Mr. Phelim Devine:

Mr. Gunning gave the example of the facade. The contractor is completely responsible for the facade and the whole envelope of the building. They are responsible for the stone, glass, all the components and the backing walls that hold it together because it is a very specialist design, carried out by two companies based in Turkey. They are also responsible for many of the mechanical and electrical components within the hospital. Their specialist subcontractors, Mercury Engineering and Jones Engineering, are responsible for the fire alarm design, the medical gas system and the steam system. These are very specialist and it is normal within the industry that the contractor would take on certain design responsibility.

The design team is responsible for the design intent, this is the specification and this is what I want. The contractor then has to respond to that. EU procurement precludes us from specifying any products and systems so BAM and their specialists come with their products and systems. They have to be brought together and that is done within a collaborative process. That causes drawings to be updated because if you take the facade, the design intent might state that mullion is somewhere between 200 mm and 250 mm wide, whereas they might say they have designed it now and it is 230 mm wide. That means the whole setting out of that facade has to be tweaked or the setting out of the slab has to be tweaked so all the drawings for this slab have to be updated. That is a design change and that happens on walls and ceilings. All the co-ordination of the mechanical and electrical services requires certain holes to go into walls, which requires an update to the drawings. That is why the employer has issued 23,500 drawings on the job since the guaranteed maximum price contract, GMP, was signed in January 2019.

Conversely, BAM and its specialists have issued 25,500 drawings and documents to the design team setting out all their design and co-ordination responsibilities. They have actually issued more drawings than we have and they all have to be brought together. It is a collaborative process and it happens on every public works project. As I said before, this hospital is ten times the size of a normal, large hospital project, so there are big numbers.