CCS evolved from the company set up by ICL to construct accommodation for the mainframe computer equipment they manufactured. This service was offered to clients as a package deal.

Founder members then set up a company in competition – again they offered clients a package deal.

A management buy-out of that company resulted in the founder members continuing the business, but showing separately the cost of the professional design and management from those of the various contractors employed.

The reason for this was the observation that clients were calling for competitive quotations from package dealers, based on whatever outline specification of requirements that client could come up with – usually pretty sparse.

Package dealers were left to compose their own designs – with every incentive to reduce them to a minimum – so as to make their tenders more competitive.

Extras became the order of the day once a contract had been won. Some of the package dealers were actually manufacturers of mechanical services equipment – which then accounted for circa 33% of the cost of a computer room. They did not hide their allegiance and took advantage of the fact that their profits were mainly in the mechanical services to discount the remaining electrical and building elements. Their expertise was in mechanical services, but they still offered to manage the whole package – with the conflicts that naturally occurred.

CCS realised that an appreciable percentage of a package deal company’s overhead was wasted in the preparation of such tenders. The clients, by definition of the fact that they were not providing complete specifications, were unable to judge whose design was best for their needs – and instead were looking for the lowest price – and the conflict over extras that would surely follow!

We removed the speculative sales overhead – our reputation by that time was sufficient to ensure that new clients would continue to be attracted. Our clients – who are also assured of the cost of the project and who retain control over expenditure, enjoy that saving.

We argue that this method adds the independent specification of requirements activity to the project that is better tailored to requirement and results in a lower overall cost.