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RAM Building Consultancy offer expert help with technical specifications and tender documentation for a roof, full refurbishments, and new buildings.
The specification is the backbone of any project. Products must be researched, selected, and agreed with the client, with finishes and facades requiring careful consideration and discussions with clients, planners, and other stakeholders.
A common misconception is that procurement drives this decision-making. This is not correct: specifications can be prescriptive or descriptive, regardless of the procurement route. Traditional contracts have had the ability to facilitate descriptive specifications, via the contractor design portion (CDP), for years. Similarly, prescriptive specifications can be used where a planning consent has stringent conditions relating to materials, or where the client wishes to ensure that specific design aspects will be provided as imagined by the design team, meaning that they are commonplace on design and build contracts.
To phrase this another way, the decision to use a prescriptive or descriptive specification is driven less by procurement and more by topics such as the value proposition.
Let RAM help you make the most of your budget to deliver the best specification and procurement route for you as our client.
We will assist you with your project and we can work with you to specify precisely what you require and what the contractor will need to know. This process is often in the forefront of the designers, and clients, mind from the very early stages of inception and our early involvement can make the accumulation of detail more straight forward. We regularly use a pool of trusted and approved, local building contractors and can advise on the most appropriate method of procuring your project and assist you through the process.
In more than 99% of cases RAM Building Consultancy will save you money and time. We will improve your overall design and ensure not only statutory compliance, but also detail integration.
To assist you in considering whether you will benefit from a Technical Specification Review, RAM Building Consultancy have come up with some of the common ‘errors’ we find in technical specifications and why:
There is an over reliance within professional bodies and building owners to trust what product manufacturers tell them.
This is primarily because the service is ‘free’
There is often an ill-advised assumption that such advice is neutral and that they have a full understanding of what alternatives there are.
If your specification has been led, (this can often be identified in not only brand names, but also in terminologies used that advantage specific suppliers) by a product manufacturer, you will be paying way above open market rates for that manufacturers products.
This carries the least risk from a pure contractual perspective. However, it is not risk free. It may be limited by the contractor knowledge, who in turn rely upon the Product Manufacturer again, so the circle has come back round.
Supplementary quality controls checks where Contract Administration services are provided by others. An Expert commentary on how the installation is taking place and whether improvements are required.
Our extensive knowledge of the UK market means we are ideally placed to help you select the most suitable roofing system and approved installers.
Further to this, should you require Tender Design services or As-Built AutoCAD drawings then we can assure you of an expertly designed roof that will offer you an economical and viable long-term roofing solution. As a part of our integrated design service RAM can provide:
- Condensation risk analysis calculations
- Rainwater design calculations
- Tender and as-built CAD drawings
There are 2 crucial tests that all technical specifications must pass:
1. Can the specification withstand a robust technical review?
- In that it meets the performance requirements
- In that it meets the statutory obligations
- In that it does not create any problem detail interfaces
Then you must challenge:
2. Is the specification cost effective?
- How do named products/services compare with peer costs?
- Are any products/services/warranty expectations over engineered?
- Is the specification unfairly biased toward a particular product or service (this is most relevant when product manufacturers have engaged in the specification process)
There are of course other criteria; such as ease and speed of construction. Which must all be considered and understood against the project background when undertaking such robust reviews.
So, the procurer must ask themselves; Is it really necessary to undertake a review of this nature? Are the design ‘team’ not already competent in this regard?
The answer lies within the knowledge limitations of those that have been employed thus far in producing the specification.
- Are they truly experts in this particular field?
- Are they independent of commercial influence?
RAM Building Consultancy are specialists in building envelope design technology. We know the market rates, the product performance boundaries, the installation benefits and more.
We have both technical and practical expertise/knowledge to draw upon. Spanning not just years, but generations.
