Owner's Representative Assistance: the key to successful new-build projects

Owner's Technical Assistance aims to support project owners throughout all stages of a construction project, from the design phase to delivery.

A fundamental and entirely tailor-made service for any successful large-scale project, particularly in the construction sector, Owner's Technical Assistance provides professional supervision throughout the project lifecycle. In the context of fire safety, this assistance aims to guide the construction process to ensure that the final building is free from any safety defects.

Acting as intermediaries between the project owner (i.e., the client or project sponsor) and the various service providers involved in the construction site, Owner's Representative Assistance consultants offer technical, administrative, and strategic expertise. The assistance provided to the project owner enables them to have all the necessary information to make informed decisions, define clear and measurable objectives, manage risks, and optimize available resources. The Owner's Representative Assistance acts as a true orchestra conductor, ensuring coordination among the various project stakeholders, thereby fostering communication and collaboration.

In summary, the mission of a owner's representative assistant is to ensure project success by providing professional supervision, expert advice, and efficient management. In doing so, it enables the project owner to achieve their objectives within agreed timelines and budget constraints.

Engaging an owner's representative assistant offers numerous benefits. Firstly, it ensures access to an expert team specialized in the intervention domain: fire safety. The owner's representative assistant will help the project owner clearly define needs and expectations through precise specifications.

Various phases punctuate the life of a construction project.

Providing a high-value-added service that structures the project's progression from its initial conception, project owner assistance plays an essential role at every crucial stage of building construction. It is therefore imperative to thoroughly understand the specificities to provide practical advice and tailored solutions for each project.

An essential phase at the start of a project, design allows for structuring the construction project until competent companies are found to proceed to the next stage.

The development of a program (objectives, functional analysis, integration constraints, and validation) ensures perfect alignment between technical solutions and the needs of the project owner or operator.

Subsequently, specific technical specifications are drafted to define the technical constraints related to integration into the overall project and the quality of supplies or services.

A framework for the technical proposal is developed to allow for a structured, rapid, and reliable technical analysis of the offers submitted by companies.

Finally, the technical analysis of offers is conducted to evaluate the services and technical means proposed by the bidding companies. This examination allows for selecting the offer best aligned with the technical requirements defined in the DCE - Dossier de Consultation des Entreprises (Tender documentation). The analysis report is drafted within 10 days following the receipt of bids from market candidates (typically three offers are examined).

For a new project, the second phase begins: construction. This phase, itself staggered over several stages, concludes with the project handover.

The construction phase starts with supervising the integration of the program into the project management/design team's consultation file. The objective here is to verify the consistency of the technical solutions described in the Cahier des Clauses Techniques Particulières (Special Technical Clauses) with the client's project as formalized by the operational program.

The owner's representative assistant is then responsible for supervising the execution plans, ensuring the presence and coherence of all technical information before the start of works, while identifying risks of unfortunate improvisations that could occur on site. For this supervision, the owner's representative assistant relies notably on current standards, the technical specifications of the chosen offer, and best practices particularly developed in reference documents. 

Throughout the construction process, the owner's representative assistant informs the project owner about project deviations (time, budget, etc.) and their potential consequences; they also verify the monitoring and coordination of the site conducted by the project management/design team.

As a supervisor, the owner's representative assistant is also responsible for the as-built documentation (DOE - Dossier des Ouvrages Exécutés). They verify the presence of all useful documents in the file and their presentation, ensuring it is a readily exploitable tool for future operations (acceptance, system operation, fire safety system maintenance, modifications).

Finally, the owner's representative assistant participates in the pre-acceptance technical operations, to reassure the project owner regarding compliance with the program of technical validation operations for the installations, conducted by the project management/design team, and evaluates the validity of the results. Where applicable, they establish conformity to the chosen reference standards.

Participation in the lifting of reservations constitutes the final stage of owner's representative assistant support, to verify that the works fully address all reservations noted during the pre-acceptance technical operations and meet the expected technical criteria.

In the project owner assistance support process for a new construction project, we commit to providing you with a set of deliverables that support and substantiate the monitoring process from start to finish:

• The Detailed Technical Program
• The Specific Technical Specifications
• The Technical Proposal Framework
• The Offer Analysis Report
• A Transmitted Offer Completeness Notice
• An Execution File Completeness Notice
• An Execution File Analysis Report
• A Summary of Findings from Site Meetings
• An As-Built Documentation Completeness Notice
• A Report of Findings from Pre-Acceptance Operations

Engage our specialists to simplify and optimize the management of your new-build project! They will assist you in developing tailor-made technical specifications that meet your fire safety requirements, while improving the efficiency of your new construction projects for optimal risk management. Our experts will provide impartial, practical technical advice that complies with current safety standards. Furthermore, they will ensure the optimization of your installation budget allocation.