ADCAS campaign against information overload enjoys widespread support
A survey has revealed that 72% of the construction industry finds the tendering process more difficult in the digital age. The survey was carried out by ADCAS (Association of Ductwork Contractors & Allied Services) as part of its campaign to highlight the problems caused by excess information in the tendering process, which has won wide support from across the construction industry.
72% of those surveyed said that tendering was more difficult now than five years ago, with a third complaining that identifying relevant information was a problem — even though 60% of those responding were at main-contractor level.
Reactions have ranged from relief that the problem has at last been raised to promises of practical support in seeking a solution.
Andrew Eastwell, CEO of BSRIA, says, ‘Lean construction is not just a case of reducing inventory. It is about taking waste out throughout the process. The practice of passing on risk by bloating tender documentation with irrelevant material is far from lean and certainly not reducing either risk or cost. Better ways must exist that improve profitability for both parties. Now is a good time to find out how.’
ADCAS believes that at least a week’s work could be cut from the tendering process for almost every major ductwork project if specifications were better defined in relation to specialist services. If the time needed to sort through excess information on a CD could be cut, the final cost of the job could be significantly reduced.
The trend towards dumping all the project data and drawings onto a single CD or a constantly changing web site is more than just a costly nuisance. Very real financial risk is involved, as John Rowell, chairman of the industrial refrigeration contractors’ section of the British Refrigeration Association, points out. ‘Very often, when confronted with a mountain of information and a very tight deadline, the proposals engineer will succumb to the temptation to leave the contract conditions to one side, assuming they will be acceptable.
‘Sadly, it is rare not to find terms which put the sub-contractor at unacceptable risk, and I’m fairly sure that some smaller companies enter a contract without a clue that they’ve accepted terms that could bankrupt them should things go wrong!’
Doug Robins, president of the Building Controls Industry Association, says, ‘In the controls sector we are often sent all the drawings and specifications for pricing a project. Most of this information is not relevant to our works. This means that our members have to scan through the entire documentation to spot the relevant sections. Not only is this very time consuming, but the printing costs can soon
add up.’
ADCAS has set up an Internet discussion group on LinkedIn called ‘Information overload — the elephant in the room’.
