Product development

The RICS New Rules of Measurement Whats afoot?

SMM7 the UK Standard Method of Measurement for Building Works celebrates its 21st birthday in 2009. In reaching adulthood, SMM7 has outlived the longest serving of its six predecessors by more than 10 years. But is it really the vehicle to take building projects through the next two decades? NBS Technical Author, Roland Finch, investigates. There appears to be a general consensus that measurement in construction is in terminal decline. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Although the use of traditional bills of quantities (B/Qs) has reduced significantly over the years, measurement of some kind is still being undertaken throughout the construction industry, probably in greater amounts than ever before. In fact, rather than one B/Q per project, each Tenderer is probably doing their own version, as are the subcontractors for their parts of the work. The difference is that few of them are being done in a standardized way. And the allegation levelled at SMM7 is that it is out of touch; it represents an era when much detail was required to be measured, although there was little discernible effect on final cost of the job. Add to this the fact that there has never been a proper single standardized set of rules that covers all measurement on a project, from cost planning to completion, and it is easier to understand the motivation behind the RICS New Rules of Measurement (NRM).

Following the report, the Group established a steering committee, with the brief to identify and develop Client-focussed common standards of measurement at each level of hierarchy in the construction process. This committee consulted widely within the industry and the result is the New Rules of Measurement. RICS intends to publish the NRM in stages, over the next two years. They will comprise three volumes:

Volume 1: Order of cost estimating and elemental cost planning. This was officially launched on 30 March 2009. It is held to be the first of its kind although BCIS, for example, produce a standard form of cost analysis, there has never been a set of rules for measuring for cost planning. This has been a source of frustration, particularly for clients, where the lack of commonality and consistency between cost plans has made benchmarking between projects difficult.

Volume 2: Procurement This is seen as an alternative to SMM7, rather than an immediate replacement, and is intended to assist those who dont need especially detailed bills of quantities. However, it is recognized that somebody needs to measure the work, as it is a very important tool for both tender evaluation, post contract cost control and variation evaluation. This part is currently under consultation with anticipated publication later in 2009.

The NRM suite will be compatible with stages in both the RIBA Plan of Work and the OGC gateway process. The authors clearly hope it will simplify the measurement process, as well as making it more relevant to todays construction procurement methods. The important thing now is to see whether the construction industry, which is notoriously slow to embrace change, buys into the concept. For further reading, visit www.ribabookshops.com/site/viewtitle. asp?pid=10326 roland.finch@theNBS.com

The RICS QS and Construction Professional Group commissioned a report, Measurement based procurement of buildings (BCIS, May 2003), which came to a number of conclusions. It confirmed that measurement still had an important part to play in the procurement of buildings, but perhaps not surprisingly it found that this measurement was used for different purposes by clients, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.

Volume 3: Whole Life Costing It is intended that this part will allow reliable and trustworthy measurement and evaluation of costs in use probably based on the model contained in ISO 15686-1 Buildings and constructed assets Service life planning. It is anticipated this final document will be published in the summer of 2010.