With accountability and transparency increasingly important in a post-Grenfell construction landscape, Acorn Aluminium is strengthening its verification and document control processes to reduce site issues and increase confidence all round.
For specifiers, contractors and developers, the pressure to deliver compliant buildings has never been greater. As regulations tighten and financial pressures rise, there is little margin for error once products reach site, with remedial works costing both time and money.
In response to this, Acorn Aluminium is strengthening its design verification, sign-off processes and documentation control to improve traceability, reduce site issues, and ultimately, get the job ‘right first time’. This early engagement is crucial to ensure that assumptions are challenged, risks are identified, and the design intent is clearly understood by all parties before installation begins.
Starting the verification process at the design stage, Acorn’s design team collaborates closely with main contractors, architects and façade consultants to establish an agreed interpretation of the project requirements, before progressing the design to the manufacture stage.
Once designs are signed off by the façade consultant, main contractor and architect, Acorn takes things one step further by adding an internal sign-off procedure. This important step ensures that what is being delivered matches up with what was sold, what has been approved and what the project actually requires, eliminating any disparities.
Verification is then built into purchase admin, creating an extra layer of control to ensure items meet approved design intent and budgets before they are ordered.
“Working with the main contractor, architects, and façade consultants, our design team will put together our interpretation of the design. It’ll get signed off by the façade consultant and the main contractor, as well as the architect,” explains Craig Key, Operations Manager at Acorn Aluminium.
“But to take that one step further, we have also introduced an internal sign-off procedure to ensure that our designer is interpreting everything as we’ve sold it and that it remains within budget.”
“We’ve also embedded that checking process into our purchase orders. So, our design team will raise a purchase request for something that’s required on the project, and that again goes through a second verification process to ensure it meets the requirements of the design intent, the approved design, and our budgets.”
But the safety net doesn’t stop there. Acorn has also built added verification into the manufacture stage, ensuring that processing paperwork is “completely in line with the design intent”.
Not only does this approach reduce the risk of product arriving on site with preventable issues, it also supports accountability and increases confidence, as Craig explains.
“It reduces the risk of us getting to site and having to overcome technical challenges from the onset,” he says.
“It ensures we’ve got full traceability and sign-off through every process, from start to end.”
The next step is to upload documentation to the main contractor’s portals, ensuring that stakeholders access only the latest revision. This is supported by Acorn’s own drawing registers, which ensure changes are recorded throughout the process.
“All of our documentation is uploaded to one of the document portals that our main contractors use,” explains Craig.
“This ensures that there’s a central hub for each document, and there’s only one version of that document, on its latest revision.
“It gives the main client, the architect, the contractor, and other subcontractors access to all of our most recent drawings. We also maintain our own drawing registers, which keeps a log of every drawing, and it’s change through the process.”
Part of a strategy of continuous improvement at Acorn, the company recognises the importance of strong and robust processes to ensure smooth and seamless project delivery, learning from past mistakes.
“We’ve had instances where we may not have been as strong as we know we need to be,” Craig admits.
“But there are lessons learned – and we move forward ensuring that we build that culture of accountability and that confidence back into all the teams around us.
“As a compliance-led organisation, these processes are a vital part of what we do, and we’ll continue to uphold them, to ensure the best outcomes for our partners.”
For more about Acorn Aluminium, please call 0115 928 2166, email [email protected], or visit www.acornaluminium.com.