House of Commons - Public Accounts

Select Committee on Public Accounts Forty-First Report

THE QUALITY OF THE BUILDING

i) Design Development

13. Design work on the Southampton Oceanography Centre did not begin until March 1990, only two months before the target date for approval of the outline. There was thus little time for preliminary design work on alternative schemes. In May 1990 the design team presented to the Project Board a design proposal based on a single concept[15] which the Project Board approved. Users were invited to comment on matters of detail but were not invited to query the concept.[16]

14. In evidence, the Committee asked why alternative designs were not sought. The Council said that, if the project were being done to-day, they would look at alternatives.[17] They thought that their architects should have presented them with alternatives.[18] The design process had involved considerable iteration and discussion with the people who were going to work in the Centre.¹⁶

15. The major influence on the design was the need for flexibility in services to cope with changes in science. Consequently, the design team provided for separate intermediate floors exclusively for the distribution of mechanical and electrical services. These floors provide a high degree of flexibility because they can accommodate the rearrangement of existing services. However they increased the cost of the building by up to £1.5 million.[19]

ii) Cuts in Specification

16. Throughout the briefing and design stages there was pressure to keep within the target budget. This led to a series of cuts and reductions in order to reduce building costs,[20] such as the deletion from the project of a plankton tower, shoreside facilities and a biology store.[21] In making the cuts, the Management Committee were hampered because the relative priorities of the project's objectives had not been previously assigned.[22]

17. The Council considered that, if the project had started with a specified sum of money and the users had been developing a brief against it, the Council would have avoided a fire fighting mode in deciding what to cut to keep within the budget.[23] We asked the Treasury witness whether he saw any merit in building up a gold-plated design only to cut it back later in order to bring it back to the budget. They told us that, as experience had shown that there was often a tendency to over-specify, the process of challenging the users either by the project manager or by the project sponsor was good practice.[24]

18. We asked the Council whether, with hindsight, they believed that they had got the best balance of functions within the Centre. They were confident that, in terms of the core objectives of providing scientific facilities for research and teaching, the Centre had very largely reached its original objective. As to something that could have been done better, it would have been desirable to have a larger lecture theatre.[25]

19. When asked about the criteria they had used in reducing the specification in order to pare back costs, the Council told the Committee that the priority was to enable scientists to carry out their scientific research effectively. For example the science involved in the study of the plankton was being carried out in another way;[26] and it was not the case that there was no capability for taking photographs or for developing an underwater vehicle.[27] The Council had been absolutely rigorous in determining that the scientific capability of the Centre would not be damaged by the cuts.[28] The core scientific objectives had been achieved.[29]

iii) Facilities Provided

20. The Centre provides a research and teaching facility which is unique within the UK.[30] The Council told us that it is a world-class Centre.[31] Its staff undertake physical, biological, chemical and geological research on the oceans and seas and on their boundaries with the air above and the rocks and sediments below. They also design, develop and operate the specialised equipment needed to examine ocean depths. The scope of the Centre's work extends from coastal waters to the deep ocean floors. The building contains teaching space, laboratories, workshops stores and offices for scientists, engineers and administrators; and berthing for research vessels.[32] However, because the brief set out few of the project's objectives in full, it was difficult to assess how far they had been achieved.[33]

21. In March 1997 the Director of the Centre reported that the new building was working very well. In particular the common areas such as the library, lecture theatre and meeting rooms were functioning very successfully and providing the necessary opportunities for interactions among staff.[34] The Council told us the staff considered the Centre to be an extremely good working environment.[35] The Council were confident that the building had the flexibility and durability to serve whatever purpose was required over the next 120 years.[36]

iv) Conclusions

22. We find it disturbing that design work on the Centre started only two months before the target date for approval of the outline. As a result the design period was needlessly compressed and only one single concept emerged. We are concerned that no other options were considered and that the architects did not present the Council with possible alternatives. In any major project involving large sums of public funds, several options should be considered and the prospective users consulted. Had this been done, an alternative method of distributing the services might have been found which would have provided flexibility for the future without any increase to the cost of the building.

23. It is clear from the evidence we took that the Southampton Oceanography Centre provides many facilities of considerable value to the scientific and teaching work that is undertaken there. It is encouraging to learn that it provides a good working environment; and that the Council are confident that it has the flexibility and durability to last for a further 120 years. It is difficult to assess how far the project's initial objectives have been met because so few of them were set out in full at the outset.

24. We note the Council's evidence that they had been rigorous in determining that the Centre's scientific capability was not damaged by the cuts; and that it had very largely reached its core science objectives. It is of course often necessary to adjust the specification of a project in order that its costs may be kept within budget. However, it is important for any cuts to be made by reference to a set of carefully considered priorities that have regard to the main purposes of the project. We are concerned that this was not the case in the building of the Centre, and that the reductions in the specification may have resulted in the exclusion of some facilities that it would have been better to retain.



© Parliamentary copyright 1998	Prepared 17 June 1998