| Creating an Effective
Project Team
By Joe Petraus, MS, PE A Loss Prevention Newsletter for
One of the best weapons in your loss prevention arsenal is
the ability to work effectively with other consultants on
the design team. Fundamental to that is an understanding of
the challenges that face each discipline. A case in point
is the geotechnical consultant. Joe Petraus, MS, PE, a partner
with EDP Consultants of Kirtland, Ohio, and a member of XL Design Professional’s
Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants Advisory Board
(GECAB), reminds us of the risks of looking upon professional
consulting services as commodities.
Architects and engineers are always under pressure to keep
project costs down. But sometimes they can be penny-wise and
pound-foolish. For example, history tells us that problems
related to subsurface conditions are primary sources of litigation.
Nevertheless, some design professionals seek out the least
costly geotechnical services, forgetting that engaging professional
services based on lowest price can expose them to increased
liability and increased project costs. Or they may predetermine
a geotech’s workscope, which can limit his or her effectiveness.
They may also forgo a geotechnical consultant’s important
construction monitoring services, choosing instead a testing
laboratory that will often work with minimal input from the
geotechnical engineer. Perhaps they will specify that the
contractor hire a testing laboratory. Prime consultants need
to keep in mind that — just as with other design services
— quality geotechnical services can save many times
their fee and lower the risks of claims on a project.
Cheaper Isn’t Better
John Ruskin (1819-1900) perhaps said it best. "It’s
unwise to pay too much, but it’s even worse to pay too
little. When you pay too much you lose a little money —
that is all. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything,
because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing
it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits
paying a little and getting a lot — it can’t be
done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add
something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better."
There seems to be a growing trend on the part of some prime
consultants and owners to treat specialty services for which
they contract (or recommend that owners contract for) —
geotechnical consulting, construction monitoring, civil design
or geo-environmental services — as mere commodities.
Although architects and engineers argue passionately that
their own services should be obtained through qualifications-based
selection (QBS), many of these same firms hire subconsultants
strictly on price. It makes little sense. Primes and owners
expect the services of high-quality subconsultants while continuing
to bid them out just as they would a roofer or a plumber.
Yet quality-conscious subconsultants find it next to impossible
to compete when price is the only criteria. Perhaps primes
and owners do not recognize the risks of contracting with
"low bidder" consultants, who are not paid enough
to do a thorough job, either during the design or construction
phase.
The Risks in Specifying a Geotechnical Workscope
Many primes, when soliciting proposals for geotechnical services,
consider it necessary to specify the workscope in order to
"keep a level playing field," thus allowing price
to be the determining criteria in consultant selection. This
is a common practice, although neither architects nor structural
engineers are really in the best position to determine where
and how deep to drill borings. Yet by specifying a field exploration
workscope, the prime consultant may be substantially increasing
his or her liability exposure. For example, consider a site
with complex geology or possibly old fill from previous construction.
If not for the pressure of competitive bidding, a geotech
might suggest more comprehensive boring coverage, which could
expose underground conditions easily missed by fewer borings.
Learning of such subsurface conditions early in the design
process could avoid unanticipated and unbudgeted costs later.
When such overruns occur, nobody is happy. Delays occur, earthwork
and founda-tion costs increase, budgets become strained and
owners look to the design team for answers as to why this
happened.
The Importance of Construction Monitoring
Construction monitoring is a critical part of the geotechnical
exploration. It is the only opportunity that the geotech has
to determine whether his or her assumptions about site geology,
as judged by the borings, were correct. Fifty years ago, Karl
Terzaghi, the father of soil mechanics, called it the Observational
Method, and what he said then is still true today. He stated
that with the uncertainties that exist in the underground,
the exploration is not complete until the engineer has a chance
to see the subsurface conditions exposed during construction.
What this means — and what prime consultants must help
their clients understand — is that geotechnical exploration
reports are not all-encompassing. This is because geotechs:
- Test only a few locations at certain depth intervals
- Are lucky if they can test 1/1,000,000th of impacted ground
volume
- In the development of their recommendations, must assume
uniformity between borings — which seldom exists.
Geotechs must have the opportunity to observe conditions
exposed by excavation, to determine if changes are required
and how those changes should be made. Simply put, there is
no one else as qualified to provide these services.
Out of the Loop
Clearly, the geotechnical engineer should conduct construction
observation and testing. But this sometimes presents a problem,
since not all geotechnical engineering firms provide construction-monitoring
services. Some skilled and experienced geotechnical engineering
firms have made a business decision to not provide comprehensive
construction monitoring services. Thus, their projects must
rely instead on the services of an independent testing laboratory.
The use of testing laboratories is effective in geotechnical
engineering only if the geotech is kept in the informational
loop during construction. For a variety of reasons, however,
this often isn’t done.
In order for construction monitoring to work properly, there
must be close communication between the geotech engineer and
field technician. But this rarely occurs when they work for
different and possibly competing companies. In my 25-plus
years of experience, I have yet to receive a call from a testing
laboratory’s field technician asking for clarification
or direction. Yet our own technicians, who are well trained
and experienced, routinely find it necessary to ask for direction
or clarification from our project engineer. The truth is,
when technicians are engaged apart from the geotech, they
generally work on their own, without input from the engineer
of record. This often creates situations in which recommendations
can be misinterpreted or at least not executed to the full
extent anticipated by the geotech. With the engineer of record
out of the informational loop, there is often a reluctance
to call him or her when a question in the field needs to be
answered. If contacted, the geotech may be reluctant to discuss
a particular concept in detail, knowing that the monitoring
of that work will be performed by a field representative he
or she does not know. Or the geotech may decline involvement,
deferring instead to the person in responsible charge of the
field technician’s work. This can, however, result in
the misinterpretation of recommendations, with little opportunity
to discuss fine points.
The prime design consultant must recognize that hiring a
testing laboratory to monitor construction progress is not
the same as having ongoing input from the project’s
geotechnical engineer of record. As the writer of the report,
he or she is in the best position to provide proper guidance
during the field activities, acting through the field technician.
In Summary, a Few Recommendations:
- Select the geotechnical subconsultant through qualifications-based
selection. Price, although a consideration, should never
be the overriding factor.
- If you’re the prime design professional, don’t
predetermine the geotech’s scope of services.
- Remember that construction monitoring is an extension
of the geotech’s professional services.
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