The challenge of the low carbon target the UK has set itself to achieve by 2050 is tough and the built environment sector has one of the biggest tasks of all if the target is to be achieved.

It’s a great opportunity, of course, for every part of the construction sector; from the architects and planners to the builders, plumbers, heating engineers and electricians. Not surprisingly, people have piled in with sustainable construction solutions for new build and retrofit, but which is snake oil and which ‘eureka’?

Right now, there’s a lot of work going on to measure what works and what doesn’t by, among others, the Technology Strategy Board.

This knowledge is beginning to emerge but getting it to the right people at the sharp end of the industry, especially those thousands of smaller firms who will probably do much of the retrofit work, is the next challenge.

That’s what the FLASH+ programme, led by the Institute for Sustainability, aims to do. FLASH+ is managed by the South East Centre for the Built Environment (SECBE), which is organising a programme of knowledge sharing events – conferences, workshops and site visits - to spread the best available knowledge to help smaller businesses in the sector to grab their share of a growing market.

Places are limited; there’s only capacity on this FREE programme for 250 South East companies. Don’t delay – to find out more visit http://www.secbe.org.uk/flashplus

*The FLASH + project is part-financed by the South East European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Competitiveness Programme 2007-13, with the aim of promoting sustainable production and consumption whilst helping to reduce the South East ecological footprint.

The Twitterverse has been abuzz today with publication of the TCN Top 100. The aim was to produce, in league table format, a ranking of those that demonstrate the most influence across the built environment sector through use of Twitter. The list was organised by the good folk at The Construction Network using the Peer Index engine and was published today in Construction News.

At Constructing Excellence we’ve had a long-standing interest in social media. We were the first membership body in the sector to start using Twitter as a communication tool and have recently delivered a social media symposium to help our members understand how to use web 2.0 not only for marketing but also to deliver projects better.

While I commend the idea I’m afraid that I have significant concerns about the methodology that has reached the results that have been published today. Partially, I’m incredibly surprised that Constructing Excellence wasn’t included in the list. One of our key strengths is our influence. We engage on Twitter a reasonable amount. It is actually quite damaging to our brand to suggest that we’re not particularly influential and to, by omission, publish this within the national trade press. However, the main impetus for this post isn’t to express my (very real) frustration that Constructing Excellence isn’t in the Top 100 but to express concerns with the entire methodology.

In fact, I would suggest that the TCN Top 100 is not a measure of influence in the built environment sector; the calculation methodology that produced the results seems to be broken. Some of these issues are down to Peer Index calculation methodology; some are down to the way in which the Top 100 itself was calculated. Some of my concerns are below:

1) While the TCN Top 100 is meant to be a measure of influence in a particular sector, what has been published is actually a simple league table of Peer Index scores. Peer Index scores take into account all tweets, be they related to the built environment sector or not. So, within the Top 100 are actually a number of Twitter users that only engage with built environment issues occasionally but place quite highly because they have derived a strong Peer Index score.

Furthermore, quite a lot of the tweeters also use Twitter as a means of social communication. Again, Peer Index scores reflect these tweets as well. In some cases those within the Top 100 have not tweeted anything at all on the built environment sector in literally months. For the TCN Top 100 to be considered as a serious measure of influence on the built environment sector then surely only tweets related to the sector should be considered. Otherwise, you’re asking those serious built environment Tweeters to compete against those that comment on marketing and IT and football and making omelettes. Without that filtering the results are meaningless. In fact, because Twitter is a social medium one could also argue that Peer Index positively rewards those that Tweet on social activities.

2) The issue above relates to the wholesale use of Peer Index scores. Now let’s look at Peer Index itself. Peer Index calculates its scores from three sub-measures – authority, audience and activity. The ways in which audience and activity are measured seem reasonably sensible. Authority appears not to work at all.

Peer Index states that it builds up an ‘authority finger print on a category-by-category level using eight benchmark topics’. This totally fails to reflect the way we think about authority in our daily lives. Authority, by its nature, is specific but Peer Index uses eight areas as diverse as sport, leisure and lifestyle, health and finance to calculate its authority total. Quite simply it rewards generalists not real authorities.

