Have you been dumped on?

Alan Millin.

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I recently had the pleasure of facilitating a LEED related training session attended by architects, engineers and facilities managers. We had an engaging session on materials and the ongoing operational sustainability of new facilities.

It’s always interesting to get views on a particular topic from several perspectives and this occasion didn’t disappoint. The general consensus was that Dubai, with its relentless development drive, had become a dumping ground for end-of-line products.

Contractors and developers, under pressure to meet tight deadlines, found themselves grateful to suppliers who could deliver on time. But did this leave the door open for these suppliers to offload old stock quickly?

We are careful to specify the technical parameters of equipment but do we include any way of assuring ourselves, or our clients, that the product we are selecting won’t be discontinued in 12 months time? When you place a bulk order for fan-coil units for instance, is the first question you ask the supplier related to whether the product is actually still in production? Probably not…

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Have you ever asked about the continuity of a particular product? The future availability of spares? Have you ever actively sought out end-of-line products to meet a deadline or simply to cut costs? And if you have, would you admit it anyway?

Even lighting presents problems. It’s often not easy to get the right replacement lamp with the original colour temperature, resulting in either strange new lighting effects or the replacement of more lamps than is really necessary.

The problem doesn’t just lie with electro-mechanical equipment either. Trying to get a replacement toilet seat can be something of an ordeal too. I asked one contractor if he could replace a toilet seat in an apartment and I knew what the answer was as soon as he took the sharp intake of breath.

“These are old”, he told me, “but if you’re lucky you might find something in a warehouse in Fujeirah”. The whole apartment block was only handed over around one year ago!

With the slow-down in development and cancellation of projects, perhaps we now have more time to think about the sustainability of what we build. When we consider life-cycle costs we often base our assessment of design life of systems on published data.

This is fine, as long as we can maintain the asset throughout the anticipated design life. But what if we can’t do that? If we can’t get spares maybe we will need to replace a unit before its design life has actually expired.

Our forward-funding assessments will be wrong and we will need more money sooner than we anticipated. Of course we can always place the burden on the end-user by means of extra charges, but that won’t win us any friends will it?

So what can we do to prevent being dumped on in the future? Certainly we should consider life-cycle costing before we make our decisions. Simply basing our decisions on first cost, as has clearly been the case in so many developments, serves no-one well. Okay, the company that does the deal might make a few quick dirhams, but will surely get a reputation for low quality work.

Perhaps the time has come to start quizzing our suppliers a little harder. The design life of a product is only a part of the information we need. Maybe we also need to ask what the suppliers future plans are for that product, so that we will have the information we need to feed our decision-making.

If we consider chillers for example, the hottest topic of conversation is often about the refrigerant used and its future availability. But will the vendor voluntarily tell us whether the model we are considering purchasing is due to be phased out just after we place our order?
If we don’t ask, we don’t get…

About Alan Millin
Alan Millin is a chartered engineer and Leed accredited professional. He is an independent consultant, coach and trainer based in Dubai. He has led the consultancy mission of two major Dubai facilities management companies. He spends his spare time correcting defects in his Dubai home and can be contacted at: akmillin@hvacandr.com.