5 MiNUTES WITH
PAUL ALLEN
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In Building Magazine’s ‘5 minutes with …’ column, Paul Allen, K2CM Director and head of cost management, explains the importance of challenging clients, the problems with construction procurement and why he did not join the SAS
Why did you choose construction as a career?
An appointment with a career’s advisor. I was asked to work through a bank of questions which presented a list of only three options, those being a footwear designer, quantity surveyor or the SAS. Once the careers advisor had established the role of the quantity surveyor, I decided that was the most appealing of the options and the careers advisor put me in touch with the Chartered Surveyors Training Trust.
In hindsight, I think my wife would have preferred me to have pursued a career in footwear design. I recently watched Abstract: The Art of Design with Tinker Hatfield which also got me thinking on what could have been, but equally I could not help but think that both I and the SAS had a lucky escape when watching SAS: Who Dares Wins!
What are you most proud of in your career to date?
Learning to work with challenging clients. It is the demands of those clients that have pushed us to redefine the role and develop innovative and progressive propositions which now help our clients to beat the market. In working to beat the market, we have developed a number of approaches which include cost-led design an approach we initially expected designers to resist, but which has been surprisingly welcome on the basis the approach negates the need for product destroying value engineering.
What has been the biggest challenge of your career to date?
My biggest challenge is right here and now – spreading word of how we can help clients to beat the market by up to 15%. This is against the backdrop of forecasters and speculators accepting and advising their clients to brace themselves for double digit inflation in 2022, so in real terms by as much as up to 30%!
Sceptics may think this is a marketing play, but to them, I say put us to work on a gain share arrangement.
If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?
I would change how construction work is procured. Design and Build is a busted flush. Fine in its purest sense but abused by the industry and in that sense not fit for the future of construction. We are client advocates and if we accept only £65p in every £1 spent in construction is realised in the finished product, I think construction management, or a form of integrated procurement, is the best way to optimise the product – and get at the transactional costs of construction, reducing preliminaries, overheads, fees and eliminating risks.
Name your favourite building in the world?
I am interested in the integrity of a building’s construction. Engineering is not something that you just use to hold things up or to service a space. It is something that can contribute to the architecture, so I am an enthusiastic fan of inside-out buildings or high-tech architecture. Favourites include the Leadenhall Building (Cheesegrater), the Millennium Dome, Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd’s Building
I am mindful that all those buildings were in fact designed by the office of Richard Rogers. Perhaps it is the pop of colour, structure and movement, with the help of enlightened clients and some brilliant and imaginative engineers putting concept before calculation.