The authority score also seems to reward the posting of links. Therefore, those that signpost content on others’ websites will score better than those that post original thought directly onto Twitter. Again, this does not reflect the way we think about authority. Real authorities aren’t those that simply regurgitate others’ ideas – they are those that form the debate in the first place.

3) The Top 5 benchmark topics for any Twitter user are published. These are a nonsense. Peer Index suggests that Constructing Excellence’s top five Twitter topics are sustainability, architecture and loudspeakers. Yes, seriously, loudspeakers. We’ve never once tweeted on that topic. At no point does it suggest that our top topics should include the built environment or construction or BIM or collaborative working or any of the other significant issues that we comment on. Shouldn’t users be able to define their own top topics?

So, as stated above, while we commend the intention behind the TCN Top 100, the delivery has been so flawed that it renders the results meaningless. This may seem trivial but for an organisation which trades on authority and knowledge it could be perceived as quite damaging.

Who are the tweeters that most influence the built environment sector? Here are five I would urge you to follow:
Grant Shapps, Minister of State for Housing and Local Government (@grantshapps)
UK Green Building Council (@ukgbc)
Graham Watts, Chief Executive of the Construction Industry Council (@CICCEO)
Noble Francis, Economics Director of the Construction Products Association (@NobleFrancis)
Federation of Master Builders (@fmbuilders)

So, follow those people. And I say that with authority.

All members of our Japan study tour are safely back in the UK. The last three days of the Japan study tour were extraordinary, and of course the full horror is still unfurling of the impact of the tsunami including on the nuclear power station at Fukushima. Events and emotions for us went something like this:

We finished our study tour at lunchtime on the Friday. The week had included visits up north to nuclear power stations under construction as well as meetings in Tokyo with many of the big contractors – including a fascinating visit to Shimizu’s research institute to see their latest earthquake-resistant buildings, very impressive. We had the afternoon off to see some sights or buy presents, and the party split up into smaller groups.

At 2.56, I was in my hotel room, with the TV on to enable an internet connection. A blaring sound came out of the TV and a red notice appeared on the screen, in Japanese. This awful sound is seared on my mind for ever more – it is the earthquake warning, and it comes about 30 seconds in advance of every earthquake of any size….. At first, it was terrifying - the 6th strongest earthquake ever and Japan’s biggest, 800 times more powerful than the Christchurch one - I was on the 10th floor of our hotel and it was like being on a small boat in mountainous seas, I eventually ran down the fire escape and got out to the street to watch the buildings swaying by 15 feet or more. The quake lasted some 7 minutes. It transpires that the island of Japan moved by 6 feet…???!!!! Elsewhere, one of our group saw cars lifted off the ground, and Jenefer from Balfour Beatty Vinci had the wit to film a temple shaking. People went back inside after half an hour or so, and I collected some stuff from my room, but the next hour saw six ‘after-shocks’ all stronger than Christchurch, so it was no fun at all and I soon went back outside. At last I found one of our tour party, and we went for a coffee and then to the hotel bar.

Next it was blitz-like, as we regrouped. Half found our way to the hotel bar within 1-2 hours, but the others had to hike 10 miles or more via the British embassy for a recovery halt. Others had been in meetings downtown, 3 of them even carried on with a meeting (?!) and so found themselves under tables during aftershocks. We began to think about a recovery plan as Tokyo became gridlocked and all planes, trains and buses ceased to run. We had been due to fly home the next morning, but it soon became apparent that all flights were cancelled or delayed. Black humour pervaded.

Then there was the horror and shock as we watched the impact of the tsunami on Japan’s eastern coast via the gripping live news coverage live on TV in the hotel bar, for many hours. This shock continues as we see more and more of the coverage now we are back in the UK.

Next it was impressive as we watched Tokyo stoically return to business as usual. Many office workers had not been able to get home so had slept in their offices. We saw that the city was virtually unscathed by such a huge tremor and the 200 after-shocks over the next 2 days, which continued to un-nerve many of us. Some of us decided to stay on the ground floor, and we set up a camp. Some went upstairs to sleep at one point, but then another big quake at 4am brought 7 of us back down to the ground floor and there we stayed until the morning.

