The Realities Only an Active Construction Consultant Knows
I currently work for a construction consulting firm that primarily takes on contracts for public civil engineering projects that aren’t very well known.
Even as a construction expert, I’ve come across articles highlighting various issues and complaints regarding the work produced by construction consultants, but when you learn the reality of the situation, you do catch glimpses of some strange things.
So,As someone who works as a construction consultant, I’d like to write about some of the odd aspects of construction consulting firms from my perspective.
People who don't know or see what's happening on the ground
Since we’re a construction consulting firm, it goes without saying that we have employees who hold the Certified Professional Engineer (CPE) license; however, with the exception of one person in his mid-40s, all of the CPEs at my company are elderly individuals in their 70s and 80s. The other mid-level employees work under the RCCM certification.
Since I only hold an architect’s license, I work within an organizational structure where I report to a Professional Engineer or an RCCM holder who serves as the supervising engineer. While many of the older Professional Engineers work as review engineers, the main issue is thatSurprisingly, many people don't know much about what goes on on the job site....that's the gist of it.
Of course, there are some people who have gained experience in the field and have worked their way up to where they are today, but due to the nature of my company—which involves a lot of work in remote locations—my opportunities to visit job sites are limited. Even when I do go out for site surveys, it’s not uncommon for a one-way drive to take two hours, so (though I realize company circumstances play a major role), considering the expenses, I can’t go out that often.
There are also some people who carry out their work based entirely on unfounded hunches—saying things like “I think it’s probably…” or “It used to be this way”—without even checking the actual situation…
It may just be my company, but in situations like this, we have no choice but to base our design work solely on existing documentation, which leads to discrepancies between the drawings and the actual site when construction begins.The result is what is commonly referred to as a “useless design.”
These days, there is a lot of talk about promoting the adoption of ICT in the construction industry through initiatives like digital transformation (DX), but the reality is that for small and medium-sized enterprises, this still sounds like a distant future.
A boss who has no intention of mentoring junior employees
My company is registered as an architectural firm, but I am not the managing architect. In other words, I have a supervisor who is a licensed architect. Since there are only two of us at the company—my supervisor and I—who hold architectural licenses, whenever there is architecture-related work, it is assigned to one of us.
My boss, a licensed architect, shows no enthusiasm for his work, and most of the projects he’s in charge of are facing deadline extensions. Since our desks are far apart, I don’t know exactly how he works, but because he communicates very little with the local government representatives (or, to be precise, makes no effort to do so), the deliverables often fail to reflect the client’s intentions when it comes time for delivery and inspection, resulting in a cycle of repeated revisions.
In fact, even though they’ve already extended the deadline by half a year, there’s still no sign that the work will be finished—it’s a complete mess.
Since he’s also a senior architect, I sometimes ask him technical questions, but he just keeps saying, “I’ve never done that, so I don’t know.” It actually makes me wonder how he’s managed to keep his job this long—I’m almost impressed. And yet, he always leaves on time as a matter of course… Maybe everyone’s just given up on him.
Issues at Construction Consulting Firms
Since this is based solely on my own experience, I’m sure there are various opinions on the matter, but I feel that the issues with construction consulting firms are as follows.
- Doesn't anticipate problems on-site; is overly biased
- There is a strong tendency to copy and paste from similar past cases
- Failing to communicate proactively with the client
- They tend to leave technical issues they don't understand unresolved and force their past experiences onto others.
Having worked on the client side in the past, I find the rather haphazard approach here quite stressful on a daily basis.
Although this may sound like I’m just venting, I’m not trying to criticize construction consulting firms. There are people who do their jobs properly, and there are companies that handle matters with sincerity.
Speaking from my experience as a client, there have certainly been consulting firms that didn’t get in touch at all and just suddenly showed up with the finished product. I suppose there may be issues with the company itself, but lately I’ve been thinking that, in the end, it might just come down to personal character…
I’d appreciate it if you could share how things are at your company—it would be helpful to know.
