New British Standard - BS 8534 Construction Procurement

After more than a year of work, coordinated by Constructing Excellence, the
draft for public comment is finally available for the new British Standard on Construction Procurement. The full title is "BS 8534 Construction procurement policies, strategies and procedures – Code of practice". This is designed to complement the recently published ISO 10845 on construction procurement, which focuses more on the procedures of tendering and selection. The British Standard is intended to provide an approach for developing a strategic procurement framework, taking advantage of the opportunity to codify and develop the many recipes for good construction practice that have emerged in recent years.

Here is an extract from the foreword: "In May 2006 a strategic workshop was held to establish what drives value in the construction industry. It and a subsequent series of specialist workshops were sponsored by the then Department of Trade and Industry and its successor, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, under the heading “Rethinking Standards in Construction” and organized by BSI and Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment. The main conclusion from the “Infrastructure” workshop was that there was definite potential for a new standard on procurement, provided it used the Office of Government Commerce process as a baseline."

Now is your chance to get involved! The Draft for Public Comment is available for you to download from the BSI website, at http://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/679. You will need to register on this site and choose a username and password, because the BS secretariat would like to know who is commenting, and they may want to get back to people for clarification.

Please, take the time to engage in this public consultation, because this new standard may soon be shaping the way that construction projects are organized!

British Standard on Construction Procurement

Today we had another meeting in London of a BSI Committee which is developing a new standard for construction procurement. The group is organized by Construction Excellence and has met quite a few times since the work started last year. After several meetings, we are now all familiar with each others' foibles and it is very easy to work together. There is representation from across the industry, although with an industry so diverse and complex, no group like this can ever be fully representative. But with a group of experienced people, we are touching a lot of diverse concerns about how to go about the process of construction procurement. Interestingly, this is taking place at the same time as the International Standards Organization is drafting an eight volume standard on construction procurement. The first part of the ISO is currently in draft form and out for consultation until end of April, so when I got back to my office I notified a few thousand people in our field about this, through a couple of mailing lists. I am hoping that this will generate some discussion and feedback, but there is a niggling doubt in my mind that a lot of people will not prioritise this or, perhaps, even see the point of commenting. I am keen to get as many people to comment on this Draft International Standard as I can, so if you have in interest in construction procurement, contact me and I can let you know how to get hold of the draft and comment on it.