The next morning the gridlock eased and the airports re-opened, so many of our party decided to head for the airport. Information about flight times was available, but unclear, and the journey for many was grim, 8 hours in a taxi and then 24 hours on the floor at the airport. Others were luckier, leaving it later and getting to the airport in normal time. Still little evidence of any damage in Tokyo – except a bent mast on the main TV tower! Finally, relief as the plane took off and the joy of returning to solid land which doesn’t rock or shudder under your feet every few minutes. But ultimately deeply worrying, as the nuclear power station story unfurled – not a station we had visited when in the same region 3 days earlier, but an incident into which many of our party had huge technical insight but needed our reports via emails and texts of the live TV coverage to understand it.

Fingers crossed for our new friends and colleagues in Japan, they are such a kind and considerate population and do not deserve this.

Since the general election in early May and the subsequent formation of the coalition Government, there have been major changes put in place, closing down the Regional Development Agencies by the middle of 2011, and taking away from the UK’s construction industry one of the major sources of public funding, to be replaced in due course by other bodies such as the Local Enterprise Partnerships, for which in early September 2010, 56 bids had been received and are being reviewed by BIS. Some of these are detailed proposals, some are three pagers. Some are for large LEPs, others are for small ones. Some will be accepted, others will not.

There has also been a drive to reduce public funds already allocated, for example, the Building Schools for the Future programme which is viewed as expensive and inefficient to run. In the West Midlands, the likes of Sandwell MBC will not be happy with the outcome following the cancellation of their BSF programme. These cuts were set in motion before the Comprehensive Spending Review, lead by the Treasury. This reviews the period 2011 to 2015 and is due to be presented by the Chancellor to Parliament on 20th October 2010.

According to Mark Prisk MP, Minister for Business and Enterprise, speaking to the Black Country Chamber of Commerce Awards Event on 9th September 2010, there is a bright economic future ahead of us. Business is the dynamo to drive the economy, moving away from the mistakes in recent years. He argued that entrepreneurial talent must be set free by creating the right environment for it to flourish, with less red tape. Many of us will agree with that approach. However, there is the inevitable delay before the LEPs will be up and running, probably not until the middle of 2011, and there is a major gap as to where new funding, private or public, may come from to enable the construction industry to survive in the mean time. Many companies will be going through a lean period and some, particularly those unable to obtain support from the banks, may not survive. There is a real risk of increased unemployment as a result.

At a time when many clients, particularly the less enlightened ones, are tending to go back to the bad old days of lowest price tendering and all that entails, there is the real fear that good companies, large and small, who provide products of value will not be able to compete and that we will revert to the conditions, pre-Latham and Egan and Wolstenholme, when things had become so bad for the industry that the Latham review had to be commissioned (1994). We have only to remember the problems with Wembley Stadium managed by traditional “old fashioned” methods, and the Emirates Stadium and the Olympic Park, which used the more integrated approach. Few of us will be proud of what happened at Wembley and the expensive and legal repercussions that resulted.

There are some out there who are sympathetic to the plight of the Construction Industry and it is hoped that the immediate future will not all be bad. There is no harm in reminding Government from time to time, whoever may be in power, that a healthy Construction Industry also means a healthy Gross Domestic Product. We should not forget that for every £1 spent by the construction industry, the GDP benefits by £2.84p.

During this interim period, there are fears of a double dip recession for the construction industry. The Constructing Excellence Movement is well aware that we have to do everything that we can to help the industry to survive and to enable it to be stronger for the future, so that when the economic situation improves, it is there to boost the GDP. Fundamental to this is Business Improvement through the likes of supply chains, and the resulting Project Improvement, thereby making supply chains, as perceived by Egan, to be more efficient and more competitive, enabling the industry to be more competitive. This will also enable the industry to be the dynamo to drive the economy.

