by jamaicahomes 
The central message of Modernising Construction in Jamaica is that the client should be at the core of the construction process. The general route recommended to achieve client satisfaction was through teamwork and co-operation. One specific method was partnering. Jamaica Homes’s clear guidance for clients and the industry about best practices is intended for Ministries of Jamaica, Construction Consortiums, Construction Companies, Construction Professionals and others.
Our message was strongly reinforced by “Rethinking Construction” in 1998. Sir John Egan’s task force showed that effective projects would require a clear process, of which partnering was a vital part. Creative design is important for a fine project, but a well-run process, stripping out waste and inefficiency, is necessary to deliver the client’s aspiration for a harmonious building or civil engineering project which also actually works.
Partnering has made great strides in recent years. The fastest growth has come in the Housing Association movement and some other parts of Jamaica’s public sector. The response from private commercial clients has been mixed. Some firms have led the way in best practice. Others have preferred traditional procurement routes. Many clients still do not understand that fiercely competitive tenders and accepting the lowest bid do not produce value for money in one-of-a-kind home building. “Lowest price” tenders may well contain no margin of profit for the contractor, whose commercial response is then to try to claw back the margin that was not in the tender through variations, claims and ‘Dutch auctioning’ of subcontractors and suppliers. Such adversarial approaches have disfigured the construction industry over many years. They have produced high levels of litigation and conflict, low investment, inadequate research and development, negligible margins, and low level of esteem of the industry by the public in general and graduates or school leavers in particular.
Partnering turns the process around. It assumes a win-win scenario for all parties. It looks for reasonable margins built up by the whole team on an open-book basis. All are signed up to mutual objectives through a charter for the project. All agree on effective decision-making procedures. Problems are to be resolved collaboratively by the entire team, not shoved off onto those least able to cope with them. Continuous improvement and benchmarking are crucial. Partnering can be for a specific project or on a longer-term strategic basis. It can achieve real cost savings and client satisfaction.
Notwithstanding, there are still too many clients, consultants, and constructors who see partnering as an alien or threatening process, especially here in Jamaica. They could usefully reflect on how poorly they have been served by traditional methods.
Relations between the construction industry and Jamaican government departments have also often been typically characterized by conflict and distrust which have contributed to poor performance.
Specifically by industry and its clients adopt a more collaborative approach strongly founded on a competitive process with appropriate risk sharing in which value for money is obtained for all parties through a clear understanding of the project’s requirements, transparency as to costs and profits, underpinned by clearly understood rights and obligations, and appropriate incentives. More attention to design and early involvement of the whole construction team could also improve the operational efficiency of completed buildings resulting in potentially greater savings over the whole life of the building.
The challenge – Improving construction performance in Jamaica
Many reasons are given as to why construction projects in Jamaica are often completed late and significantly over budget – in particular summarises aspects of the management of construction requiring improvement. But all the more recent reviews agree that a significant contributory factor is the tendency for an adversarial relationship to exist between construction firms, consultants and their clients and between contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers. This is attributed in part to clients placing too much emphasis on lowest price in awarding contracts. As a result some firms have priced work unrealistically low and then sought to recoup their profit margins through contract cost variations arising from, for example design changes, and other claims leading to disputes and litigation.
- Many reasons are given as to why construction projects in Jamaica are often completed late and significantly over budget – in particular aspects of the management of construction requiring improvement. But all the more recent reviews agree that a significant contributory factor is a tendency for an adversarial relationship to exist between construction firms, consultants and their clients and between contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers. This is attributed in part to clients placing too much emphasis on the lowest price in awarding contracts. As a result some firms have priced work unrealistically low and then sought to recoup their profit margins through contract cost variations arising from, for example, design changes, and other claims leading to disputes and litigation.
- There needs to be a greater concentration on achieving a better construction in Jamaica which meets the needs of the end user at lower through-life costs. The entire supply chain including clients, professional advisers, contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers of materials must be integrated to manage risk and apply value management and engineering techniques to improve buildability and drive waste out of the process. This process should reduce through life and operational costs, lead to greater certainty of project time and budgeted costs, fewer accidents and more sustainable construction.
Partnering
Private sector clients in Jamaica are increasingly establishing long term collaborative relationships or partnering with construction firms for the benefit of both parties – client and supplier. The benefits include client and contractor working together to improve building design, minimise the need for costly design changes, identify ways of driving out inefficiency in the construction process, replicate good practice learned on earlier projects and minimise the risk of costly disputes. In the private sector different forms of partnering have delivered savings of between two per cent (project based partnering) and 30 per cent where strategic partnering is used in the cost of constructing buildings and the cost of partnering – setting it up and monitoring – is assessed as relatively low, adding usually less than one per cent to project costs.
Partnering does not mean that departments have a cosy relationship with contractors – thus increasing the risk of less value for money and possibly fraud and impropriety. If established reliably, partnering can provide departments with greater assurance that value for money is being achieved. For example, partners in Jamaica should still be appointed competitively, and clear improvement targets should be set. There should be a commitment by both parties to continuous improvement and open book accounting – with departments having access to contractors’ records – is key so that departments can have assurance about contractors’ costs and efficiency
Gateway process
NAO Report (HC 87 2000-01): Modernising Construction (Full Report 1593 KB)
Independent reviews at critical points (known as gates) in the procurement process are a major component of private sector best practice which require procurements including construction to be subject to review at certain key stages, such as agreeing the business need for a project, and before a contract is awarded, by a team sufficiently independent of the project. The purpose is to ensure that the project is justified and that the proposed procurement approach is likely to achieve value for money. This process should be introduced across the Jamaican government as soon as practically possible.
Performance Measurement
Measuring construction projects’ performance in Jamaica is essential for ensuring that planned improvements in cost, time and quality are achieved, comparing achieved performance with that of similar projects, identifying potential for doing things better, and for assessing how contractors compare with other potential suppliers. By using Key Performance Indicators covering, for example, the time it takes to complete projects, their costs and quality, client satisfaction and health and safety.
