What Clients Want

30.03.21

Nigel Ostime

hawkinsbrown.com
Books
RIBA reports
RIBA Client Liaison Group

• Make the RIBA more outward facing

• Provide a forum to hear views directly from client bodies

• Provide a vehicle to feed ideas and initiatives from the Institute back to them

• Identify the tools and skills that architects need to improve their service to clients
Roundtable discussions

Commercial
developers
Sport &
Healthcare Leisure Workplace

Schools Retrofit

Contractors Housing Heritage

Roundtable questions

• How do you view architects and architecture?

• Where can architects add greatest value?

• What roles do you see your architects performing?

• Do architect’s fees reflect value?

• What skills do architects need to get into your sector?

Roundtable outputs

• 12 articles in RIBA Journal

• 50+ filmed interviews

• 1000+ clients in database

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What do you think clients want from their architects?

Where can architects add the most value?

What roles do clients want their architects to perform?

Client & Architect report

• Championing the Vision

• Listening and Understanding

• Engaging with People

• Delivering Technical Talent

• Learning and Improving

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Championing the vision

What Clients Want | 25.10.16 10

“A continuous thread that runs through the project.”
Listening and understanding

“The key is to actually listen, not just make assumptions or presumptions.”

Listening and understanding

“Architects need to be business analysts – you

need to understand how the client’s business
works.”
Engaging with people
Delivering technical talent
Learning and improving

What Clients Want | 25.10.16 15

Client Survey

• A first for the construction industry

• Nearly 1000 responses

• Roughly 1/3 domestic, 1/3 commercial, 1/3

contractors

• Questions deliberately phrased to encourage honest

feedback and improvement
What clients have told us – project overall
What clients have told us – design skills and ability to meet the brief
What clients have told us – process management
What clients have told us – appointed through recommendation
What clients have told us – following up
www.listenback.co.uk

22
What clients have told us – budgets

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Survey headlines

• Most clients satisfied or very satisfied with end product

• Architects design skills highly rated

• Managing the process is less well rated

• Contractors less satisfied

• Architects more highly rated than non-architects

• Recommended architects more highly rated

• Follow-up rated highly

Client Survey #2

• New survey

• Change in focus to reflect

• lessons learned from #1
• topical issues
• focus on housing sector

• Results to be published soon!

What is going wrong with contractors?

• Limited engagement with the supply chain

• Working and procurement practices - novation

• Gulf in expectations by both parties (who’s leading?)

• Tighter budgets and higher construction costs leave less room for error

• The reality of process management

• Speak up if you see pitfalls

• Always consider the triumvir – programme/cost/quality

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Building in Quality – joint memorandum of understanding

We hereby commit to work together to:

• Overcome cultural bias in the construction

industry for better collaboration and
greater transparency between members
of the project team
• Give due prominence to the outcomes
stated in the project brief
• Establish a way to identify and track risks
to quality, cost and programme
• Encourage the involvement of end-users,
purchasers and asset managers in the
conception, design and specification of
projects
• Promote progressive, long-term,
integrated delivery and ownership
structures

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Edinburgh Schools Inquiry and Hackitt Review
Building in Quality Guide

• Advice on achieving quality under three headings:

• Functionality
• Build quality
• Impact

• Quality Tracker

• As a consequence of this work:

• CIC quality tool and PAS
• CLC Procure for Value tool
• BSI committee on quality management in construction
to add requirements to ISO 9001 to raise the bar in the
construction industry
So what do clients want?
− Professionalism
− Design excellence
− Robust project management
− Listening – and learning
− Continuous improvement
− Leadership

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31
Achieving Quality
30.03.21

Nigel Ostime

hawkinsbrown.com
• Lean thinking and productivity
• Quality assurance
• Risk management

33
Lean thinking and productivity

34
Architects are designers!
(and this is where we add value)
Design process / project process
Lean thinking

Manchester Part 2 talk | 24.11.16 37

Origins of ‘Lean thinking’

• Japanese post-war car industry

• Taiichi Ohno

• Toyota Production System

• Lean production

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Lean Thinking

• Doing more with less

• Providing customers with what they want

• Meeting the customer’s needs at a specific price

and at a specific time
How can the construction industry improve productivity?

What can architects do to improve productivity?

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA)
Quality Assurance

43
What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) refers to

administrative and procedural activities

implemented in a quality system

so that requirements and goals for a product, service or activity will be fulfilled.
What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) refers to

administrative and procedural activities

implemented in a quality system

so that requirements and goals for a product, service or activity will be fulfilled.

“Doing what it says on the tin.”

What is Quality Assurance?

It is the systematic

measurement,

comparison with a standard,

monitoring of processes and

an associated feedback loop

that confers error prevention.

What is Quality Assurance?

• Originated in industry.

• Industrial Revolution.

• Introduced to construction late 1980’s.

ISO 9000

International Organization for Standardisation.

The ISO 9000 family of standards is related to quality management systems.

Designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and
other stakeholders while meeting statutory and regulatory requirements related to
the product.

ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including
eight management principles on which the family of standards is based.
ISO 9000

Principle 1 – Customer focus

Principle 2 – Leadership
Principle 3 – Engagement of people
Principle 4 – Process approach
Principle 5 – System approach to management
Principle 6 – Continual improvement
Principle 7 – Factual approach to decision making
Principle 8 – Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
ISO 9000

Plan Do Check Act

Plan: establish the objectives of the system and its processes and the resources needed
to deliver results in accordance with customers’ requirements and the organisation’s
policies, identify and address risks and opportunities

Do: implement what was planned

Check: monitor and measure processes and the resulting products and services; report
the results
Act: take actions to improve performance
ISO 9000

ISO 9000 sets out 7 steps towards developing and implementing and then
maintaining and improving a QMS:
1. Determining the needs and expectations of customers and other interested parties;

2. Establishing the quality policy and quality objectives of the organisation;

3. Determining the processes and responsibilities necessary to attain the quality objectives;

4. Determining and providing the resources necessary to attain the quality objectives;

5. Establishing and applying methods to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of each
process;

6. Determining means of preventing nonconformities and eliminating their causes;

7. Establishing and applying a process for continual improvement of the QMS.

ISO 9000

Whatever the system, there are self-evident rules to be applied to all documents.
They should:

• be uniquely identifiable;

• show the authority under which they are issued;

• be contemporary and show the date and/or number of the issue;

• demonstrate that they are complete;

• be issued by a person who has the defined authority to ensure compliance.

ISO 9000

All documents should be regularly reviewed and updated

Controlled Documents

Auditing

Non-conformance/ corrective action/ preventive action

ISO 9000 – management reviews

The Standard requires that top management must review all aspects of the quality
system at planned intervals including:
• The effectiveness of audits of the system.

• The performance of suppliers (eg specialist consultants that may have been engaged, and
contractors).

• Review of client feedback and complaints

• The interchange of information, problems and other project related issues, which may be
beneficial to other personnel within the practice.

• A review of the application of the quality system to establish where improvements may be
applied.

• Any new and relevant statutory or regulatory requirements.

• Determine and review CPD and training requirements.

ISO 9000 – quality manager

For good practice and especially for organisations seeking accreditation, senior
management must appoint a member of the management who has responsibility
and authority that includes:
• ensuring that processes needed for the quality management system are established,
implemented and maintained,

• reporting to senior management on the performance of the quality management system

and any need for improvement, and

• ensuring the promotion of awareness of customer requirements throughout the

organisation.

Some of the tasks allotted to the Quality Manager may be delegated to any
appropriate staff. The role of Quality Manager need not be considered a full time
job and the incumbent will inevitably wear a number of other hats.

It must be stressed that quality is the responsibility of staff at all levels.

ISO 9001

• ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the
standard have to fulfil.

• Third party certification bodies provide independent confirmation that

organizations meet the requirements of ISO 9001.

• Over a million organizations worldwide are independently certified, making ISO

9001 one of the most widely used management tools in the world today.
ISO 9001: 2015 contents

1. Scope

2. Normative references

3. Terms and definitions

4. Context of organisation

5. Leadership

6. Planning

7. Support

8. Operation

9. Performance evaluation

10. Improvement
ISO 14001 environmental management

ISO 14001 - a series of international standards on environmental management

“Promote a common approach to environmental management similar to quality

management; to enhance organisations' ability to attain and measure
improvements in environmental performance; and facilitate trade and remove
trade barriers.”
ISO 14001 environmental management

First published 1996 to cover:

• Environmental management systems

• Environmental auditing

• Environmental performance evaluation

• Environmental labelling

• Life-cycle assessment

• Environmental aspects in product standards

ISO 14001 environmental management

The standard is applicable to any organisation that wishes to:

• Implement, maintain and improve an EMS

• Assure itself of its conformance with its own stated environmental policy

• Demonstrate conformance

• Ensure compliance with environmental laws and regulations

• Seek certification of its EMS by an authorised external certification body

• Make a self-determination of conformance

QM for RIBA Chartered Practices

Small practices (up to 10 staff in total)

Required as a minimum to use the RIBA Project Quality Plan (PQP), or equivalent,
on each project, completed to an appropriate level of detail, as determined by the
practice.

Medium practices (11 to 50 staff)

Required to use the full RIBA QM procedures, or equivalent, on all projects and for
office procedures.

Large practices (51+ staff)

Required to have an externally-certified BS EN ISO9001-2008 Quality Management

System in use. This could be based on an externally-certified system developed
from RIBA QM or another externally-certified equivalent system.

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Risk management

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Risk management

What sort of commercial risks might you have to consider as a practicing architect?

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Risk management

Should be addressed for all projects and all sizes of practice

Typical risks

• Client liquidation/ doesn’t pay fees

• Key member of staff leaves

• Workload fluctuations

• Sub-letting work

• Disaster, eg fire, flooding, etc at office

• Errors on a project

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RIBA guide to risk management

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