Construction management puts the client back in charge. Is the client ready?

Every procurement route is really a bet on who is best placed to carry risk. For most of the last generation, the UK's answer on big commercial schemes has been the main contractor, wrapped in a design and build contract.

This week Building published a direct challenge to that answer. Developer Lipton Rogers and law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer argue that design and build has lost its edge, and that construction management is the better option for complex, high-value schemes.

It is worth taking seriously. But the most important sentence in their argument is not the one about contracts. It is the one about people.

The case against design and build

Their diagnosis will be familiar to anyone who has sat on either side of a tier-one bid. Schemes are harder to get going and harder to deliver on time and on budget, while global instability, inflation, insolvency risk, rising regulation and supply chain strain are all eroding contractors' willingness to sign large, onerous contracts.

Then comes the part every commercial person will recognise. On complex jobs, programme risk drives extension of time claims and adversarial behaviour. Damages agreed at the start often go unclaimed, and the parties end up fighting over one large final account, while the lump sum can climb quickly once claims appear.

I trained as a QS and left contracting as a Commercial Manager. The final account was where you learned what a contract actually meant. Design and build promised the client a single point of responsibility. The final account is often where that promise got tested.

And the promise has another weakness. Single point responsibility is only as strong as the balance sheet behind it. Building reported this year that directors of Jerram Falkus, a £50m business, had concluded the firm was unlikely to have a long-term future months before it went into administration. How much certainty was any client really buying there?

What construction management offers instead

The authors point to control and better decisions. On one Lipton Rogers scheme, the construction manager recommended spending more on groundworks, which saved considerably more on final cost and brought delivery ahead of programme. They argue that outcome is highly unlikely under design and build, and that client control lets specialists propose better long-term solutions.

History is on their side too. Tate Modern and the Royal Opera House were both delivered under construction management by Schal.

The sentence that matters

Here is the honest bit, and credit to the authors for writing it. They accept construction management does not suit every project or inexperienced clients. It needs a professional, engaged developer with clear governance, disciplined decision-making and experienced advisers. For clients who want to stay hands-off, and for simpler projects, design and build still has a role.

Read that again as a hiring brief, because that is what it is.

Under design and build, a client can effectively buy competence inside a lump sum. Under construction management, it has to employ that competence or appoint it directly. The risk does not disappear. It comes home.

So who does a client actually need?

A development director who has run trade contractor procurement, not just watched a contractor do it. A commercial lead who can manage twenty or thirty packages in real time rather than defend one final account at the end. A construction manager whose package managers can lead without the stick of a main contract. And someone with the authority to say "spend more on groundworks now" and the judgement to be right about it.

That last point is the whole game. The groundworks decision in their example was not a contractual advantage. It was a judgement call, made by people who knew what they were looking at and were trusted to act.

The questions nobody is asking

If the market does rebalance, where does that talent come from?

Construction management has been a specialist route in the UK for a long time. How many people have genuinely run a large CM scheme from the client or CM side? How many of them are still in the industry, and at what level? And how many clients have the in-house bench to govern it, rather than hoping their advisers will?

There is a commercial question too. The skills that win a final account are not the same skills that lead live cost on a CM job. Is the best claims QS automatically the best CM cost manager? I am not convinced.

And for contractors, a harder one. If the complex, high-value work drifts towards CM, which of your people become more valuable, and would you even know who they are?

So, is it time to rebalance?

For the right schemes, with the right clients, quite possibly. The argument is sound and the track record exists.

But the procurement route is not the scarce resource. Judgement is. You can change a contract strategy in a single board meeting. You cannot assemble a team that has done it before in the same afternoon.

Before any client chooses construction management, they should ask a simpler question first. Do we have the people to be the kind of client this route demands?

If the answer is no, the contract will not save you.

*Source: Building, "Construction management vs design and build: Is it time to rebalance?", September 2026.*