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Consulting engineers are increasingly stepping into the role of project managers on major capital projects involving Information and Communications Technology (ICT), playing an oversight role to ensure that all professionals and contractors collaborate effectively, says Electrical Engineering (EES) managing director Bradley Hemphill.
EES, working with global multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy firm WSP, is active in the design, management and system integration aspects of two of the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadia and, on their own, with two major transport hubs.
“Increasingly we see consulting engineers stepping up to the plate to ensure delivery to professional standards,” says Hemphill.
“South Africa’s engineering fraternity is stretched for skills. Those that we have are world class but the pressure they’re under sometimes means that they narrow their focus to only those aspects of a project that directly involve them. There is a concern that some aspects of integration between complementary engineering disciplines may be overlooked.”
Hemphill believes that consulting engineers, often seen by developers as an unnecessary expense, must be brought on board to, at best, engineer the systems but, at the very least, co-ordinate and project manage the integration of engineering systems.
“There must be someone who has oversight of all the components and systems to enable management of different suppliers and service providers, many of whom are direct or via third parties. Only someone with the relevant experience and qualifications will be able to do this and, increasingly, that is falling to consulting engineering firms.
“We have saved some clients millions of rands because we have shouldered the risk of complications arising through inadequate oversight. Our experience on major construction projects, and the knowledge we bring, helped identify potential problems and, by being proactive in addressing them, we averted crises that may have caused costly delays.”
Lack of oversight by an integrator can lead to additional capital expenditure after completion date because some services slipped off the radar as they were not the main focus and beyond scope.
In most large infrastructure projects the client usually deals with an ICT engineer, a life-safety engineer - who is often the electrical engineer and a Building Automation Systems (BAS) engineer, who is usually the mechanical engineer. Each gives preference to his main responsibility. Areas of overlap, or tasks outside the strict parameters of their profession, are usually afterthoughts.
“In our experience of working in multi-professional teams there is always heated debate about who takes responsibility for tasks that cut across disciplines. For example, which of the engineers is going to take responsibility for implementing a structured cabling system that is required by many other disciplines?
“Inevitably none of the professionals on the project will want their fees reduced so none is {mospagebreak} to forego any parts within their budget without the reduction in responsibility.”
Hemphill says this often means that only the most basic communications infrastructure—for example, only the network cable—is installed. Often the IT and the telephony are designed as separate networks as they are the responsibility of different engineers.
“This means unnecessary expense. With convergence these can essentially be the same physical network and be logically separate with their own equipment if IPT (IP Telephony) is not a present requirement.
“A fully integrated structured cabling system would not only save installation and implementation costs at the construction stage, but would give better return on investment in the future as it would be able to support leading edge technologies as they were needed.
“Formalised consultation with all the engineering teams and third party stakeholders facilitates better synchronisation of activities and pools professional knowledge and significantly provides a better asset, reduction in capex and reduction in opex.” |
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