From industry collaboration and responding to a shared sense of collective responsibility to learning the lessons of the past, displaying the right behaviours now will set the tone for recovery.
Shortly after lockdown, construction faced a real crisis. More than just the challenge of shut-down sites and jammed supply chains, the general public did not think that construction work was permitted, that sites were safe or should stay open. Some workers were subjected to abuse, and delivery trucks were prevented from getting to their destinations. Construction was in the news for all the wrong reasons.
For a short time, our industry was at risk of losing trust. Rather than proudly promoting the vital work that was being delivered - the highways, homes and hospitals - we were explaining things that didn’t look right. It took a lot of determined effort by the industry as a whole, convened by the CLC task group and industry bodies, to regain the initiative – through clearer messaging from government, the development of safe working standards and promotion of best practice.
Reputation is everything
The reason why I highlight the site safety crisis and bracket it with pride in the sector is that it highlights a wider reputational issue for the industry. Construction work takes place fully in the public eye, and the public deserve to be assured that construction will do the right thing. As we plan for recovery – we must also plan to be doing the right thing commercially.
In the short term, this means paying on time, cascading money through the supply chain and keeping people employed and projects going. In the longer term this could involve rethinking the balance of risk in contracts or guarding against toxic commercial practice triggered by a drop in workload. If we fall short on either managing healthy sites or ensuring the sector’s health, we will spend more time explaining the poor behaviours rather than celebrating the sector’s contribution to the recovery.
Construction must not repeat past mistakes
Judging by previous downturns, the odds are stacked against sound commercial practice. Many will recall dubious tactics on all sides after the 2008 crash and will be hoping that the same mistakes aren’t repeated. Incomplete design work, uneconomic bidding, under-resourced teams and unfair risk transfer all created deep-seated problems, heightened by an all-pervasive, aggressive conflict culture.
Could we really be proud of what we did, even if it did save businesses and deliver projects? Surely the cost was too high?
Instinctively we know that not doing the right thing came at a significant cost to the sector: the loss of jobs and businesses; the erosion of margins and balance sheets and the loss of trust throughout the industry. One result is that the sorting out of issues as diverse as payment, training and even the sharing of digital models has been made much harder during the recovery.
How should we shape recovery?
As sites restart and as projects are bid, we will start to make the thousands of individual decisions that will shape the character of the recovery. If we make the right choices, doing the right thing, then the industry has a much better chance of coming out of the COVID-19 crisis with the capacity it needs to deliver essential investment.
However, making these choices will be difficult, not only because they will be made by individual businesses, but also because they could involve big compromises in sharing both pain and gain. Organisations may choose to accelerate payment or to reset the risk transfer in a contract. Alternatively, they may opt not to.
As a rule of thumb, if the consequence of the choice is ‘winner takes all’, it probably won’t be the right choice.
Working collectively to make us proud of our industry
So where does pride and industry reputation come into this?
As I have worked with the Construction Leadership Council Task Group over the last few weeks, I have seen key parts of the industry, including clients and the supply chain, come together like never before to convene an effective response to the crisis. From the development of the Site Operating Procedures and a key statement on payment to a joined-up industry ask to government, the Task Group has presented a positive and united front.
We have seen this collective response to the crisis being played out right across our industry. From construction’s high-profile role in the delivery of the Nightingale Hospitals all around the UK – and we are honoured to be involved in delivering three in Birmingham, Harrogate and Cardiff – to our work collaborating with over 40 organisations across our industry, including Network Rail, CBRE, Laing O'Rourke, and Mace, to collate thousands of PPE items urgently needed by the NHS, we are all demonstrating that we are making a difference and can take pride in what we do.
As we look to the next stage of the crisis, we need to take that sense of pride a step further, channelling it to build a sense of collective responsibility for the health of the industry. If pride in construction encourages firms to pay their bills on time and clients to manage contract terms fairly, to think of the future as well as the present, then we will be doing the right thing, and in doing so, we will be setting up ourselves properly for recovery.
Doing the right thing won’t be easy. It may cost more, and it will almost certainly involve difficult compromises. However, the outcomes are likely to be much better for the team, the project and the sector. We can protect our industry if we all do the right thing. Looking after our sector’s health will be something that we really can be proud of.
A version of this viewpoint was published by Building on 27 April 2020.