Page 6 - CSA INDEX - Spring 2019

Munich completely outplayed Chelsea in this 2012 final. However, they could not finish and therefore lost the
match. They also had the same scenario in the 1999 final against Manchester United; two extra-time goals scored
by Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer won the match 2-1 for United after Munich had dominated the
match. This illustrates another principle of success – the great players and the most successful teams do their
best work when it counts most, in the pressure situations, in the games that really matter. This work involves
scoring goals, but it also involves saving shots, defending attacks and creating the goalscoring opportunities. It
requires a game strategy and teamwork.

On construction projects, I think teams are composed in the following way:

• Structural professionals are the central defenders, the base upon which everything else is
built. These could be Booby Moore, Franz Beckenbauer or Fabio Cannavaro, who captained
England, West Germany and Italy to World Cup success. Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dyk is a great
example amongst current players.

• Architectural specialists are the creative midfielders, the imagination & the link between the
different parts of the team. Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandes, both World Cup Winners with
Spain & part of the legendary Barcelona team of recent years, immediately come to mind. As
does Croatia’s Luka Modrić, who was named player of the tournament at the 2018 World Cup
finals in Russia.

• Building Services Engineers are the wing-backs, they run the channels between the
architectural elements and the structure. The legendary Brazilian duo of Cafu and Roberto
Carlos are great examples. As are the World Cup winners Paolo Maldini of Italy and Philp Lahm
of Germany.

• Cost consultants are the goalkeepers, the safe-pair-of-hands for the client’s money, but
whose mistakes can prove to be costly for the client and the wider project team.
Iker Casillas, Gianluigi Buffon, Manuel Neuer and Peter Schmeichel have all been part of
extremely successful teams.

• Commissioning specialists are the goalscorers, the finishers, the match-winners. At club and
international level, Harry Kane, Gerd Muller, Kylian Mbappe, Alan Shearer, Sergio Aguero,
Zlatan Ibrahimović, Neymar and Miroslav Klose have been prolificmarksmen.

My philosophy about construction project delivery is as follows:

“Why would any project team want to do all the briefing, design, costing,
programming, procurement & installation work and then not be able to finish properly

– to deliver a correctly performing building to the client?”

The different threads of this article are intricately woven together in a major project that is taking place in London
– the construction of the new 62,000 all-seater football stadium for Tottenham Hotspur.

Tottenham were scheduled to begin playing matches in their new stadium in September 2018. Because the
stadium’s Building Services systems are not working correctly, not a single match has yet taken place. On the 9th
January 2019, Tottenham’s chairman Daniel Levy issued the following apologetic statement:

“I should like to apologise to our fans and thank you for your continuedpatience…
We shall now seek clarity in respect of building test schedules and test event dates
and provide further information on these in the next two to threeweeks.”