In the front lines

Ben Woods.
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Unrealistic expectations also tend to colour a client’s cost expectations, said Ramachandran. Clients continually demand the very highest quality, but at the lowest possible cost, which signifies a whole new juggling act for the contractor. “They want the best quality but, at the end of the day, they want it at the cheapest price. The two don’t go together. You just cannot get the highest quality for the lowest price,” he said.

As a result, some contractors are left with little choice but to cut corners. “Not all, but some contractors have to sacrifice on quality, or else they will land up making a loss. Some consultants may not even find out but, at the end of the day, you might not be able to see it but the structure is then weak,” Rama-chandran continued.

According to Saeed, these unrealistic expectations can’t only be attributed to a lack of awareness. “Most designers know about the constraints we face, but they don’t always care,” he said. “Sometimes the developer is pushing them. The developer wants the job to be done so he can make money out of it. He has invested a significant amount of money and he wants his hotel or his shopping centre working so he can start making that money back.”

That’s not to say that the contractor is always the innocent party. In some cases, Ramachandran admitted, an absence of quality is a simple case of unscrupulous or unprofessional contractors trying to boost profits. “We cannot only blame interior designers,” he insisted. “There are places where the contractors try to play, where they try to deviate from the specs to save money.”

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Some elements of the design are more easily manipulated than others. “Fabric is a place where they will play around a lot. The consultant will specify a certain fabric, with a metre price of AED500, for example. The job is awarded with this fabric. Immediately, the contractor will cut a piece of the sample and go to India, China or Pakistan and duplicate this fabric at a price you can’t even imagine,” said Ramachandran.

Growing competition should quash this tendency, as will current market conditions. “Competition has gotten stronger in terms of numbers and we have seen quite a few international companies coming in, so the quality is starting to improve. The clients have more choice, so if you are not up to standard, it’s a case where you are not going to survive, especially with the way that the market is slowing down somewhat,”  Woods predicted.

In terms of hardship, companies will invariably demand more bang for their buck. And with limited budgets on their hands, the last thing they will want is shoddy, short-term solutions.

“I think if companies are going to spend the money they are going to spend it wisely, and that’s going to be the key – making sure they get value for money and quality, and that they don’t have to redo things in a couple of years time,” Woods maintained.

 “I think this will be a challenging time for people, but I think the clever designers and the clever contractors will come out of it and you will see very strong companies at the end of this. The weaker people in the market have probably had their time.”

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