XVII.
THE ANTI-SOCIAL CONTRACT.
One of the troubles in obtaining good buildings to-day, as everyone who has tried in the capacity either as owner, architect or builder must realise, lies firstly in the system of asking for competing tenders from builders, and secondly in tying down the lowest tenderer to carry out the work under a strict and binding legal contract. We look on the builder as a contractor and call him such. His chief function in modern eyes is to undertake to do a carefully specified piece of building for a fixed sum. His profit is not specified and he is free to make as much as he likes out of his operations as long as he carries out the specified work in the specified way. The real difficulty is that by no manner of means yet devised can the work be specified beforehand with absolute accuracy, nor has any means yet been discovered by which, in all the multifarious processes of building, it can be ascertained whether what has been specified has been actually carried out. We may make drawings as complete and thorough as is humanly possible; we may write long specifications and have the number of bricks, and the amount of all other material and labour to be used, assessed beforehand by a quantity surveyor, yet quality of material and workmanship enters so largely into every stage that no one can definitely say at the end that the contract has been carried out to the letter. Further, we may appoint clerks-of-work and other watch-dogs to follow the contractor at every step on the building itself, or rather to attempt it, and yet we may be fooled by work made off the site and brought to it, or by work done on the job and covered up before the architect or any of his agents, including the clerk-of-works, can see it.
The contract system of building means that directly the contract is signed, the architect, representing the interests of his client, and the contractor are there watching one another like rival detectives in a divorce case. The contractor to obtain the contract has probably put in too low a price. Everywhere in material and labour he is anxious to save except where he can find, as in practice he always can, excuse in the specifications and drawings for extras, when he is equally anxious to spend unnecessary money. I do not want to suggest that the majority of builders are not honest. Without any dishonesty in carrying out a contract, which he knows will be strictly enforced against him, the builder uses his wits to make the best living he can. If he has done a good deal of work for the same architect he may take a long view and say “I had better not do such and such a thing, because if discovered this particular architect will not ask me to tender for his work again.” I admit this often happens and to a certain extent the rigours of the contract system are thereby tempered. But who, outside a lunatic asylum, under such a system and under modern conditions, would expect good craftsmanship to flourish and good sound building to arise? That it does flourish now and then, and that good sound buildings are put up occasionally is a miracle, which I, as an architect, can only put down to some strange innate goodness in the breasts of many builders. I am afraid this goodness is chiefly to be found in those who are styled old-fashioned, in firms that have a tradition and in craftsmen who love their work, whatever they may in a monetary sense make from it.
But why should this state of affairs exist? Why should the builder be on one side and the architect on the other? Why should they not be colleagues from first to last, each helping the other with his experience? The answer is that this happy state of affairs can only take place to the benefit of everyone concerned, and particularly of the building owner, if the ordinary contract based on cut-throat tendering is abolished. By far the most satisfactory work it has been my lot to carry out, as well as the most enjoyable, has been that done under a different system—a system of actual cost plus a fixed profit. In this, to begin with, a careful estimate is made by independent quantity surveyors of the cost of the proposed work, and both the builder and the architect’s remuneration is fixed from the outset. If the building costs more than the estimate, neither profits by the excess. Of course the architect’s commission of six per cent. is so small that it cannot be considered any temptation to him to increase the cost of the building for the sake of it. Still it is more satisfactory, as an example to everyone, and more pleasant for the owner, to know exactly what he is going to pay each person.
What is the result? Everyone starts on the building operations as friends and helpers. In place of antagonistic individual effort you have team work. The larger experience of materials, which the average builder who works for many architects possesses, is placed at the architect’s and consequently at the client’s disposal. If he suggests red deal instead of yellow for a certain piece of work the architect has no reason to suppose he has some hidden motive behind his suggestion. Under the present system the architect is wont to jump to the conclusion that the yellow must be the better, because the builder has suggested the red, and, if the yellow is in the contract, he will insist on it till all is blue, and if the contractor makes a loss, he will take care to make it good elsewhere. And after all, the red might have been better for the particular position. We all know, however, even as free-traders, that the desire to buy in the cheapest market has many qualifications. Among them is human nature, and there is a great deal of human nature in building, and especially in good building. If when we set out to build we want real value for our money, as well as buildings which will be of real value to the country when we have done with them, the sooner we abolish the ordinary form of building contract the better. That is why I have called it the Anti-Social Contract.