The project manager is usually the first person charged with the responsibility of delivering the project’s objectives. Normally the project manager will either be an internal employee or external appointment and, in all cases, he or she should be knowledgeable of the financial and operational criteria of the hospitality industry and not just property construction. If the project manager is an external appointment, the same criteria should be utilized. In deter-mining the consultants to be employed, the first consideration is The design team
117 ● ● ● ● ●
the nature and scope of the project, and these generally fall into the following categories (Table 7.1):
•
Soft refurbishment•
Soft and hard refurbishment•
Full refurbishment•
Repositioning•
Repositioning and extension•
Building use conversion•
New build.Different projects require different skills and the manner and form of contract used for their implementation will all influence the number and type of consultants utilized. For example, a soft refurbishment normally involves the replacement of curtains or drapes, bedspreads, upholstery coverings and wall decorations.
This type of refurbishment will often be internally funded and dealt with by the company’s in-house interior designers and implemented by the maintenance team or local interior decorators
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Figure 7.2
The normal structure of the client team
Operations Finance Development Sales Marketing Tech services
CEO
CONCEPT
BRIEF
PROJECT APPRAISAL
IMPLEMENT
IN HOUSE CLIENT PROJECT MANAGER
LINE MANAGERS
or suppliers. A repositioning and extension project, however, will be much more complex involving obtaining permits or local and statutory approvals, external finance, party wall negotiations, pro-vision of utilities, complete replacement of the building services infrastructure and major construction works. In the case of the latter we can envisage that the range and skills of the consultants will be extensive. However, the knowledgeable project manager will, before defining the range of consultants and services required, reflect and discuss the method of procurement and con-struction relevant to the cost, quality and time attributes of the project brief. For example, if time is less critical than cost and qual-ity, then there may be justification for seeking to ensure that the project is fully designed and costed before works are commenced.
On the other hand, if time and cost are more critical than quality then the detail of the design is not so crucial. The first example would require a comprehensive design team providing a full range of services to detail extensively and specify all the elements of the project information for supply and construction, whereas in the second the requirement would be to secure a fixed price and completion date normally allowing the contractor/supplier greater freedom to determine the specification of the elements.
The design team
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Construction Content External consultant
Soft refurbishment Soft furnishings Interior designer
Bedroom and public areas Carpets Planning supervisor
Floor and wall finishes Cost consultant*
Artwork
Hard refurbishment Soft furnishings Interior designer Bedroom and public areas Furniture M&E services engineer
Floor and wall finishes Architect or building surveyor
Lighting Cost consultant
Artwork Planning supervisor
Bathrooms Project manager*
Minor building work Building permits
New build, repositioning All interior elements Project manager or enlargement Exterior building fabric Interior designer Bedroom, public areas and New build areas Architect
back of house facilities Landscaping M&E services engineer Branding/signage Structural engineer Building permits Cost consultant
Planning supervisor Specialist consultant**
*Optional consultants
**Specialist consultants used for issues such as planning, lighting, environmental, traffic, studies
Table 7.1
Specialist consultants used on various development options
Chapters 8 and 9 consider these issues in greater detail, but clients invariably seek the best in terms of cost, quality and time.
These are not unreasonable aspirations, as development is gener-ally undertaken in a competitive environment with declining resources, and this requires a focus on attaining value for money.
This includes applying the requisite design resources as the pro-curement of these can equate to 12–15% of the overall project cost.
Another area becoming more relevant to determining the selec-tion of design skills and services is the changing nature of the construction industry from skill based to factory manufactured
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Illustration 7.1
Carlton Hotel, Edinburgh: a refurbished hotel (Courtesy of Paramount Hotels)
(i)
(ii)
based. Historically, bathrooms in hotel projects were part of the architect’s design scope. However, this element of the product has evolved from the architect undertaking the planning with decorative input by the interior designer to one where now the interior designer generally does the detail planning and design and produces the detail design drawings and specifications.
Considering the range of different room types and configurations that can be involved in a refurbishment this can be an extensive and time consuming exercise, nevertheless, while the client may include and pay the interior designer for doing this work, it is still quite common for the construction cost of this element to be included in the total value of works used to calculate the percentage fee charged by the architect. Similarly, it is not unknown on a new build project wherein the bathrooms are procured and installed as a pre-manufactured pod for both architect and interior designer to receive the full fee for this element even though one party only will prepare a greatly reduced set of detailed drawings and information.