Michael Thompson is Chairman of the Built Environment Improvement Network which is represented on the Constructing Excellence Management Board, and Executive Advisor to West Midlands Centre for Constructing Excellence.

We are delighted to be able to feature a guest blog from Paul Wilkinson:

‘Social media’ figures a lot in my construction PR and marketing consultancy work, but when asked to give an example of how it could ‘open doors’ I used to struggle with an answer. Not any more: blogging has got me talking to senior government decision-makers.

As well as advocating blogs to clients, I have been blogging since 2005 - writing a construction collaboration technology blog and, more recently, a PR/marketing/social media blog. In my technology blog, I wrote several times about the impending government appointment of a Chief Construction Advisor.

When Paul Morrell’s appointment was announced, I wrote an open letter to him, asking him to ensure that information and communication technologies (ICT) was fully utilised in helping to co-ordinate a low carbon policy and to improve the government’s return on its investment. I highlighted how ICT could play a vital role:

• “promote best practice in construction procurement” – think about the efficiency savings that come from automating aspects of tendering, making information available online and reducing paperwork.
• “implementation of Government policy” – from Gershon to Greening Government IT, ICT is now a cross-cutting strand within government and the Strategy for Sustainable Construction, albeit modestly, gives scope for government to encourage better ICT use across the industry at large and support its low carbon policy.
• “championing the industry’s image” – Too often described (sometimes unfairly) as ‘technophobic’, the industry could at least partly transform construction’s low-tech image by incorporating ICT more effectively into its day-to-day operations. This could range from high-end BIM collaboration to the ways in which industry manages its conversations with clients, supply chains, local communities, regulators, new recruits to the industry, and others (see post).

I then added a public PS, inviting him to consider social media tools and techniques (blogs, online forums, social networks, even Twitter) as a way to engage in online conversations with construction industry people.

To my surprise, Paul Morrell got in touch. In possibly his first ever foray into the blogosphere, Paul wrote a detailed reply to my post. He said he needed no persuading about the enormous potential of ICT:

“Just one those topics (and I need no persuading that it is a big one) is indeed the enormous potential that lies in more intelligent use of ICT. On that subject, the part of my mind that is closed is the part that is already persuaded of that potential in improving communications, reducing or removing transaction costs, transforming the way that buildings are designed, creating more direct links between design and fabrication/assembly, removing the coordination errors that too often block productivity etc. The part that is open is in recognising that there will be still more potential beyond my current understanding, and indeed beyond the general understanding of the industry – and also the part that addresses the hard issue of barriers to adoption. These are easy to list out: too many people of my generation in positions of influence, the multiplicity of systems (so that any single member of the supply chain who moves one way, will certainly find themselves dealing with other members who have gone a different way), the fact that if we don’t do it pragmatically we could spend the rest of several lifetimes talking about inter-operability etc; but I am open-minded as to which of these barriers are perceived and which are real, and as to the best way of hurdling them.”

He went on to say that he also intended to start his own limited engagement with social media:

“…I certainly intend within that period to set up a blog which, whilst it may be a bit slow motion for generations Y and Z, will provide an opportunity to show emerging thinking – and, above all, get some thinking back.”

Last month, I went to hear Paul Morrell speak at a meeting of the London Constructing Excellence Club, and when LCEC chairman Andrew Bowles introduced me to him, he immediately remembered the blog exchange (telling me also that he wasn’t quite sure he’d ever embrace Twitter). I am looking forward to supporting his efforts to build an online dialogue with construction industry people, and not just about the role of ICT or of social media.

Constructing Excellence is already embracing such tools (including this blog, use of Twitter, and deployment of social network platforms for G4C and the Collaborative Working Champions, among other things), and I am talking to LCEC’s February meeting about them too. Social media platforms are augmenting conventional communications, and - as my experience shows - they can be very useful in opening doors and starting conversations with the influential industry people you might want to talk to.

I have generally given up being shocked by opinions, especially when espoused in a search for votes. However, one particular policy statement announced this week took me aback somewhat. Did Kenneth Clarke really suggest that HSE inspectors were ‘intrusive’? Funny that. I thought that was part of their job.

