There’s a prevailing sentiment about luck: to paraphrase, you make it happen. You can sit around and wait for something to come your way. Or you can choose to spend the time and make the effort to chase after it.
Architects are consultants that tackle problem-solving in three dimensions. They are visualizers. Some are considered to be visionaries. Others have even proven themselves to be. The impact of the built environment on mankind is profound, especially as we will soon pass the point where more of us live in cities than in the country. The skills that architects bring to the equation are considerable.
One thing about provincial and municipal governments is that you generally know their business. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. “Transparency” is the flavour of the month. Government laundry is hanging out there for all to see. Clean and dirty.
When politicians and bureaucrats contemplate the things they want to do to make our lives better, it typically gets identified as a problem. But if politicians and bureaucrats generally possessed problem-solving skills they would not be politicians and bureaucrats. They’d be consultants.
Corporations on the other hand, like to keep their cards close to their chest. That’s totally understandable. Intellectual property, sound planning and innovation drives the private sector. Anyone involved in leaking data or corporate information can quickly find themselves in hot water.
So where are the foregoing considerations going?
Architects often choose their profession based on a noble desire to contribute to society. We have responsibility to our clients, but unlike most other professions, we also have a responsibility to the public – all those who will be users of whatever it is we conceive. Many of us, because of this rather weighty responsibility, possess an interest in public affairs and public discourse, especially when there is a looming problem or issue dependent upon the construction of something.
When the resolution of a problem involves choosing to build or not build something (imagine schools and hospitals) architects often lie awake in bed at night thinking about the solution. At the same time, politicians and bureaucrats are grappling with the language they should use to describe the problem!
Often, the ideas that architects have are contrary to the politics of the moment. Radical thoughts. Contemplations that challenge. Approaches that require additional upfront cost based on long term sustainable notions, or methods that may radically cut costs based on ingenuity. Perhaps the scale of a project as conceived is all wrong. Perhaps the context has been driven by politics instead of philosophy.
Time passes. Eventually the proverbial proposal call comes out. “On the street” as we like to say. And built into it, are all the stupid notions that have been driven by politics and bureaucracy as opposed to common sense. “Here’s what we are going to build and here’s how we are going to go about it.”
Now the only option for the design community (architects or urban planners or engineers) is to respond to the proposal in the manner requested. In forty years of practice I have never encountered a situation where an enlightened idea or suggestion has changed the essence of a request for proposals. In fact, questioning the Request for Proposals (RFP) thesis will quickly get you branded as a troublemaker. (Not me of course. Not ever.)
Which (finally) brings me to the point of this post. Quite often, architects have understood the problem (usually a product of public, and therefore political, pressure) and have conceived of the solution long before a project is rolled out as an RFP. The ideas may have the potential to change the course of project direction. They may have the effect of vastly cutting the budget or improving sustainability. They may possess a creative or innovative solution that will embrace the common good.
They may even go so far as to formally present their solution to politicians and bureaucrats in the form of a proposal. One that will be immediately earmarked as “unsolicited”.
And it doesn’t matter how ingenious the proposed solution may actually be, for even complete resolution of the problem will be received as devious – an affront to Procurement Policy. Worse still, a bureaucrat is likely to mine an unsolicited proposal for the solutions it contains and use the submission as the framework for preparing an RFP.
The likely outcome is that in the end, a competitor with better ties to the party in power or a cut fee will be awarded the project. Our newly minted NL Public Procurement Act will facilitate this commendably. A greater indignity occurs when the project that has profited from your idea is awarded to an out-of-province multi-national who can afford to cut the fee and boast about all of their in-house expertise that did not come up with the idea in the first place. Worse yet, you may be told that the project was given to a “far more experienced team” (read: let’s recreate past mistakes).
This is how creative problem-solving of (publically funded) infrastructure projects is generally killed by the political / bureaucratic process. Actually, killed is much too soft a euphemism. Slaughtered is more like it.
Innovation is not rewarded. It dies before it sees the light of day. The built environment suffers. Your built environment.
So why is it that our politicians and bureaucrats cannot cope with unsolicited proposals? Wouldn’t you want the people with the ideas working for you?
For an excellent, thoroughly researched commentary on unsolicited proposals, I would direct you to following article by Denis Chamberland of Aird & Berlis: