Ferry and Brandon's Cost Planning of Buildings

Richard Kirkham

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781119968627
• Edition: 9
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118887585
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Construction & Architectural Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This new edition of the classic quantity surveying textbook retains its basic structure but has been thoroughly updated to reflect recent changes in the industry, especially in procurement.

Although over the last 20 years a number of new procurement methods have evolved and become adopted, the recession has seen many clients revert to established traditional methods of procurement so the fundamentals of cost planning still apply - and should not be ignored.

The first edition of this leading textbook was published in 1964 and it continues to provide a comprehensive introduction to the practice and procedures of cost planning in the procurement of buildings.

This 9^th edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect changes that have occurred in the UK construction industry in the past six years. Whilst retaining its core structure of the three-phase cost planning process originally developed by Ferry and Brandon, the text provides a thorough grounding in contemporary issues including procurement innovation, whole life cycle costing and modelling techniques.

Designed to support the core cost planning studies covered by students reading for degrees in quantity surveying and construction management, it provides a platform for understanding the fundamental importance of effective cost planning practice.

The principals of elemental cost planning are covered from both pre- and post- contract perspectives; the role of effective briefing and client/stakeholder engagement as best practice is also reinforced in this text. 

This new edition:  

• Addresses The Soft Landings Framework (a new govt. initiative, especially for schools) to make buildings perform radically better and much more sustainably. Puts focus on actual performance in use at brief stage, during design and construction, and especially before and after handover.
• Covers recent changes in procurement, especially under the NEC and PFI
• Provides more on PPP and long-term maintenance issues 
• Offers an improved companion website with tutorial worksheets for lecturers
  and Interactive spreadsheets for students, e.g. development appraisal models; lifecycle costing models

Phase III
Cost Planning and Control at Production and Operational Stages

Chapter 15
Planning and Managing Project Resources and Costs

15.1 Introduction

Once the cost plan has been approved by the client and the working drawings are available, we need to consider the resources required to realise the project.

Developers normally need to involve themselves with construction professionals in order to get their building work undertaken. The building industry and the civil engineering industry together are often referred to as the construction industry, and many firms (certainly most of the large ones) operate in both sectors, even though their staff and organisations will probably be separate.

Smaller contractors often specialise in either civil or building work (such as groundwork in the case of the former).

It is, however, very difficult to separate the two halves of the construction industry statistically, because of the overlap which occurs. For instance, the construction of the foundations of very large buildings could almost be classed as civil engineering (and you will find it so referenced in your library, if this operates the Dewey Decimal Classification or UDC system), and there may be quite a lot of building work on some civil engineering projects.

A further subdivision of the building industry is into housing and other work, many main contractors having divisions which specialise in one or the other (Taylor Woodrow, for example, has a housing division called Bryant Homes).

The building industry in the United Kingdom has changed considerably over the past 40 years, in two ways. First, most general building contractors now undertake only a small proportion of their turnover using their own directly employed operatives, the majority of their work being outsourced to specialist or trade subcontractors. The general contractor's role has changed from being primarily a provider of resources into being a provider of management and financial services. Very often, the supervisory and administrative staff and a handful of labourers will constitute the entire site workforce of the general contractor.

In the second case, between the end of World War II and the late 1970s the building industry was geared largely to serving central and local government departments as its direct clients. Because of changes in the country's economic structure, this is no longer the case. In much of the country, and particularly in the south-east, the industry has had to accustom itself to the different norms of private enterprise clients, more interested in results than in procedures.

15.2 Nature of the construction industry

The UK construction industry accounts for a significant proportion of the economic output of the UK economy. As of 2013, the industry, in statistics can be summarise...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Authors
• Contributors to the Ninth Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Ninth Edition
• Acknowledgements
• Nomenclature and Acronyms
• About the companion website
• Introduction
• Phase I: Cost Planning at the Briefing Stage
• Phase II: Cost Planning at the Design Stage
• Phase III: Cost Planning and Control at Production and Operational Stages
• Appendix A
• Index
• Advertisement
• End User License Agreement