in their planning and later evaluation of bids. These estimates are produced by measuring and valuing the work from drawings and presented in a formal document. The basis of measurement does not relate to any standard method or rules and can perhaps be equated with so called builder’s quantities. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC) there are very formal procedures for measuring and valuing construction work, see Lu (1994), which are codified in norms defined by the government. The norms can be closely equated to a standard method of measurement and valuation. Maybe measurement of construction work is not so peculiarly ‘British’ as we think.

In recent years the issue has been raised as to whether measurement has a place in the quantity surveying profession, or whether it should even be included in undergraduate courses related to that profession. Indicate that measurement still has a place in the profession. It is described as a core skill in these readings. In many undergraduate courses the amount of formal teaching of measurement has reduced In addition, courses have stressed the wider value of measurement skill and knowledge as an analytical tool rather than solely its use in the preparation of bills of quantities. Part of the debate referred to seems to centre on the notion that to be associated with measurement is somehow demeaning for a professional person. Sometimes the suggestion is that measurement is just simply redundant in this day and age. People often put forward the view that surely as computer aided design (CAD) systems evolve and develop the related measurement will A be available at the ‘flick of a switch’ or the ‘press of a key’ - a natural by-product of the computer generated design.

In many ways this is nothing startling. A form of measurement is already available from CAD systems. Automated measurement of the type dreamt about in the construction field is much nearer in fields such as aircraft design.

The suggestions that measurement is redundant and possibly demeaning could be related. The redundancy argument is often put forward by the ‘bills of quantities are dead’ lobby. For them measurement equals bills of quantities. For them the other uses of measurement and, indeed, the value of possessing measurement skill seems lost. For some, the two - quantity surveyor and measurer - are synonymous, and to be associated with one carries identification with the other. Bills of quantities are out of fashion, so the argument might go, therefore there is no need for measurement, therefore as a quantity surveyor one does not need to do or know about measurement. The function of BQ has not changed very much ever since it was introduced about hundred years ago. In the traditional procurement system, BQ is used mainly for project costing and as part of tender document for soliciting competitive tenders from contractors. It is a uniform document for contractors to estimate or price the work on precisely the same basis, thus allowing for the fairest bidding. To the quantity surveyors, BQ are also used for project costing or estimating, for assessing tenders, price negotiation; valuation of interim payment and variation orders and for the settlement of final account. It is considered as a multi-purpose document. For the purpose of submitting the bid or tender, each builder then has to come out with accurate estimates of the project cost or tender. It was done by measuring and quantifying the quantities of all materials and labour necessary to complete the work, i.e. preparing a bill BQ for the project. As each builder had to prepare his own BQ for each project, they came to realise that they were duplicating a lot of effort by each measuring the same quantities from the architect's drawings. They realised that it is more economical for them as a group to employ one surveyor to measure the work and prepare the BQ Padang 21-24 June2006 3 Paper presented at International Conference on Construction

Industry 2006, Padang, Indonesia, 21st June – 25th June 2006 for them. The builders will then price the BQ and submit their tenders on the same basis. They would share the cost of the quantity surveyor (or the successful builder will pay the surveyor) and include the payment in their bids. On the part of the building owners themselves, since they ended up paying for the quantity surveyor's fees, it finally dawned on them that they might as well employ him directly and get some cost advice from him as well. (ASAQS, 2006; Myles, 2006, CIQS 2006). Apart from some minor changes in term of method of measurement, content and format of presentation, BQ is still a document detailing description and quantities of all the construction work of a project. It may now may come in elemental, trade, work section or operational form. With the advent of ICT, the process of preparing s has evolved from the tedious manual and time consuming processes to semi-automated or fully automated processes involving the use of computers and sophisticated specialised software. But the whole process is still involving the toiling over many hundred drawings in doing the time consuming “taking off”, many hours of meetings and discussion with the client and other consultants and drafting, checking, editing and printing the 300 – 500 pages document The opinion seems to have gained ground that it is unnecessary to teach the routine techniques on the assumption that they are of little use to the professional quantity surveyor. But most practitioners would regard this as a false assumption as a detailed knowledge of the techniques is required, not only to manage and supervise their execution, but to judge the significance of the results they produce. Nisbet also addresses the issue of simplified methods of measurement. A major argument in this debate being that if measured tender documents are needed, then the level of detail required under a standard method can be reduced without significantly impairing the ability of a contractor to price construction work. 80% of the value is contained in 20% of the items. The simplistic point here being that if we knew which items were included in the 20% we could direct our measurement energies to accurately defining them. Finally, on the question of how often bills of quantities are used as a tender document. This, of course, is an issue by itself but also provides food for thought on the issue of measurement and its future. ANYALISE TABLES

The most simple of observations to make here is that the time period which these reports cover is one in which risk has increasingly been moved to the contractor, and this would certainly be reflected in a growing preference on the part of clients for design and build procurement systems.

Until information suitable to be priced by contractors can be produced reliably by electronically generated design, the skill of quantification – measurement - will remain important. Twodimensional design has to be converted into a form which can be both understood and priced. The production of bills of quantities through the appointment of a quantity surveyor by the client has ensured that all contractors tendering were pricing on the same basis and that there was no expensive duplication of effort. It enables work to be valued and also minimises the risk to the contractor as the extent of contract work to be done was limited to that measured in the contract bills of quantities.

The process requires a complete design before it can be properly finalised to tender stage which takes time and a natural desire for progress sometimes results in poor quality documentation. This practice of producing bills of quantities appears to be in significant decline but lump sum contracts still dominate. Consequently contractors or their subcontractors must carry out the measurement process to be able to get to a price and in doing so they take the risk of variable accuracy. This results

in the inevitable duplication of effort and there is no consistency in the measurement process. One common result is said to be that the contractor who makes the biggest pricing error gets the job.

The use o...