|
Flogging a dead parrot
Here’s a trip down memory lane … back to the early
seventies and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But what could a
hilarious, abusive, surreal sketch show possibly have to do with
the modern construction industry?
“As teams go, the building team is not at
all like a cricket XI. More like a batsman, a goalkeeper, a
pole-vaulter and a water polo player”
I blame Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was
the sketch about the “right room for an argument” that did it
for me. After I watched it, I started going to an argument
clinic. All these years later I still attend. Actually I
alternate. One week it is the clinic, the next it is pilates.
It’s all to do with the Olympics. The memo on
my desk today asks “Does TB want to apply to be on the Olympic
building dispute adjudicator’s panel?” Hell, this is the very
thing I’ve been training for all these years. I have the vest, I
have the physique (thanks to the pilates) and, by heck, I am
gunning for a gold medal.
I expect you’re wondering what the argument
clinic is. With Michael Palin and John Cleese it was £1 for a
five-minute argument. For me it was £8 for a course of 10.
Couldn’t resist. Mind you, the first tutor wasn’t quite up to
snuff.
Too conciliatory.
Then there was an awful mix-up with the
second bloke. He launched into a tirade, claiming that I was a
vacuous, toffee nosed dispute-o-maniac and ever so much more
besides. But all was well. Instead of the argument room, I’d
walked into the room where you go to get insulted. I actually
suspect that an awful lot of quantity surveyors and one or two
solicitors kept going to the abuse room, but I don’t want to get
into an argument with you over that.
Anyway, the Olympics is gearing up for the
odd dispute or two. But what happened to all that talk of
teamwork and partnering and loving each other?
Well, let me take you to one of my favourite
events in the seventies. It was an international conference of
architects, heaven help me. The architect Denys Hinton was going
on about “the building team”. He said: “As teams go it really is
rather peculiar – not at all like a cricket XI. More like a
scratch bunch consisting of one batsman, one goalkeeper, a
pole-vaulter and a water polo player.
“They are usually brought together for a
single enterprise – each member has different objectives,
different training and technique and different rules. The
relationship is unsuitable, even unreliable, with very little
cohesion and no loyalty to a common end beyond that of coming
through unscathed.” Beautiful. Just as true today, too, 30 years
on.
As to how many attending the clinic went on
to the room where you go to get hit on the head is a fascinating
conundrum. There must have been quite a few. More then went into
the room where you shoot yourself in the foot. Laugh, we did …
until we cried.
Anyway, the upshot was that design-and-build
became oh so fashionable. The Hit on the Head and Shoot in the
Foot brigade insisted on requiring the liability for design and
build to be taken by sub-sub-subcontractors. The bloke doing all
the choosing and designing and putteruppering is the bloke down
the hole with a shovel.
Gawping down the hole are those who went to
Monty Python’s abuse room. And out of the hole is supposed to
rise up a great Olympic Stadium. The footings will be designed
and built by the dumper driver and his mate. Do you want an
argument about all that?
Let’s have Olympic medals for dispute
gymnastics. It will be all too easy to award the medal for the
outfit with the biggest dispute. No, no let’s have a pre-Olympic
gold medal. That goes to the person who fathoms out how to run
the “Let’s avoid an argument room”.
It might even be that the architects and
engineers (I doff my cap to the RIBA and the Institution of
Civil Engineers) to take charge of the “what shall be built” and
the “how” and the “why” and the “where” and even the “who”. But
please don’t bother with the “when”. Leave that to the builders.
The reason is that we adjudicators are hoping
to compete for the extensions of time gold medal. Let’s just see
who makes a dispute about completing the works by
13 August 2012. I am up for that appointment. Meanwhile, it’s
pilates one week, the argument clinic, the next.
Let the games begin … on 27 July 2012!
Readers are invited to forward recent
judgments for reporting in this column (with full
acknowledgement) to: Tony Bingham, 3 Paper Buildings, Temple,
London EC4Y 7EU. DX: 37164 Biggleswade
Top
|