The latter example applies to more and more building elements and components and, in certain highly regulated countries such as Germany, where such products require national certification, manufacturers’ control of the marketplace is such that variances no matter how desirable for aesthetic reasons are not financially viable.
Admittedly, the architect or designer will still be responsible for the coordination and integration of such pre-manufactured elements in the overall building design and construction but that is a dif-ferent service element covered separately in any good agreement.
Other areas to be considered in evaluating the project requirements and determining the design team resources to be applied include:
Planning applications. Where these involve monuments or listed buildings or development in sensitive areas, the use of a The design team
121 ● ● ● ● ● Illustration 7.1
(Continued) (iii)
specialist planning consultant in the early stages, before the appoint-ment of other teams can save time and resources to secure agree-ment in principle for the permissible developagree-ment. In the USA, consultation with a land agent can attain the same results.
Cost. Sensibly utilized in the preliminary stages of a project’s viability stages for establishing benchmark costs, cost consultants do just that, establish a project’s likely outturn cost based on indus-try benchmark information. This is often confused with the cost of a specially designed property and can lead to projects starting on an erroneous basis.
Unrealistic timescales. A common error driven by naivety or unrealistic aspirations at the outset, time and resources are applied to defining the brief but not the time to realize the objective realis-tically. Similarly, time is expended on detail design production information without thought to the time required or remaining to procure and construct the specified elements. Alternatively, skill based elements will be incorporated into fast track projects where the time is not available to realize them.
Resources. Clients will resource the project internally to realize it to the implementation stage and then fail to allocate adequate resource to manage the delivery. Consultants’ and contractors’
skill sets, resources and current workload will not be reviewed or analysed to see if they are adequate.
Quality and complexity. Is the project complex and requiring a high degree of quality in specific areas? The input of professional skills in a limited service hotel is far less than a quality resort, as should be the method and systems of procurement. Does the provi-sion of building services require a full mechanical and electrical design service or would a performance specification suffice?
Definitions. Do all the parties understand the content of FF&E and OS&E? (see glossary of terms for explanations). These are probably some of the most misinterpreted elements of a project cost estimate and ones that lead to most cases of cost overruns or omissions on hospitality projects. Similarly in Europe there is a tendency to define quality in terms of star ratings even though there is no European standard for hotel quality ratings and those that do exist nationally are inadequate in terms of definition for use in any contractual way.
International variants. As consultants practising in most English speaking nations or those that historically formed part of the British Empire will have a similar background in training and basis in the scope of services and of terms of engagement they publish, there is a wide variety in the detail of the definitions worldwide.
Those engaging consultants are advised to research the local defin-itions and systems before making assumptions about the mean-ing of the commonality of the terminology utilized.
Professionalism. Professional status, methods, character, or standards in a modern world where everyone from a sewage worker (not to demean their contribution to society) to a physician
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The design team
123 ● ● ● ● ● Illustration 7.2
Elysium Hotel & Resort, Paphos, Cyprus (Courtesy Scott Brownrigg)
(i)
(ii)
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Illustration 7.2
(Continued) (iv)
is a professional, surviving in a very competitive marketplace, the term has lost much of its meaning and standing in society. Most professional bodies write their own standards of professional practice and control the training, qualification and monitor com-pliance of standards of practice of their membership. Enforcement of standards is as difficult for them as is that of most hotel fran-chisers or franchisees, so perhaps the old motto of ‘buyer beware, seller not fair’ is becoming more applicable to our selection of the professional consultant. Personal references, even though they take time and energy, are still the most valued way of selecting those that you will be entrusting to advise you on spending large amounts of your or your company’s capital funds.
Experience. Some would argue that the scribbles of a young child are as creative as those of our renowned modern artists and, irrespective of the validity of such a view, determining the creative skills one is seeking to procure is different to the technical skills needed to deliver a complex construction development. Many examples exist of separating the two in attaining the requisite skills and undoubtedly there can be no substitute for experience and a proven track record in hospitality development that is so sensitive to attaining a balance in cost, time and quality for realizing a return on investment. Experience, it is well to remember, is vested in the individual and rarely in the corporate body, so select and secure the individual and not just the corporate body.
The above is by no means an exhaustive list of the items to be considered in establishing the requirements for the skill and ser-vice levels of the design team members on any given project, but hopefully provides sufficient insight to demonstrate the need to investigate carefully the terms and provisions required for any relevant project in the particular location.