That Memar magazine has provided the opportunity to address the execution of buildings — alongside introducing examples of architectural designs from Iran and other countries — is no accident, and arises from a plain fact: that there is, in our country, a deep gap between designs and their actual execution.
At a meeting held some time ago at the offices of Memar, the editors raised the necessity of addressing this matter as follows: 'In the country's building activity, execution lags far behind design.' The discussion that followed mainly turned around two important axes:
1 — In today's building activity, architecture is interwoven with other disciplines — including structure, mechanical and electrical services, fire and smoke protection, observance of codes and standards, energy conservation, and intelligent-building systems — and these cannot be separated. The article 'Architecture is Not a Single Discipline' in the previous issue addresses this subject. The Osaka Maritime Museum project of Japan, which was drawn from the Journal1 of ARUP in that issue of Memar, shows that, in introducing a design, alongside architecture, the introduction of the other disciplines is also unavoidable. The interconnection and mutual influence of architecture and the other disciplines of building design and execution — and, of course, various reasons for clarifying this point of view — call for an extended discussion which we hope interested readers will pursue. It may help to bring architectural designs closer to the means of building execution.
2 — 'The deep gap between execution and design' — in fact, the lag of building execution behind design — was the other axis of the discussion. Is execution really far behind design? If this is the case, are its causes to be sought within the limited domain of the building profession? Or do they have wider roots in the present social and economic situation of society? In examining these questions, this article concentrates mainly on building services.
Government buildings
A glance at the construction in Tehran and certain provincial centres shows clearly that one group of buildings is large with a great built area. These buildings are essentially government-owned, or their funds are in some way drawn from the state budget. Although they form only a small part — perhaps less than one per cent of total built area — they take up the principal attention of the professional press. The path of design, execution, hand-over and maintenance of these buildings usually follows the order defined in the publications of the Management and Planning Organisation. Whoever speaks of 'design and execution' usually has this group of buildings in mind. As far as our subject is concerned, here are some of the principal knots in the building process for this group:
1 — The design of the various services of these buildings is usually done in a consulting-engineering office and by engineers with access to the latest books and catalogues. The design engineer tries to bring his design close to the latest achievements of the advanced industrial countries that he sees in those documents. The result of his work is a set of two-dimensional drawings and a bill-of-quantities booklet, with the following problems:
— The systems and equipment specified do not match the realities of our society.
— No technical specifications are given for the systems and equipment.
— The services drawings are not properly coordinated with the architecture and the other disciplines.
— The bill of quantities is a single form for all kinds of buildings, with the result that a great many items are starred (i.e., open-priced).
— Since the consultant's fee is a function of the riyal volume of the work, in many cases an unnecessary rise in this riyal volume affects the choice of systems.
— In services design, codes and standards — including the National Building Regulations — are not observed.
2 — Even with all this, the designer is relatively free, dealing with paper, pencil and computer. But the contractor doing the work has endless limitations and difficulties. The contractor has nothing other than the drawings and the bill-of-quantities booklet to convey the designer's thinking. An experienced architect, speaking of a hospital he had designed, said: 'We design one thing, something else is built, and what is then operated is yet another thing.' As a result, what is built differs greatly not only from today's execution in advanced industrial countries, but even from what was specified in the design and what could mainly be built in the country. To get closer to the reality of execution in this group of buildings, it is useful to point to some of its principal reasons:
— During the work in such sites, the principal plant is usually purchased by the client and handed over to the contractor for installation. The client here is a state organisation or a body connected to the state. This method became common during the war years, and at that time was perhaps unavoidable: with the rapid changes in domestic prices, including the procurement of these items in the contractor's obligations was not feasible, and the ordering and purchase of certain principal items from foreign markets, at the time, required means often beyond the contractor's capacity. The method then continued, and continues to this day. The greatest defect of this method is that the services of a building — especially the mechanical services in large buildings — are an interconnected set of systems that, in operation, must perform a defined task and must, of necessity, have a single responsible party. That party is, in principle, the contractor; but the contractor does not regard himself as responsible for the systems' proper functioning, since he did not procure the principal items, and the fee he receives for installation is at the level of pipefitting and ducting.
Worse still, the client's purchasing officers are usually a number of scattered staff, and at commissioning time it is uncertain that they are still in the same posts; in any case, they are not legally responsible for the working of the equipment. As a result, an interconnected system — for example, the air-conditioning of a large state building — drifts far from the goals set for it. Some part of the building is not warm in winter and not cool in summer. Many of the spaces in such a building, far from offering comfort conditions, even bring harm to occupants' health. Such buildings have been described as 'sick'1.
At least one further factor that has greatly damaged the quality of execution is the visible weakening of contractors over the past two decades. This weakness goes beyond the scientific and technical domain and is plainly visible in the areas of manpower, financial means, and the contractors' decision-making power. The lack of capable, decisive contractors essentially arises from the fact that these contractors are absent from the centres of decision. The decision centres for large buildings are exclusively in the hands of state organisations and authorities whose members are less acquainted with technical points, codes, standards, and current advances. The bulk of the contractor's time and energy is consumed in trying to pass through the various bureaucratic barriers of the decision centres. A capable and reliable contractor is one who can rely on a technical office, experienced and informed manpower, a stock of materials and equipment, sufficient machinery and tools, and financial strength. The absence of these factors has led to the shrinking and weakening of contractors. Although a great scientific and technical potential in the country's young generation is going to waste — owing to the absence of stable and predictable conditions in the country's economic and social situation — the contractor fears recruiting experienced expert manpower, and to fulfil his commitments relies more on temporary, short-term, low-cost staff (the same situation is becoming general among project consultants too). As a result of the strong, continuous influence of these factors, the contractor — who in principle should be responsible for procuring materials and executing the mechanical services of a large state building up to commissioning, hand-over, and proper system operation — in practice does only the pipework and ducting, and at this point prefers that this part of the work too should follow the routine practice of everyday pipefitting and ducting.