Clarke has stated that, were the Conservatives to win the next election, contractors would be able to “curb the powers of intrusive inspectors by allowing firms to arrange their own, externally audited inspections and, providing they pass, to refuse entry to official inspectors thereafter”.

The new plans would see an initial health and safety assessment being carried out by a contractor’s employee and this being externally audited. I would like to outline two fundamental issues with this approach.

The first is purely logistical. The Conservative statement seems to require a new project role to be developed - the supply side health and safety auditor. A few questions:

• How does a contractor choose an auditor?
• Who audits the auditors to ensure that they can fulfil the role?
• At what point in the construction process does an assessment take place?

Clarke’s sales pitch for this was based on an appeal to the delights of a reduction in bureaucracy. However, all he appears to be doing is shifting the interface from being between the HSE and those that deliver construction work to being between the HSE (or equivalent) and those that audit those that deliver construction work.

It is also suggested here that the health and safety assessment take place once, after which ‘official’ inspectors could be banned from site. When would that be exactly? This proposal utterly fails to take account of the nature of construction work where the health and safety risks change over time. The present system isn’t perfect but, under the present regime, the way in which random inspections can take place at least fits with our understanding of construction risk.

My second issue is that making health and safety assessment a transactional relationship makes it utterly open to abuse. The Conservative statement does not provide detail on who would pay for the external audit to take place. My fear would be that there would an open market and that the auditor would act as a consultant to the contractor. If the auditor were employed by the contractor in this way, that auditor could potentially be influenced to pass unsafe practices for risk of not winning any future work from the contractor. In addition, the initial assessment being carried out by a member of the contractor’s staff could also lead to that person coming under pressure to not hold up a job on site. I have no doubt that the majority of those working in our sector would not seek to influence the results of any assessment but it does seem like the Conservative proposals take unnecessary risks around human nature.

We work in a sector that has made huge strides in health and safety performance over the last ten years but still results in far too many fatalities. As Rita Donaghy’s recent report states, One Death is Too Many. Many within our sector think that the HSE does a good job and would actually like to see them more heavily resourced. I believe that, rather than a deregulation of health and safety assessment, would lead to a reduction in accidents and a much healthier UK construction sector in all senses.

Repeated below is the Executive Summary of the new report from Constructing Excellence, published on 14 October 2010, entitled Never Waste a Good Crisis. Authored by Andrew Wolstenholme of Balfour Beatty Management, the report looks to determine the level of industry progress since Rethinking Construction and define the improvement agenda for the next decade.

Since Sir John Egan’s Task Force published its report Rethinking Construction in 1998, there has been
some progress, but nowhere near enough. Few of the Egan targets has been met in full, while most
have fallen considerably short. Where improvement has been achieved, too often the commitment to Egan’s principles has been skin-deep. In some sectors, such as housing, construction simply does not matter, because there is such limited understanding of how value can be created through the construction process.

For the last decade, the industry has been sheltered by a healthy economy. This has enabled construction to prosper without having to strive for innovation. The current economic crisis is a perfect opportunity for us to think again. We can not afford to waste it.

Looking ahead, there are major challenges on the horizon. Most clients have already cut their long-term investment plans, and capital budgets will be at risk for many years to come as we anticipate a long period of recovery from the current recession. For Government, there is huge pressure to reduce public spending. But perhaps the greatest challenge is how we can deliver a built environment that supports the creation of a low carbon economy for the UK. So while there is no crisis yet in our industry, we are approaching a time when UK plc can no longer afford to build and maintain, the infrastructure capable of supporting our future needs as a society.

So what will make the industry change now when it has failed to do so before? We believe that an essential step is for suppliers, clients and Government to adopt a new vision for the industry based on the concept of the built environment. This means understanding how value is created over the whole life cycle of an asset, rather than simply looking at the building cost, which is only a part of the total equation. It is about how the relatively small up-front costs of design and construction can have such huge consequences for future users, whether expressed as business or social outcomes, as well as for the environment.

