ABSTRACT
The heritage of today’s procurement and design processes is at the heart of the whole life value question, and in some ways points to why and where we went wrong. The drive for ever more cost-effective solutions pushes performance to the limits, and sometimes beyond. It is time to push back a little in some circumstances to achieve something better than ‘just compliant’, ‘just ok’ or ‘just legal’. Procurement was once a simple affair. Thought of as merely sourcing of materials, it
was simple, local, and above all transparent and manageable. As the ability of industry and the transport system to handle materials at an economic cost developed, so did the ability to provide more complex materials to sites at any location.
