How We Waste £25,000,000 Annually
BY ALFRED C. BOSSOM.
[Mr. Bosom is a well-known architect with wide experience of the United States. He is an alderman of the L.C.C., and one of the members of the Building Industry Council of Review who have recently published an Interim Report.—En. Spectator.] J)O the readers of the Spectator know the sum spent annually in this country on building ? It is about £250,000,000 a year. Of this the municipalities are responsible for 1100,000,000 or so, the Government for about 110,000,000 and private enterprise and jobbing and maintenance contracts for the remainder. I should say that ten per cent, of this, or £25,000,000 a year, is literally thrown away through poor organization and obsolete practices.
Twenty-five million pounds a year ! It is a tidy sum. If Mr. Snowden were to clap on that amount of extra taxation the country would be in an uproar. Yet we tax ourselves to that extent, year in and year out, on our building programme for lack of a little forethought and joint endeavour. All rents and manufacturing costs throughout Great Britain are higher than they should be because houses and factories cost too much and take too lone to build. For the same reason the building industry languishes, employment in it is needlessly precarious, and some of our greatest national needs, like the reconditioning of our factories and the clearing away of the slums—I see Mr. Greenwood hopes they will disappear in ten years—are rendered almost unobtainable on the score of expense.
The Council of Review looked into this as they looked into every other problem of the building industry. I think we are a fairly representative lot, and I know we have put in eighteen months and more of stiff work on our terms of reference—" to undertake a comprehensive review of the economic position and technique of the building industry and its associated interests."
For the first time, architects, surveyors, contractors, manufacturers and suppliers of building materials, operators and inspectors put their heads together to find out what is wrong in the building industry and to set it right. We heard and examined the most authoritative witnesses ; we held the frankest and friendliest discus- sions ; and I am tremendously hopeful that the Interim Report we unanimously presented will !wove the begin- ning of a wholly new era in the British building industry.
I want to leave everything else on one side for the moment—even the fearsome handicap of our fussily antiquated building laws and regulations—and make clear, if I can, the immense importance of the Council's recommendation "that the Time and Progress Schedule system of construction should be extended on a stan- dardized basis as widely as possible throughout the country." • No one interested in a big building scheme could possibly desire better architects, contractors, surveyors and workmen than he finds in Great Britain. But these various factors—all of them equally essential—do not at present work together as they might and should ; they are far too independent of one another ; there is a lack of liaison and combination between them ; too often they get in each other's way, with the result that time is lost, nothing proceeds by a continuous pre-arranged flow, and the process of construction, instead of being an orderly and consecutive advance all down the line, is too apt to become a scramble and a delay. It is the raison d'être of the Time and Progress Schedule to prevent all this.
I have known a thirty-four storey building, costing £1,500,000 put up in New York in sixteen months. How was this miracle of building efficiency achieved ? Simply by the Time and Progress Schedule. The owner knew what he wanted, and denied himself the luxury of those last-minute unhappy thoughts. The architect completed his working drawings and handed them to the contractor, who in turn made all the arrangements for the supply of labour and material by given dates, before a single boring had been made, or a single spade handled, in excavating the foundations.
Look ahead. Have everything mapped out in advance before a sod of earth is moved. Insist upon the owner giving the architect and the architect giving the con- tractor all the information he ought to have before he can go ahead. Put the contractor in effective command of the whole undertaking and invest him with the undivided responsibility for its successful completion by the agreed date. Subject to the direct approval of the owner and the architect, let him make the multi- farious sub-contracts and arrangements that have to be made to insure that the materials will be forthcoming at the specified time, that the operatives will never be idle, and that one constructional process will fit into another like the wheels of a clock.
That is the essence of the Time and Progress Schedule. There is nothing really wonderful about it. It is just common sense and organization applied to a complicated problem that otherwise gets out of hand. But it took ten years of intensive propaganda and example to teach the building industries of Canada and the United States that this, and no other, was the way to run their business. To-day it is the only way in which buildings are con- structed on the other side of the Atlantic and no one for an instant would think of going back to the old wasteful and haphazard methods.
It is thanks almost entirely to this scheduling of everything in advance and working to an agreed time- table that buildings in America cost nO more to erect than in England, are completed far more quickly, yield larger profits both to the owner and the contractor, and at the same time enable the operatives to be paid from three to five times the wages they receive in Great Britain.
Of course other factors help. There is more flexibility in the American building laws for one thing, trade union regulations are more elastic, and a stiffer fight is put up against the common enemy of all building—bad weather. I remember some four or five years ago being connected with a twenty-three storey building in Buffalo which has approximately the same rainfall, a much lower temperature and an immensely greater snowfall than England. We built every working day throughout the year. When it rained or snowed we ran tarpaulins round the building, lit a dozen fires in great braziers, provided the men with mackintoshes, long rubber boots and sou'westers—and so carried on. The result was that this huge edifice, costing L1,000,000 was finished exactly in the scheduled time—namely, in less than fifteen months.
I usually find that Canadian and American experience is of little use in England, and that British manufacturers and contractors pursuing their own methods, get as good results or better. But in this case of the Building Industry I undoubtedly think that current practices could be improved to everybody's benefit—to the nation's because we should be getting more and cheaper houses and factories, and to the gain of all sections in the industry because building would become once more a highly profitable investment and architects and brick- layers alike would find themselves full of work.
How are we to start saving this £25,000,000 or n0,000,000 a year that now runs off our buildings like rain ? Well, I am very hopeful that the L.C.C. may take the lead and that for the future it will undertake no building schemes and give out no contracts except on the basis of the complete Time and Progress Schedule covering not only the construction but also the archi- tectural drawings. I am hopeful, too, that if such a large-scale demonstration of the savings be effected, all other municipalities throughout the Kingdom—and of course the Government itself—will follow suit.
Previous page
