The Manchester Lecture

By Richard Barnes BSc (Hons) MSc FRICS FCIArb

On 17 January 2019, the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (ICES) and CIArb hosted an inaugural event, The Manchester Lecture, at Manchester Airport Marriott Hotel.

The theme of the event was Planes, Trains and Automobiles with a specific focus on construction law, contracts, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and collaboration within infrastructure projects.

The welcome address was provided by Richard Barnes, Chair of the CIArb North West Branch, with talks by Tony Bingham, who provided an insight into the best procurement system he had ever seen, followed by John Riches who gave an interesting talk on 'What I love about NEC4', which provided an interesting and reasoned rationale of some of the issues with the NEC form of contract.

That was then followed by Mark Wheeler who provided a review of the DAB provision in the new NEC4 form of contract, which led on to an excellent talk by the NEC gurus, Patrick Waterhouse and Rob Gerrard, who provided an entire overview of the NEC4 dispute resolution provisions.

The incoming Vice President of ICES, Stephen Slessor, presented a review of digital construction and the use of the BIM protocol, his talk concluding with a review of the current case law with a view as to how to overcome the relevant legal barriers.

The final talk of the day was provided by Professor Jason Underwood with a talk titled Collaborating towards a Digital Built Environment Transforming the Perceived Norms. This talk provided a review of the industry, the need for improvement and the UK government’s commitment to improvement. Jason introduced the studies which determined that the transformation was mainly about sociology and that true collaboration is based upon trust, which, according to Rousseau et al (1998), is a ‘psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another’. He introduced the audience to emotional intelligence (EI), interrelationships between the generations, their behaviours, and how different generations relate in the workplace.

The event was closed by Ian Cowling, President of the ICES, who as a Commercial Director concluded that budgets were not big enough!

The day provided an excellent example of collaboration between the two institutions and it is hoped that this and similar initiatives will be run again, not only in the North West but around the globe.