Agree entirely Chris, we do need a level playing field where quality is once again the key and not simply price - especially when people are out there buying work to keep things ticking over! We lost one recently where our keen estimate was three times the cheapest quote, and we were the next lowest out of the five bidders! In the end, especially if there is something odd about a site, quality nearly always pays you back much more than any extra costs that may be involved. This is true in geotechnical and geo-environmental terms and the competent people in both of these industries know it and can usually provide graphic examples of where the cheap option went horribly wrong....
Both buying jobs and reducing supervision are indeed very worrying trends as they are ultimately unsustainable and bad for our industry as a whole. I remember my old boss in the 90's downturn when I started saying; 5 minutes thought will save you an hours grief and £1000 on your investigation will save £10,000 of lawyers... Sad to say nothing has probably changed and if only we could get this across to the people actually commissioning works, I think as an industry we would be a lot more appreciated. So I fully agree, this is something the trade and interest groups need to take on board and try to come up with a stand on. It is often said that we learn more from failure than success but whenever I see presentations, they are usually only about our success. Now in terms of PR I can see why this is but perhaps what we need is industry bodies to make clients aware of why it is not a good idea to only rely on price? I hope the new BS goes some way to helping there as one intention during the update was to try and provide a more level field to judge quality by.
In regards to Christiaan's point, who is looking out for the potential asbestos if the rubble came from demolition of 60's and 70's buildings? Who is keeping an eye on the metals to see if they are recoverable or going to affect the results? Who is looking at how the ground reacts as you investigate? I could go on, but I hope you get my point. There certainly are competent trustworthy drillers out there, no question, but ultimately we are responsible for both them and for the results and conclusions we come up with. If people feel they are competent enough, then fair play to you. I can see a case for reducing supervision on certain sites, but I would personally and professionally rather see what is actually going on before sticking my company's PI on it.... Also, if your drillers find something odd, how do you spot it and how do you deal with it, after all if you do have to go back to site or generate standing time for the drillers, where do you recover that money from? Adding monies to cheap bills often causes greater resentment with clients than knowing up-front what it will really cost. I do get a little tired of people whining that we as an industry keep adding unexpected costs and how the final bill is inevitably more than they expected. We do ourselves no favours at all by underestimating or cutting corners to win jobs.
Chris Swainston
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