• Public sector clients should engage appropriately qualified individuals or organisations with the necessary professional construction expertise to undertake on their behalf an appropriate level of ongoing inspection of the construction of their buildings. This is in order to identify and report defective work to the client and to ensure proper rectification of same.
• Depending on the nature of the project, this inspection role, at the level at which the defects in the Edinburgh PPP1 schools occurred, is traditionally undertaken by a combination of resident architects, resident engineers and Clerks of Works, the use of whom has dramatically reduced over recent years, yet the essential role they played does not appear to have been effectively provided for by alternative arrangements within the forms of procurement currently in vogue.
• Clients need to reappraise this gap in the assurance processes which has been allowed to develop.