The C3 Alliance is a group of manufacturers, contractors and developers that aims to boost productivity and value on construction projects through early collaboration.
By bringing all those involved in a building together on day one, C3 hopes to influence design and procurement decisions to create schemes that deliver higher returns on investment and better outcomes for those using the buildings.
The C3 Alliance, so called because its objective is to focus on Construction, Choice and Collaboration, is part of the Allneeds Group (owner of IBC) and is led by Managing Director Tony Ball, formerly Commercial Director for Berkeley Homes.
Mark Farmer, author of Modernise or Die: Time to decide the industry’s future, a review of the UK construction labour model, was one of those to speak to the 120-plus people attending the event. One of Farmer’s recommendations in his damning 2016 report was that the industry should adopt a more collaborative, assembly-led approach to constructing buildings.
Traditional lowest-price-wins procurement models lead to wasteful redesign, interface issues and re-work as elements of a building are specified, substituted and defined in an ad-hoc, piecemeal fashion as a project advances.
Component-based design removes these inefficiencies and sits far more comfortably in a BIM or digital construction environment because a development’s actual components can be plugged into the model from day one.
“Our goal is to enable early engagement which will benefit all, by bringing developers, contractors, manufacturers and investors together as early in the process as possible,” says Ball. “It’s not about buying cheaper, it’s about value and buying better.”
“The C3 Alliance is championing one of our main goals: to be involved much earlier in the process so that we can contribute to true value engineering,” says Steve Durdant-Hollamby, Divisional Managing Director, Polypipe Civils & Infrastructure, which is a founding member of the Alliance.
“Value engineering should not be about cutting cost in the latter stages of a project, it should be about delivering more with less through bringing together competent people early enough,” Durdant-Hollamby adds.
> Modernise or Die: Farmer Review of the UK Construction Labour Model
