“It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is to get up and take action.” So wrote the American writer Al Batt.
Never is this more true than in the construction industry today where we all know what we don’t like, but find it very difficult if not impossible to do anything about it.
The introduction of the Payments Charter under the leadership of the Construction Leadership Council as an action from the Construction 2025 strategy is a bold attempt to change behaviour. How successful it will be will depend on whether people sign up to the spirit of the Charter as well as the letter of it, but it is clear that many subcontractors are not holding their breath that cash flows will improve.
"If you have not read Construction 2025: Industrial strategy for construction- government and industry in partnership, then you should, especially if you are going to be working in the industry over the next 15 years."
Another area desperate for change is in training. The industry is short of skilled labour and in particular youngish skilled labour. In the last boom we saw the completion rate on apprenticeships fall as low as 35% as trainees were lured out of training early into jobs. The consequences were not pretty. When the recession hit, these partly skilled people were among the first to be shed and our skilled workforce now mainly qualify for bus passes. Either getting a job or completing training could be counted as a successful outcome, but which is the most important for the industry as opposed to the employer or the individual? It is another example of short term versus the long term.
Housing shows even more the contrast between the short term and the long term. A large percentage of new housing units in London will never go to meeting the capital’s current housing needs unless you include within that housing need rich foreign residents using London housing as a refuge for their money. It is pleasing to see one local authority, Windsor and Maidenhead, at least removing from their housing plans land at risk of flooding despite the difficulty it will have in meeting its housing target.
If you have not read Construction 2025: Industrial strategy for construction-government and industry in partnership, then you should, especially if you are going to be working in the industry over the next 15 years. The challenges the Construction Leadership Council has is twofold. First, getting people to sit up and take notice after the battering they have had over the last seven years of construction hell is extremely difficult. It is only matched by getting the same exhausted group to take action.