At least another factor that greatly affects the falling quality of execution, especially in building services, is the chaos of the market. Building services require thousands of items — components, accessories, and equipment — that must be installed in an interconnected system to perform a defined task in operation. For years, most of these items used to be imported. In advanced industrial countries every factory's product must obtain certification from a credible national centre — for example a fan2 — and have undergone all stages of testing, with its performance3 approved, so that it answers the design's needs. Now only a small number of these items is imported and most of these materials are domestic.
The making of hundreds and thousands of types of components for service systems — even hospital equipment — within the country is, in itself, gladdening, and a hopeful step towards the country's industrialisation. But the process by which these items are presented in shops, and the process by which the contractor (or client) buys them, is very chaotic and disheartening. Components and equipment are seldom tested and certified, and their conformity with standards is rarely accompanied by an approval certificate from a credible national centre. Despite the loud and seductive 'ISO 9000' advertising of many manufacturers, the contractor's purchasing officer (or client's) usually does not have scientific and technical awareness of what he is buying, and the seller does not have correct technical information about what he is offering. The worst manifestation of this market chaos today is to be seen in the production, supply, and use of polymer pipes. These pipes, in various materials and colours, abundantly fill the market, and the buyer usually purchases without attention to or knowledge of the temperature and pressure conditions specified in the design for the use of the system in question, and without knowledge of the manufacturing process of the pipe he is buying or its conformity with the standard (raw materials, manufacturing method, testing method). The seller too is often without proper knowledge of what he is offering. In fact, what is procured and installed differs entirely from what was envisaged by the project designer. As a result, the services installed in large buildings usually do not perform their intended functions, and after a short time, parts of the system (or the whole) quickly wear out and fail.
Even a glance at the points above shows that the expectation that the other important parts of the procurement, execution, hand-over, and operation of services in large buildings — required today in the advanced industrial countries — would be observed is not realistic. Some of these parts are noted:
— Testing, Adjusting and Balancing4: this work, abbreviated TAB, is essentially not done.
— Hand-over5: the hand-over of building services, which is a long technical-legal and complex process, is held in our country in a formal and ceremonial manner.
— Operation and Maintenance6: maintenance of services is, in essence, an engineering activity based on preventive maintenance7. In industrial countries, advanced models for O&M have been designed and organised, and great importance is attached to it. Doing this part of the work leads to the proper working of systems and equipment and the long life of building services in the operational period. In this area — which is, in fact, maintenance engineering8 — no serious work has yet been done, and not even an effective step has been taken to set up specialist maintenance companies and grade them.
— Energy conservation: in the advanced industrial countries, extensive studies have been carried out in this area, and its requirements at the design, execution, and operational stages have been codified and published in standards and codes, and rigorously controlled and observed in practice. But energy conservation in our country's construction has so far remained at the level of seminars, conferences, and the publication of 'Topic 19 of the National Building Regulations', and still has no relation to the lived reality of building activity in the country — even of large state buildings with their consultant designer, supervision body, and graded contractor.
Non-government buildings
The absolute majority of non-government buildings are made up of construction known as basaz-o-befrush (build-and-sell). The design and execution of these buildings is under the control of no credible consulting engineer, no supervision body, no other engineering organisation. To build them, only access to the heated 'permit-form' market is enough. In the design and execution of their services, none of the elementary principles of engineering is observed, and those involved have little awareness even of these principles. The services of these buildings are designed by inexperienced engineers who, in order to obtain the permit, must buy a permit-form; and the one who sells the form is often unaware of its drawings and design.
All these efforts last until the 'permit' is obtained, after which the executor has little to do with the design and drawings, and the work proceeds with the localised, situational decisions of the owner and his ad-hoc contractor. As a result, the services of these buildings are extremely weak, far from technical and engineering principles, and very short-lived. A dissection of the design, execution, maintenance, and operational process of this group of buildings calls for an extended discussion that will not fit within the scope of this writing — we hope to address it on another occasion.
A passing look at what has been said in this article about construction problems in the country, especially in building services, shows that the services of these buildings are not only very far from today's scientific and technical achievements of the world, but also in a very chaotic state which both wastes a great share of the country's wealth and, in many cases, endangers individual, family, and social health. Beyond this, it is plain that these problems are not confined to the engineering community, but have wider roots in the economic, social, and even cultural state of society. One cannot, therefore, expect that simple, quick solutions to remove these problems will help in this discussion or lead to a healing of the construction process.
The list of these questions can be continued:
1 — Is the control of state organisations over construction not enough, and does it need to be more stringent and broader?
2 — For the full observance of the published topics of the 'National Building Regulations', is there an urgent need to set up a system for controlling their enforcement?
3 — Is the problem in the great distance between the municipality and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning?
4 — Is the principal root of construction problems the excessive intervention of state centres?
5 — Is the principal solution to entrust control of construction to civil bodies?
6 — Is one of the important reasons for today's situation in construction the structural weakness of the Engineering Organisations?
7 — Will changes in the 'Engineering and Construction Code' have a practical effect in resolving these problems?
8 — Is the principal cause of the chaos in the materials and equipment market the unawareness of manufacturers and suppliers?
9 — Have competent civil bodies in the field of construction not yet been set up, or are they not present in the decision centres?
Footnotes
1. Sick Buildings 2. FAN 3. Performance 4. Testing, Adjusting, Balancing 5. Commissioning 6. Operation & Maintenance 7. Preventive Maintenance 8. Maintenance Engineering