STUDY OF MERITS AND DEMERITS OF APPOINTING SAME DESIGN CONSULTANT AS SUPERVISION CONSULTANT IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The construction project consulting services is very important to the project lifecycle. When a project sponsor or client selects the project implementation mode and the contract type, they analyze the very important questions, i.e. who is responsible for the design and construction supervision of the project? How to arrange the design work and the supervision work? Should the design work and the supervision work be carried out by a single consulting firm having the required qualification and capacity? Whether the company can provide services for both the design and site supervision for the project? Should design services and construction supervision services be delivered by the separate entities? Consulting engineering services are defined as technology-based intellectual services of advisory, supervisory, or implementation nature provided by consultants who may be individual experts or consulting firms. Different methods for carrying out selection of consultants has been documented in the literature and by PPRA and FIDIC. Such methods include Quality based selection (QBS), Quality and cost based selection (QCBS), least cost selection (LCS), Single source selection, and Fixed budget selection. This thesis presents a questionnaire based study of merits and demerits of appointing a same design consultant as supervision consultant in the construction industry in Pakistan. Based on the literature review a questionnaire was designed to collect data for this study. The checklist format was adopted for the development of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was comprised of five sections of the project phases including project initiating phase, project planning and design phase, project execution phase, project monitoring and control phase, and project closing phase. The questionnaire was distributed to engineers and architects for their responses who used to work with different firms registered with the Pakistan Engineering Council. Response of 98 valid questionnaires was analyzed by using MS Excel and SPSS-19.