The impact of this vision is potentially immense for our industry. We need to abandon our existing business models that reward short-term thinking. Instead, we should incentivise suppliers to deliver quality and sustainability by taking a stake in the long-term performance of a built asset.

How will this be achieved? We believe that the era of client-led change is over, at least for the moment, and that it is now time for the supply side to demonstrate how it can create additional economic social and environmental value through innovation, collaboration and integrated working – in short, the principles outlined in Rethinking Construction. Clients should focus instead on professionalising their procurement
practices to reward suppliers who deliver value-based solutions.

Government, as a client, needs to understand the enlightened thinking that better and more intelligent designs improve patients’ recovery in hospitals and learning outputs in schools. So, rather than reduce the number of schools and hospitals being built, it must sponsor smarter and more productive solutions and reduce the amount of money wasted on the procurement process. For Government as a policy maker, the challenge is to create an environment that incentivises innovation and speeds up the modernisation process.

There are other stakeholders with a key role to play. We need an education and training system that promotes holistic learning across disciplines, so that industry professionals are equipped with an understanding of how better integration delivers value. We also need industry bodies and professional associations to cooperate better to represent our industry effectively to Government and the public.

Above all, we need leaders who can engage the public and key stakeholders about the ‘new value’ the built environment brings, who can engage employees to deliver the necessary changes and who can attract more talented people from a wider pool to work in our industry. If our present leaders do not feel up to the task, they should at least support the development of the next generation, who appear to understand very clearly what is needed.

Today saw OFT’s announcement of fines averaging 1.5% of turnover for around 100 companies caught in its two-year investigation of ‘bid rigging’. The coverage raised some interesting issues for me:

1. For once, the industry’s spokespeople did well. And much better than when the story first broke in April 2008. Specifically, I heard Stephen Ratcliffe, chief exec of the UK Contractors’ Group, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The BBC’s line was that the fines could have been 10%, so why weren’t they, considering the tax payer had been ripped off “in every case”. More of this in a minute…. But Stephen did a good job of putting across the contractors’ case, whilst reminding the interviewer that even the OFT had led by saying that only a handful of cases involved collusion, the others were the lesser matter of ‘cover pricing’, in order “to stay sweet with the client”, he said twice. A ‘sticky’ phrase, so good work. All in all, great to hear a good spokesperson for the industry on prime time radio, even if in a defensive mode.

2. Cover pricing. We all strongly condemn all anti-competitive practices. Such activity is entirely incompatible with best practice and achieving best value. And it was hardly Ratcliffe’s strongest point when he said that the industry had worked with the OFT to produce a new voluntary code of practice. What? We voluntarily agree not to rip off our clients?? However, cover pricing is, in part, a symptom of poor client practice and is facilitated both by lowest price tendering practices and also rigid prequalification ‘rotas’ in which bidders are fearful of not putting in a bid for fear of being excluded from future work. Our evidence is that lowest tender price doesn’t even deliver lowest outturn price, let alone best value, leading more often than not to claims and an outturn cost greater than the tender price – data shows anything between 20% and 25% on average. Where’s the good competition in that?

3. By the way, by definition there can be little evidence that cover pricing cost anyone any money. Remember they were trying to ensure they lost! We do not know what price the company who sought the cover would otherwise have derived for themselves. It is quite likely that it would have been higher than the other, real, bidders. Therefore it would be hard for any lawyers to justify advising their clients to sue past contractors, or losing bidders, or to blacklist any of those fined by the OFT.

4. Any client who thinks lowest tender price is always best is vulnerable to this sort of thing, as well as other stupidities. The much better approach is collaborative working. The selection of integrated project teams requires much greater rigour and scrutiny at selection and award stages than does lowest price tendering. Selecting lowest price is likely to create a process where collusion is possible. Any fool can bid lower than the next person – and all can count the cost later. Open book accounting, and other commercial techniques of collaborative working, when established at the outset and used during the bid stages and beyond, reduce the risk of cover pricing and forms of collusion. The other need is for a greater focus on the value side of the equation, understanding the outcomes that end users actually need from the project.

