Manlapaz opened with three decades of change. The glass and aluminium that built Bonifacio Global City, Makati and Ortigas in the 1990s, then green building, then parametric envelopes, ETFE and building-integrated photovoltaics. The professions that work on those buildings are organised, from the United Architects of the Philippines to the civil engineers. There is nothing for façades. London has a society of façade engineers, and there are bodies in Hong Kong and in Malaysia. Her question was what such an organisation would be for, and she began by asking what gets in the way of a façade here.

Ninety per cent say no

Daniel C. Go answered from thirty years in practice, the first ten passed without his knowing façade consultancy existed. In 2006 his firm won a competition for a worship and training centre of 97,000 square metres seating ten thousand, and somebody suggested a consultant because the project was massive. He saw the point at once: his job was the concept and how the building would look, and somebody else had to do the nitty-gritty work of the details and specifications that make the big difference. Watching a mock-up loaded to its maximum tolerance until it broke settled the argument for him.

The trouble is everything since. When he recommends a consultant, ninety per cent of clients say no, because the fee is expensive and the value invisible. So he engages one himself, out of his own scope, for the portion that gives him the details, because the arithmetic runs the other way.

The initial cost of the facade consultant is negated by the actual savings

Daniel C. Go, ADGO Architecture and Design

He also described the cycle that follows a refusal, and expected architects to recognise it. The owner will not engage anyone, so you take your design to a supplier and ask them to develop a system for it. You are now tied to that supplier. Their bid comes in the most expensive. Hand the design to another supplier and they have neither the details nor the hardware, and the problem is yours. There is a reputational cost too: an owner can suspect a private arrangement with the supplier. With a consultant on board his instruction is fixed: not brand specific, performance driven.

Who pays for the specification

Myra Zamora put the same question from the specifier's side, where every answer is expected to exist already, constructability included. Her practice divides into the visionary and the implementation, and the specifiers make the vision happen. When the client refuses the consultant, the gap lands on her. On one project she went to the supplier herself for a benchmark of 270 to 300 kilometres per hour, after the structural designers said it was not their scope and she would need a façade consultant.

Who should hire the consultant? Is it the client or the architectural designer?

Myra Zamora, Royal Pineda+ Architecture-Design

Her second point was about sequence, and it costs money twice. A consultant appointed after bidding had started meant reviewing every document again. Meanwhile a low-E coating sits on a different face in a cold climate, and getting it wrong moves the U value, the heat gain and the mechanical calculation with them. On another project the glass was specified first and the air conditioning calculated afterwards, at which point the consultant arrived to broker between the two. She also had a harder argument, from a typhoon in Tacloban: high-end clients with Italian glass, and the day after, the glass broken and the cladding on the ground.

Called when it is too late

Theodore Khoury, eighteen years with the same consultancy, named the two doors that do not open. The first is the fee, answered with a maybe later. The second is timing: the call comes so far into the project that the only service left is repair. His argument for a standard was about materials rather than fees: near the water, saltwater build-up and erosion get settled between an owner and a supplier who both believe they are right, and a written standard would take that decision off them.

I think the Philippines deserves that. I think the Philippines should have a higher standard for their buildings

Theodore Khoury, ALT

A loop back to the code committee

Adam Lee located the gap somewhere else entirely. Codes are written by intelligent committees who draw on other nations' codes and produce a well documented set of rules. The industry then builds to them, discovers the pitfalls, and has nowhere to send what it learned. His example was the Philippine Green Building Code, mandatory for about eight years, which on an ordinary office plate turns roughly half the visible strip of wall into operable windows. In Manila those windows will never be opened, because the building has to be air conditioned and has to keep the jeepney noise out.

The green building code is making buildings that are less green

Adam Lee, PTCC Façade Design

He did not blame the committee, whose members are experienced construction people rather than façade people, which is the point. He offered two British models: a corporate-sponsored technical body publishing advice, and a membership organisation focused on professional accreditation. New codes, feedback into existing ones, training and accreditation could sit in either. Go closed on the analogy he uses with clients: a good surgeon still needs a cardiologist and an anaesthetist, each specialised, or the operation does not go well.