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"There's always pain with buildings," said Richard Rogers during a recent visit to his firm's new creation, the £40m Welsh Assembly building. This was not the whining of a melodramatic architect but a bare statement of fact.

The early conception of the project was typically fraught with dispute and politically charged, much akin to recent high-profile political projects such as the Scottish parliament and the Portcullis House buildings. Yet after a major rethink into the procurement and management of the Cardiff project back in 2001, the scheme has hit its budget and earned plaudits from locals and architectural critics alike, in stark contrast to the experience in Edinburgh and London. So where did it all go so right for Wales' new political hub?

The comparison with the Scottish Parliament job in particular is instructive. Architectural competitions were held for both projects in the same year, 1998, and the two kicked off using construction management as the preferred procurement route. But while the significantly bigger (over six times in square metres) Scottish scheme was finished over a year ahead of the Welsh Assembly, the job was plagued by chaos and negativity throughout. The now infamous cost overrun to past the £400m mark, bust-ups between team members and a storm of public and political criticism all beset the scheme, ending in a very public dressing down for all concerned at the public inquiry held in 2004 by Lord Fraser.

We took the scheme apart and it brought it back to a stage where we had a set of drawings that could be signed off by the Assembly

Dermot O’Reilly, director, TPS

The Welsh Assembly script was running along the same lines until the decision to halt everything was taken in 2001 (see dateline). The architect was sacked, the construction manager Skanska stood down and work stopped. It was a "brave and correct" decision, according to Francis Graves, the QS firm tasked with reviewing the scheme months later that year (see box). One can't argue with that judgement. The break allowed a new clearer structure to be set by the client and a new emphasis on price certainty in the form of a design and build contract. "In hindsight it was the right decision," says Dermot O'Reilly, director at TPS, which was brought in to project manage the scheme after the enforced break. "The decision was to take a bit of a breather. It was quite controversial at the time."

TPS arrived on the scene nearly a year later, in May 2002, with a brief to take a tighter grip on cost and time than had previously been in place. For this they enlisted the services of QS Northcroft to revise the costs and work on difficult elements of the project, including the problematic roof that consisted of six separate domes and posed significant challenges to get off the drawing board. "There was a big emphasis on price certainty. It was more about that certainty than lowest price." Although TPS had inherited a tender list of contractors bidding for the D&B contract they still decided they needed to spool back to the early stage work in terms of the project's life. "We spent a lot of time doing the brief and restructuring the scheme's objectives," explains O'Reilly. "We took the scheme apart and it brought it back to a stage where we had a set of drawings that could be signed off by the Assembly," says O'Reilly.

Our approach was not to bury anything. Even if there is bad news, communicate it

Dermot O’Reilly, director, TPS

Such a challenge was complicated by the absence of an architect during 2002. To get around this TPS drew on the different teams within Northcroft to work on interpreting the roof design. Northcroft director Stewart Pitteway said the firm had to deal with a changing external environment for design. "The design (of the project) had stood still but the world had moved quite considerably. 9/11 made security more of an issue and there were also new disability regulations to adhere to." The firm used M&E specialists, an expert team on shells and cost planners. Pitteway reinforces the new attitude taken on by the team post 2001: "Everyone bought into the discipline. It's an attitude. D&B does set a good discipline and this was reinforced by everyone involved."

Before appointing the design and build consortium headed by Taylor Woodrow and including RRP in January 2003, TPS had the tricky job of working through the tender process with contractors. Ideally the firm would have gone to a two-stage tender but that would have involved re-bidding the scheme through OJEU. "We turned it into a one and a half stage Design and Build contract," explains O'Reilly. TPS had also inherited a GC/Works contract that O'Reilly wasn't entirely happy with. "We were concerned that no-one would sign it. There was a lot of risk transfer. It was a bit of a sledgehammer." To get around this, O'Reilly says a lot of work was carried out in collaboration working out particular areas of the project and creating risk profiles.

Everyone bought into the discipline. It’s an attitude.
D&B does set a good discipline and this was reinforced by everyone involved

Stewart Pitteway, director, Northcroft

The rethink and the newly enforced discipline paid off during construction. While the Holyrood scheme north of the border faced 15,000 changes during construction, figures released by TPS show a much more controlled environment. They reveal that just 80 project management instructions were issued during the building of the Assembly. Around a quarter of these were concerned with value engineering changes, while much of the rest related to a bigger than expected IT requirement. The Assembly had a separately organised framework agreement for IT provision, which led to the IT package being integrated into the actual building later on in the contract. "It did cause some problems," admits O'Reilly. "Some of the store-rooms have now become IT suites. But Taylor Woodrow dealt with the issues well."

So what of the cost comparison between the two? A bit of a minefield according to sources close to both teams. A documentary on ITV this week called Wales This Week claimed the Welsh job was more expensive based on the £ per square metre measure, £13,400 per square metre against £13,060 for the Edinburgh job. Any such basic comparison is grossly unfair according to one Welsh team member. "That simple benchmark is fundamentally wrong for these projects. You would need to do a massive amount of interpretation work to make a fair comparison. It would probably take a year to do it." The member points to the fact that the Cardiff scheme was just the front-end public face of the assembly - the politicians' and civil servants offices are provided in existing buildings, rather than in new build premises in Edinburgh. "This was the jewel of the complex while the Scottish parliament was the whole development," the team member explains.

What is clearly comparable is mutual respect between team members and the client on the Cardiff job as against the more fractious experience of the Scottish Parliament team. Northcroft's Pitteway praises Richard Wilson, the head of the Assembly's estates team, for "keeping the team together through the ups and downs". He also describes the internal Northcroft team as doing a "superb job" throughout, and claims there was a good team spirit amongst all the firms involved in the construction. TPS' O'Reilly adds that there was quite a different approach to internal reporting compared to Holyrood. "Our approach was not to bury anything. Even if there is bad news, communicate it." He adds that the team is confident of completing the final account within months of completion. If only the same were true up in Edinburgh. The latest estimate for wrapping up the final account is this May - 18 months after completion. So while taking a breather early on might have affected the timescale, on every other level, be it cost control, management and enjoyment, the Welsh win out in this battle of the Celts.