Some insights on how to carry out effective design management by the client (III): Providing manufacturer information to the design firm in a timely manner
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This post was last edited by Clauspolunit on 2009-10-14 at 16:56. When designing projects, design firms often encounter situations where the design work cannot proceed properly due to the owner’s failure to provide the necessary ordering information in a timely manner. Often, the clients are slow at the beginning but rush things at the end; they don’t hurry to place orders at first, but then rush to make purchases in order to provide materials to the design firm, and after that they press the firm to produce the designs as quickly as possible. This is also one of the reasons for the decline in design quality.
This post was last edited by ms3210 on 2009-10-13 at 17:04. This problem is likely due to a lack of communication and coordination between the property owner and the design firm. Such issues exist during the design phase, but they are not major problems. Additionally, I suggest that the poster make the title of the post more user-friendly, so as to receive more satisfactory responses!
Equipment orders must be finalized before construction begins; placing orders after that will inevitably affect the project schedule.
This post was last edited by ms3210 on 2009-10-13 17:07. We place orders entirely based on the models provided by the design institute—there is no such issue. Originally, the design institute wasn’t in charge of it. We talked about it before finalizing it.
During the project, it is common to encounter situations where the funding is insufficient. Is it that the construction entity doesn’t want to hold a tender, or is it due to poor financial conditions? When the financial situation improves, the project owner becomes more urgent in requesting the drawings. Time waits for no one, and money doesn’t wait for projects~
I don’t quite agree with this. All I saw was the design institute responsible for contacting the manufacturers to request the return of the materials. The owner is mainly responsible for organizing and presiding over the meetings to discuss the technical attachments. Taking the projects I have been involved in as an example, it is often we who urge the client to quickly gather several manufacturers of certain types of instruments so that they can negotiate with the design institute to finalize the technical attachments. Only after signing and once the bid opening takes place can it be determined which company to request the documents from, so that they can be provided to the piping team.
Repeated, please have the moderator delete this reply.
In the case of projects managed by a design institute as the general contractor, it is of course the design institute that contacts the manufacturers to obtain the necessary materials. However, for projects where the owner is responsible for the procurement themselves, it is the owner who must get in touch with the manufacturers.
In my opinion, the drawings produced by design institutes often do not result in a decline in quality. Rather, to ensure quality, much more material than expected is used. What about the cost?
The above statement is debatable – the model provided by the design institute? Was it the design institute that designated the manufacturer? The latter is explicitly prohibited; it also falls under the latter category if the design institute indirectly specifies a manufacturer by referring to a particular model. Therefore, typically the design institute only specifies certain technical parameters, with the purchasing party responsible for the procurement (it may be the owner who makes the purchase, or if it is an EPC project, the design institute handles the procurement itself). But it is certain that, with regard to the design requirements, it is the purchaser’s responsibility to provide the designer with relevant information from the manufacturer in a timely manner, rather than thinking that everything is fine once the procurement is completed according to the design, as mentioned above. For example, in the case of centralized air conditioning systems proposed by the HVAC department, this department specifies the power requirements for cooling, heating, ventilation, etc.; the purchasing party then determines the winning vendor through bidding or price comparison processes. The winning vendor will gradually provide the design team with various requirements regarding the execution of subsequent orders, such as the load capacity of the equipment, its wiring, and the structural openings required for it. Only after receiving these conditions will the design institute proceed to further develop the design for the relevant fields such as structure, plumbing, architecture, and so on. For some large-scale units and complete sets of equipment, such problems are even more apparent. Therefore, the interface relationships between design and procurement, design and construction, as well as procurement and construction are quite important, with the design-procurement interface being particularly critical. This is also the root cause of the initial development of the EPC model. Of course, for some simple civil projects, as well as projects such as roads and bridges, similar problems do not exist or are less common.