So, a dark day for the industry, especially those companies who were fined of course, but “every cloud…”, and if it adds to the case for systematic collaborative working, then all praise the OFT.

This is the first part of a two-parter on ethics in the built environment sector. This first part will look at where I believe the debate on ethics in the sector is currently while the second will start to reflect on particular ethical issues and determine how some of the great western philosophers would have considered them.

As those of you that have met me may know, my background is in philosophy, and specifically in ethics. I somehow ‘landed’ in construction around ten years ago. I have always described it as such deliberately as if I were somehow a visitor from another planet. And quite a distant one at that.

Over the last few years, however, ethical considerations have become more prominent in construction although the use of ethics as a term is still rare. Instead, moral judgements are ensconced in the language of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, fair payments, procurement, collaborative working and elsewhere. I would like to argue that, at present, the built environment sector is only addressing a limited part of the ethical agenda and that a significant widening of that agenda is required if construction can be considered as an industry that is behaving ‘morally’.

What struck me immediately when looking at our industry is that strong parallels exist between how ethical considerations of war and how an ethical framework for construction could be developed. This is not, by the way, because I’m suggesting that construction is inherently a battleground! We’ll have none of that reverting to type round here thank you. Just War Theory is traditionally divided into two main constituent parts. The first, Jus Ad Bellum, is concerned with the decision to go to war; the second, Jus In Bello, considers conduct once hostilities have started. The two areas are not interdependent, i.e. a just war can be fought unethically.

I would argue that the same holds true for construction and would like to posit that there should be a ‘Just Wall Theory’. (No groans at the back please. Trust me, it gets worse). At present, the discussions about ethical behaviours in construction largely consider what happens after a decision has been taken to construct - the Jus In Buildo stage if you will. (Told you). What is missing is consideration of that former stage – the question asked is “can we build it”, but not “should we”. This seems to chime with our view of the world – that there are some things that simply shouldn’t be built. I mean, can any of us really morally defend snow domes in Dubai?

If one agrees that in some cases the act of construction is in itself unethical it leads to the question of how we make that decision. I will move onto that discussion in Part 2 which will come at a later date.

In the meantime, for those of you within the sector that are interested in this topic, I would recommend you seek out Ethics for the Built Environment by Peter Fewings. I was delighted to be able to share a stage with Peter at last year’s Construction Ethics Symposium in Bristol, which I believe to be the first such event in the country. Hopefully more such events will take place in the future to take this debate forward.

By Don Ward

Building returned to this theme again following their interview with Steve Morgan, the new capital projects director at BAA, in their June 26 issue and the accompanying leader. Such was the postbag they received, headed by yours truly, that they then asked Stan Hornagold and I to debate the issue, a transcript of which appeared in the August 7 issue with another leader, this time entitled “Anyone for a free lunch?”.

I enjoyed the interview with Steven Morgan of BAA, and I have arranged to meet him to discuss his plans and our views, which will be really valuable. At the time I felt it was easy to misinterpret what he had to say about frameworks and collaborative working, and it certainly did not justify the leader “Is partnering dead?”. Frameworks are but one aspect of collaborative working, but too many people see them as a way of avoiding EU procurement process on every project, instead of realising the real benefit of the efficiency and cost improvements which come from the same team working together on successive projects – provided the process is well managed and there are stretching improvement targets in place. No-one should confuse this with negotiation or a soft touch, no-one from Egan onwards has advocated anything other than fierce competition. What we want is the right sort of competition, based on quality, trust and on whole life cost and value and which procures the whole team, instead of a lowest price bidding ‘game’ and a sequential risk dumping process down the supply chain.

So what’s next after frameworks for the public sector? Probably more frameworks, but manage them properly this time!

PS. The Building debate was also a useful reminder always to be precise in how you say things to the press. I got slightly misquoted in the heat of the debate, and managed to come across as lumping the (original version of) ProCure 21 in with poorly managed frameworks such as the OGC consultants’ framework, for which I apologise to ProCure 21, which is undoubtedly one of the better frameworks.