By Anthony Dunams, PE, CVS – Editor, Value World
Summer heat is picking up and I hope all are able to enjoy family and friends as most locations across the globe are dealing effectively with COVID and allowing people to reconnect with family that they may have not seen for 12 months or so. Please take the time, if you can, to reconnect and enjoy your family.
In the news recently is the grief, despair and anguish with the collapse of the Surfside, Florida, USA building. As value practitioners we all should be aware of this and implications of such a tragedy. Buildings just failing without an outside trigger (earthquake, hurricane, fire, terrorism, etc.) is quite unheard of, especially in the United States. This harkens to the fact for years ASCE and other organizations have highlighted the blight of US infrastructure and grading US infrastructure at a C minus. It is time to reinvigorate and improve infrastructure across the globe.
All of us as VM practitioners may have reviewed and evaluated projects like this Surfside building and just like the Grenfell Tower project in West London – our insight and review of projects is an important and relevant assessment of the built environment, and we all need to be stewards and ensure that value is being provided (opposed to cost cutting at the peril of life safety). Sometimes we are the last stand to review a project before the design is finalized and put out for bid; therefore, we have responsibility to the client and the facility users to make sure that assessment is thorough and that value is based on safety, risk mitigation, improvements to social-economic concerns, etc.
Let’s ensure value is adhered to during construction but also throughout the foreseeable life cycle of that project because we are an important cog of the process to improve both natural and built assets across the globe.
Enjoy this edition (especially the great overview of the new SAVE International President Mike Pearsall’s platform) and be safe out there.
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