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Foreign countries are already much further ahead
What sounds almost too good to be true is already a reality in other countries such as the USA, the UK and Australia. Construction law expert Dr Wolfgang Breyer from Stuttgart has intensively studied the contracts on which international projects are based - and wants to develop a German contract model based on their example. "On German construction sites, things are still done as they were 1,000 years ago," says Breyer. "Everyone plans and builds largely independently. But to make a project a success, we need a common platform." It's called a multi-party contract. *** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
Breyer and Kämpf have the same vision. This is why they launched the team building initiative at the end of 2016 - they have since found numerous well-known partners, including the clients BMW, DB Netz, Fraport, Bayer, the planning companies Drees & Sommer and Albert Speer as well as the construction companies Ed. Züblin, Hochtief and Porr. Their goal: to develop a new type of project management model that makes the dream of co-operation instead of confrontation on the construction site a reality.
The basic elements of this model are the multi-party contract and the project planning tool Building Information Modelling (BIM). Whether this works is now being tested in two pilot projects. One of them is a congress hotel in Hamburg's HafenCity. It is due to open in 2023. The client is ECE. Kämpf is right in the middle of it (Together we are strong, page 72).
"Sometimes we think: What we're doing is totally reckless," he says. This is because there is complete transparency within the project team: during the planning phase, planners and construction companies must disclose their costs and calculations and the client must disclose his budget. "Nobody has ever done that before." So it's an experiment. But transparency is necessary in order to be able to calculate a realistic price for the planned hotel. Ultimately, everyone benefits from this. Because the better the so-called target price corresponds to the costs ultimately incurred, the more profit all those involved in the construction can divide among themselves.
The joint drafting of the multi-party agreement is also an experiment. "When I saw the contract for the first time, I made my usual comments and sent it back to Dr Breyer," says Kämpf. But that's not how it works in the new partnership model. "I learnt that Dr Breyer is not our lawyer who looks after our interests vis-à-vis the other contractual partners. Instead, he advises us as a team and everyone has a say in the drafting of the contract," says Kämpf. Ultimately, the contract should reflect the economic consensus of all partners. It is due to be signed at the end of January.
The contract will stipulate that the client will no longer have sole control of the construction. Instead, there will be a project management team consisting of one representative from each partner. The committee will follow the consensus principle. "If the project management team decides that the hotel should have plastic windows instead of aluminium windows because the plastic windows are particularly cheap at the moment and therefore more profit is made for everyone, the client must bow to the decision," explains Kämpf. Or: He uses the option of the builder's order and imposes the aluminium windows, which are more expensive. In this case, however, he alone must bear the additional costs.
Planning is done with the help of BIM. That makes sense. After all, the planning tool is also designed to ensure that everyone involved in the project works with a common model from the outset, so that the plans of all trades are optimally coordinated - and a water sprinkler is not suddenly sitting on the ceiling exactly where a window should actually open. After all, every mistake reduces the team's profit. The team also decides which of the BIM standards currently available on the market to use. Not the client.
„Wir haben über viele Jahre gelernt, auf dem Bau konfrontativ zu arbeiten“, sagt Breyer. „Nun muss ein Umdenken stattfinden in Richtung Teamarbeit.“ Eine sorgfältige Auswahl der entsprechenden Partner ist dabei besonders wichtig. Der Unterschied zum herkömmlichen Modell ist hier, dass der Bauherr nicht nach dem Angebotspreis, sondern allein nach Kompetenz auswählt. In Australien verbringen manche Teams zunächst drei Tage im Outback – und erst, wenn sie sich auf Herz und Nieren geprüft haben, unterschreiben sie den Mehrparteienvertrag. Denn: Vertrauen und Sympathie sind wichtig, schließlich ist die neue Zusammenarbeit eine große Herausforderung für alle Beteiligten. Aber: „Nicht jeder kann ein solches Vertragswerk bewältigen“, so Breyer. Die Strukturen sind sehr komplex. Deshalb eignen sich die Mehrparteienverträge vor allem für komplexe Projekte.
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Read the full article here: JUVE Issue 2018/12 - Bauen_mit_Vertrauen.
