The cost of poorly assembled data to the construction industry

In terms of the recent CN Award for NBS Create, the judges highlighted one statistic "£2bn - the cost of rework every year". So how does the use of a good master specification system, that helps coordinates the data across the construction project team, help to significantly reduce this risk?

£2bn - the cost of rework every year

Some insightful statistics are provided at the "NBS Educator" area of the NBS website - http://www.thenbs.com/training/educator/specification/specProblems/specProblems02.asp - extracts from which are below...

When specification-based disputes go to court - the reasons as a percentage are:

• ‘Or equal’ specifications: 25%.
  Jobs have ground to a halt over arguments about just what is ‘equal’ to the proprietary specification, and whose decision this is.
• Conflict between drawings and specifications: 12%.
  Remains a major issue.
• Ambiguity: 12%
• Defective specifications, e.g. buildability: 12%.
• Inaccurate technical data: 12%.
• Product performance deficiencies: 8%

In terms of conflict between drawings and specifications, this is responsible for 19% of change orders.

Looking at various surveys across the world...

• http://ascelibrary.org/action/showAbstract?page=76&volume=18&issue=2&journalCode=jmenea shows rework costs 4.4% of construction costs and takes 7.1% of time, in Sweden
• http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/1730/1/01347434.pdf  rework costs of 5% in Australia, for example – range is 3% to 23% of contract value overall.
• http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/pdf/rethinking%20construction/rethinking_construction_report.pdf - the key UK document I think, for targets for improvement – Egan said up to 30% of construction cost is down to rework in the UK
• http://www.civil.hku.hk/cicid/3_events/48/papers/5.pdf quotes 10% of cost on rework – see Table 1

Construction contributed ca £65 billion to UK economy in 2004 – orders totalled ca £34 billion in 2009. 5% (for rework) of these figures is £3.25 billion and £1.7 billion respectively.

So, around £2 billion.

Gelder

Thanks to NBS Technical Author John Gelder for many of these statistics and the original articles on the NBS Educator site.