Heating and Ventilating

As anyone who reads my leaders or my blogs on www.heatingandventilating.net will know, I am a wilting flower, says HVR editor Paul Braithwaite.
But, just this once, I will stick my head above the parapet and have an opinion.
HVR will be backing the Information Overload campaign to the hilt.
You have only to read Kevin Talbot's News Extra on page 9 of this issue to realise just how much money is being wasted.

According to Talbot, it costs an m&e contractor an average of £2million to tender for a Building Schools for the Future project. This is a staggering sum even if you accept that the contractor may be successful one in three or four times.

Another figure is that of between £3billion and £5billion which is the total loss on construction tendering. And Talbot is right when he says this money is simply disappearing. It is not being used to deliver better products or to make our built environment more sustainable.

The initiative comes initially from ADCAS, the Association of Ductwork Contractors and Allied Services and this organisation has been joined by the HVCA's Ductwork Group in a campaign to tackle the problem of Information Overload.

Basically what is happening, according to Talbot, is that many design schemes are sent to specialist sub-contractors before they are ready for the subbies' input or are in such as state that the work cannot be accurately costed - which means that it will probably have to be costed out again when the design is more accurate.

A huge amount of largely irrelevant information is passed from client to consultant, to main contractor and on down the supply chain with specialist constractors having to wade through it all so that they can get to the relevant information. It is all too easy to just mail out a disc with everything on it.

This waste of money and time is surely a campaign which the government's construction tsar should be getting to grips with.

Paul Morrell is a former QS so he should know what's what.
And, in the final reckoning, he works for the government which is the largest construction client.

But when it comes to the final reckoning how much interest has the government shown in the building services industry?
Has it stopped retentions? (resounding NOOO!).
Is the Boiler Scrappage scheme big enough? (another resounding NOOO!)

Will Morrell prove to be a building services champion? (resounding...well, the jury is still listening to the evidence).

I will leave it there. And as I said at the beginning of this comment, who am I to raise my head above the parapet?