Lord Adonis has turned up the heat on construction over productivity, with a warning that the industry must ditch its “short-term” culture.
The chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) shared his views exclusively with Construction Manager, ahead of a keynote speech he will make to the industry later this month.
Adonis, who has been tipped for a transport role with new London mayor Sadiq Khan and proposed as chairman of Crossrail 2, described raising productivity as a “critical issue” for construction.
“Construction has changed hugely for the better in recent years, yet still many in the industry feel it has a long way to go to rid itself of the ‘this is the way we have always done it’ culture,” he said.
“If the UK is to develop the projects that this country needs, we need to ensure that we are getting the highest possible quality at the lowest possible whole-life cost.
“Quite simply, we need to do more – and we need to do it faster, better and cheaper.”
"If the UK is to develop the projects that this country needs, we need to ensure that we are getting the highest possible quality at the lowest possible whole-life cost. Quite simply, we need to do more – and we need to do it faster, better and cheaper."
Lord Adonis, National Infrastructure Commission
“That means thinking beyond the short-term and taking advantage of every innovation and incremental improvement that might help us on that journey.”
Adonis, who will speak at the Construction Productivity Forum on 8 June, added that public and private sector construction clients also had a responsibility to push productivity.
“They have the ability, and the self-interest, to drive new ways of thinking and the adoption of new technologies along the supply chain,” he said.
“Supporting innovation and raising productivity are critical issues for the construction industry and for the delivery of major infrastructure projects across the UK.”
Adonis was Transport Secretary in Gordon Brown’s government from 2009 to 2010, but resigned the Labour whip in the House of Lords in October 2015 to take the newly created NIC role.
ONS figures suggest that construction productivity growth is slow, improving just 7% over two decades, although this is disputed by a new report published by the CIOB.
Paul Nash, incoming president of the Institute, said it was hard to believe construction had not grown considerably more productive in recent years, given the steady fall in accidents on site and the emergence of innovations such as offsite manufacturing.
“For decades, studies have suggested numerous solutions to improve construction’s productivity, yet the data indicates growth is weak at best,” said Nash. “We might ask – is construction productivity being measured in the most accurate way? Are we getting the wrong impression from the data?”
He added: “It’s important to point out that poor productivity growth in construction is not just a UK phenomenon: in developed nations globally we see the same occurrence, which drags down the productivity performance of the wider economy.”
The Construction Productivity Forum, organised by the Construction Equipment Association, takes place in London on 8 June.
Whist the industry is definitely “short-term” in nature, I am not sure that simply thinking longer-term will deliver benefits by itself. Single projects can delver significant improvements in productivity and achieve Adonis’s “need to do it faster, better and cheaper”.
But it will require the industry to ditch the traditional approaches to contracts and selection, and also to plan and manage execution using methods that have been proved to reduce waste. Both these are changes that could be adopted today, and could deliver benefits on a single project. The only catch is they would require a change from how the industry works today.