Robert Merry, is an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years. He also acts as an expert witness. Here he presents his view of the stone industry this month.

So here it is, merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun.

Look to the future now

it’s only just beguuuuuuuuuun!

Thanks Noddy. How’s the nuts?

Looking back over the year, I can’t say 2013 will be remembered with any great fondness or that it was much fun, except perhaps for CE Marking. And I am sure you have all embraced the new legislation with open arms. No?

There is a future – but it may or may not be BIM (Building Information Modelling). I wrote about a course I attended in a previous article and I was pleased to read Tony Bingham wrote along similar lines recently in Building magazine. He called it “risk shifting”.

I thought that was a very accurate description.

Instead of sending you all the drawings for every trade in every room, like they do now, so that you can’t say “I don’t know” or “I didn’t receive it”, BIM is a supposedly benign attempt to ‘share information’ for the general good of the project

on-line. In reality this means you, as the sub-contractor, are obliged to check everyone else’s bits fit with your bits using a wonderful 21st century information-sharing platform.

It simply shifts the responsibility (risk) for making it all fit together from the ‘professional’ team (architect, engineer) to the contractor, who will of course pass the golden chalice of responsibility to us, the

sub-contractors.

Wo betide the stone contractor who hasn’t used the ‘clash detection’ procedure to investigate the relationship between the stone, the plumbing behind it and the wall build-up behind that.

It seems the cover-all statement “fix to a suitably prepared surface” is dead, or at least on life support.

You might need to arm your site teams with iPads and androids to cope.

There is a strong possibility that BIM will fail miserably simply because the man or woman actually building the building just won’t have the time or the money to consult the iPad before they fix the stone on the wall or floor or pavement or frame.

Back to Tony Bingham. Again, he put it so succinctly when he said: “Write the script before you go on stage”. In other words, pay the professionals to sort out the building before it gets built.

Mind you: they don’t do that now, do they?

What with 120 day payment terms stealthily creeping their way into contracting as well, it might be time to move on, as many have, to supply-only or supply-and-install-directly-to-the-client.

One customer, one or two invoices, possibly a deposit up front and good old fashioned trust and customer service. No need for ‘augmented reality asset visualisation’ (more BIM speak).

One of my favourite holiday activities at this time of year is to go to a church. I sing carols (poorly) and try to cut back the thicket of anxieties that have grown inside my head over the year as I seek some solace and rest in beautiful surroundings.

I am not religious but the sanctity of a holy place with its reverence to a higher power is cathartic. To stare at centuries old stone and stained-glass windows that shift not with the times calms my soul.

And not a computer-generated thought in my head.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and you find the time to ‘stand and stare’ at something beautiful and real. Or at least to read Leisure by William Henry Davies.

Ironically, its available online at all good search engines.

Have fun.

Robert Merry, MCIOB, ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He is also an expert witness in disputes regarding stone and stone contracts. Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 99762.