The construction phase in Spain: direction, control and tracking

Execution is governed by the duality already presented in the article on the building agents: the works director resolves the design questions the works raise, validates their adaptations and answers for the built work being the designed building; the execution director verifies materials and material execution and values economically what is built. In daily practice, this means scheduled site visits, instructions noted in the site order book and a monthly flow of checking and signing culminating in the certification. The fine mechanics of both roles are developed in the article on works direction and execution direction.

The works' quality control is organised from the control programme, which plans what is checked, with which tests and at what frequencies: product reception with its markings and certificates, material testing with concrete as the classic protagonist, and execution checks on the critical units. Accredited laboratories and control entities run the tests; the execution direction interprets results and decides. The operating rule presiding over the system is simple: everything that will end up hidden is checked before being covered, because the cost of verifying is negligible compared with that of discovering late. The complete system, with its cost and its responsible parties, is analysed in the article on quality control on site.

Every month, the executed works are measured, valued at the contract rates and certified. The certification is the economic heart of the phase: it fixes what the developer pays, records real progress and surfaces deviations while they can still be remedied. Around it orbit the modifications and the new rates, the two routes through which the contract budget adapts to the reality of the works. The monthly mechanics and their good practices are developed in the article on certifications and cost tracking, with the documentary detail of the milestones in the one on the site minutes, from the setting-out minutes that open the clock to the completion minutes that close it.

Three rules condense the economics of the construction phase. First: the works do not create economic problems, they reveal them; almost every serious deviation originates in the design or the contract, and the construction phase only determines how long it takes to surface and how much it costs to resolve. Second: monthly information is worth money; a rigorous certification and an honest progress curve allow timely correction, while the job that goes well until it suddenly goes badly is, almost always, a poorly measured job. Third: documentation is the currency of the end; minutes, orders, tests and certifications are the materials from which the final settlement and, in the worst case, the lawsuit are built.

The first is the under-resourced site direction: scarce visits and weak documentary control are paid for in quality and in the settlement. The frequency of visits is agreed in the appointment contract.

The second is certifying by estimate instead of by real measurement, the classic origin of the conflictive settlement. The measurement is taken on site and checked against the bill of quantities.

The third is executing changes without a written order or an agreed price, leaving for the end a pocket of works without contractual cover. The order and the price are documented before execution.

The fourth is neglecting the phase's documentary closure: handover and settlement, covered in the closing branch, are prepared throughout the works, not in their last week. The closing file is built month by month with the certificates.