By Bruce G. Matthews
Special to Ontario Construction News
What are you buying when procuring engineering or architecture services? It’s not the report, plan, or drawing, that you receive at the end. That’s just the deliverable. What you’re really contracting for is the knowledge, skill, and judgment of the design professionals. You’re buying their intellect, gained through extensive education, training and experience, to be applied to your specific needs and challenges.
Procuring the intellect of designers on major projects is unlike procuring other services and nothing like procuring goods. Infrastructure projects have competing challenges of timeliness, fiscal responsibility, and quality/innovation, all while trying to meet a defined societal need. Problems with project delivery have created a separate, overarching consideration: the desire for certainty – certainty about cost, schedule, and quality. Certainty is negatively correlated to risk. Certainty is maximized when risk is minimized.
Risk management is a well-understood concept. ISO 31000 details a risk…
