title: Management of building services. Procurement for highly serviced healthcare facilities.
abstract: The question of whether design and build is the best procurement system is hard to tell as other procurement alternatives (main-contractor and principal services contractor coupled with project management team, and construct management method plus good building team) can also give satisfactory results. Besides, it is also known that there is no standard solution or best buy amongst procurement systems. Indeed, there is no single method of procurement which can be suitable for every project for all time. It is also accepted that the choice and use of an inappropriate procurement system is not the only reason for inefficient project management, people and experience are far more important than strategy. Coordination of building services has a direct bearing on the success of a hospital project. Services must be fully integrated and coordinated. One thing is clear, as far as building services coordination is concerned, the traditional procurement system is not conducive to effect coordination process, however, the integrated nature of D&B has relieved all the burdens on the client's design team, and, from the face of this procurement path, all coordination problems that the client would normally encounter from the traditional method will no longer exist. Of course, the technical and managerial problems in relation to coordination still exist but they would all be passed to the contractor side. To protect the contractor's interest, all coordination problems would still have to be managed and controlled by D&B contractor and his specialist contractors expeditiously. Indeed, if design is not fully integrated, and construction and services are not completely coordinated, no matter how integrated is the team, D&B method will not work. To sum up, the author's discussions can be summarized as follows: Project success can be enhanced by engendering a team spirit and a high degree of cooperation between project participants. This can be achieved by the use of non-traditional procurement systems. Building services and hospital engineering systems must be properly coordinated at both design and installation stages. Coordination must be seen as both technical and managerial issues. A professional building team can manage the complex issues of services coordination. But it is known that an integrated building team can give better result. D&B is not a panacea, other procurement paths with adequate project management can provide a better alternative than either the traditional or the design and build system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Building Services Engineering Faculty of Construction and Land Use, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
authors.forename: K C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Lam
mesh_terms: D003284:Contract Services / Q000592:standards; D006723:Hong Kong; D006749:Hospital Design and Construction; D008284:Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D011682:Purchasing, Hospital / Q000379:methods*