This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.
The latest edition of the RIBA Plan of WorkCPC2013 is not a contract document. As its introduction explains, it directs readers to various tools and supplementary core documents used by a project team, including documents relating to professional services contracts, schedules of services and project controls, which may or may not be contractual, and to various forms of commonly used building contracts. It does not yet include any reference to the requirements of the CIOB’s Complex Projects Contract 2013 (), which ultimately may require some amendment to be made to it.
The RIBA Plan of Work was first developed in 1963 and, as a fold-out sheet, formed the bedrock of The Handbook of Architectural Practice and Management (RIBA Publications 1967) in the organisational framework for the management of the design and construction of building projects through the traditional design first, build later procurement route. In a simple and understandable matrix, it set out everyone’s participation in the traditional project development route from inception to completion. However, since its creation there have been many changes in the way projects have tended to be procured. In 1963, for example, there was little other than mechanical and electrical services that had much in the way of contractor design, design and build was rare, management contracting was unheard of and the Building Regulations didn’t yet exist.
RIBA have not started with a clean sheet but, for the 2013 Plan of Work, have used the framework from the 2007 version of the RIBA Outline Plan of Work and adapted it to meet the requirements of projects in both traditional and non-traditional methods of procurement to reflect what it refers to as “contemporary design and management techniques” and it embodies the 2012 “BIM Overlay” to the Outline Plan of Work. Although, in not dealing with the processes of collaboration and control required by CPC2013, it does not deal with all. In the 2013 Plan of Work RIBA recognises that the traditional sequential approach cannot be followed with some procurement strategies, which inevitably require a degree of parallel working. This new Plan of Work does at least two things which could not possibly have been achieved with the original. It provides the infrastructure to support collaborative working using BIM and, in its online version, it provides for the possibility of producing a bespoke plan of work for a particular project. A guide to the use of the 2013 Plan of Work is available.
Keith Pickavance is an Executive Consultant at Hill International and an architect with construction management experience. He is the author of ‘Delay and Disruption in Construction Contracts’ and ‘Construction Law and Management’ and a co-author of CPC2013.
