The establishment of consulting-engineering bodies in the 1330s SH (1950s) was a response to the country's need, at that juncture, for such organisations. Engineers in architecture, civil construction, mechanics and electricity — graduated from foreign and domestic universities — were each individually capable of solving engineering problems within their own discipline. But the design of large buildings, with new mechanical equipment and new technical installations, demanded disciplined collective work whose knowledge and skill went beyond the single-disciplinary expertise of any individual member. To be an architect, a structural engineer, a mechanical or an electrical engineer is one thing; to produce and deliver a "project" is quite another.
The preparation of a "project" was a new craft, profession and body of knowledge — a precondition for building by modern methods, which we did not possess and inevitably had to acquire and import from those who did. We did so. Several consulting-engineering firms were founded by engineers who had worked in foreign firms (inside the country or abroad) and had learned the production of a project from beginning to end. Elementary regulations were drawn up so that government departments could enter into contracts with these firms. The founding of these pioneer firms and the codification of the initial regulations enabled other engineers to learn project production from them and, eventually, to set up firms of their own. This current continued until the Revolution. Easy contact with abroad also brought many recent developments in project-production methods into the country.
One thing, however, was missing — the systematic teaching of firm management and the technical and financial management of project production. Although every young graduate learns firm management and project management on the job, without manuals (handbooks), guidebooks, short courses, training workshops, professional-society publications and regular periodic conferences, professional apprenticeship cannot reach the maturity and standard it deserves.
Consulting-engineering firms, beyond being the necessary instruments of project production for any kind of building, are also the indispensable means by which large architectural transformations are realised. Even the most creative architect and the most innovative structural or mechanical engineer cannot translate their new ideas into practice except within the organisational framework of a consulting firm. Each large project, when carried out, brings to light a host of executive achievements which — though in one sense are merely the unfolded parts of an initial general design — cannot come into being without a multi-disciplinary collective work-flow within a firm and under the specific protocols of project production. The creative values realised lie beyond the individual capacity of any single engineer; they are the exclusive product of group work and, of course, of the art of management leadership within the firm.
After the Revolution, until recent years, we did not carry out large projects. When large projects are not undertaken, architecture remains at the level of "petite architecture" — neither mind nor practice grows. A great many public and government buildings — hospitals and universities especially — were of course built across the country, but none counted as a transformation in architecture or engineering. The competitions for the National Library and for the Cultural Academies were the first sign of grappling with large projects, and the construction of the Islamic Heads-of-State Summit Building was the first experience of carrying out a large building and the first test of engineering and managerial capacity in this domain.
In Abbasabad — the worksite and showcase of the large buildings of recent years — and in the National Library building, lies the largest post-Revolution experience of project production and large-building construction. On one hand it shows our capacity to produce large projects and bring new construction and installation technologies to realisation; on the other, it reveals our severe limitation in expanding this capacity to meet the country's wider building needs. The Cultural Academies building — only a few steps from the National Library — and most of the buildings now under construction at Abbasabad are witnesses to this claim.
The Hafezieh Guesthouse, the conference halls of the Export Development Centre, the Esfahan Cinematic Cultural Centre, the Rafsanjan Sports Complex, the Bar Association Building, the Innovator Building and the new building of the Islamic Consultative Assembly — among the best projects of recent years — for all the architectural quality they exhibit, do not in themselves represent a fundamental transformation in the capacity of consulting-engineering firms.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs's choice of well-known and recognised consultants to design some twenty diplomatic missions abroad set in motion a new strand of architectural activity. Carrying out work in foreign countries required collaboration with a foreign consultant and the preparation of project documents to international standards of project production. No report has yet been published on the results of these collaborations between Iranian and foreign consultants in the transfer of new project-production methods — but the contact itself, and the discipline of preparing projects to international standards, is in itself an important transformation.
The competition for the central headquarters of the petroleum industry was another opportunity for cooperation between Iranian and foreign consultants. The use of a foreign consultant in that competition — although it had no clearly defined aim or path — carried the message that even the largest organisations of domestic consulting engineers are not yet adequate to produce the large projects whose construction is being announced one after another. And this at a time when the client side is far weaker organised than the consultant side. The great point of weakness in confronting large projects is therefore on both sides — both the client and the consulting institutions — and both require serious planning to secure the specialised personnel and organisations they need.
Engineering faculties are training engineers at high speed across every discipline required for the design and execution of buildings. But neither the small private offices nor most of the ranked consultants — whose experience and capacity, in practice, are not much greater than those of personal offices — are capable of taking on projects whose scale, whether in the public sector or the private, is far greater than the projects of the past. Seven or eight well-known major-consortium consultants, with good initial backing and the experience gathered in recent years, and their new collaborations with foreign firms, can equip themselves and raise their level. But most of the ranked consultants — without a planned collective transformation, a fundamental revision of methods and organisation, an extension into new sources of engineering and managerial manpower, and the accompanying support of the Management and Planning Organisation — cannot cross this threshold. At the same time the young, talented and zealous forces, both among architects and among structural and mechanical engineers, are demonstrating very high capabilities. Unless they are absorbed into competent organisations as soon as possible — or set up such organisations themselves — their energy and talent will either dissipate in small marginal work or be drawn off into foreign firms.
It seems that the pressure of demand for the execution of large projects has broken the rusty bureaucracy of the Management and Planning Organisation and opened an escape route to foreign consultants — but these decisions may also be very ill-judged. The Management and Planning Organisation should not interfere beyond setting the general policies of the technical and executive system. It must let the seasoned forces of consultants and contractors come together — trusting in the high capacity of the young forces and enlisting their participation — to prepare and carry out a programme that transforms the design and construction management of the large building projects the country needs today.
