We are very excited to congratulate two of our CE West Midlands Awards 2024 winning projects for their wins at the Constructing Excellence National Awards 2024!
Huge Congratulations to Pulse Consult, Stratford-on-Avon District Council, Stratford Town Trust, Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP) (now Coventry City Council) for Stratford Riverside which won the Delivering Value Award and also to VINCI Building UK, Birmingham Airport, D5 Architects LLP, Cundall or their Next Generation Security Project, Birmingham Airport which won the Integration and Collaborative Working Award.
Three Winning Facts about the Stratford Riverside project:
1. Prioritising Stakeholders- Harnessing the opinions and support of a wide range of stakeholders and project partners was essential. Volunteers, business support, community groups, statutory bodies all came to the table, offered direct help to make it possible. Through the District Council’s central role and LEP support, something special was achieved.
2. Leveraging value- Unlike commercially driven projects, this had to drive value from every pound spent for the improvement of biodiversity, residents and visitors. This engendered genuine support and a will to achieve value.
3. Turning around 30 years of neglect- The majority of this site had unfortunately been neglected and left unmanaged for some 30 years. This project turned this around and set in motion a legacy fund created by biodiversity offset credits to fund the next 3 decades of planned maintenance.
Three Winning Facts about Next Generation Security Project – Birmingham Airport:
1. Collaborative processes fostered a one-team approach that championed client needs.
2. Coordination across disciplines bolstered successful delivery of this highly complex project, to programme and in a live operational environment.
3.Ongoing communication enabled delivery with zero impact to airport operations or customer experience.
Tributes continue to be paid to Lord John Prescott, a major figure in Labour politics and the former deputy prime minister, following his death at the age of 86.
Known for his blunt, no-nonsense style, and powerful left hook, Lord Prescott was Sir Tony Blair’s loyal deputy for 10 years after Labour’s 1997 general election landslide. His passing has prompted Martyn Jones to reflect on his impact on construction.
When Labour won power in 1997, he became deputy prime minister, as well as leading a vast department with responsibilities spanning the environment, transport, and the regions.
It was in these roles that he helped negotiate the landmark Kyoto climate change treaty – the Kyoto Protocol – adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005. It required 41 countries and the European Union to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5.2% below 1990 levels and setting us on the path to combating climate change.
But our focus here is on his role as the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) when he set up a Construction Task Force, chaired by Sir John Egan, to report on the scope for improving the quality and efficiency of UK construction. Their report published in 1998 significantly changed the lexicon and ways of working in much of the industry.
In formulating their proposals for change the Task Force studied the experiences gained at the cutting edge of construction and in other industries that had changed themselves in response to the emerging ICT techno-economic wave in the late 1980s early 90s. In doing so, this was, at the time arguably construction’s most explicit response to the opportunities presented by the new technologies and ways of working associated with the new wave.
They argued that continuous and sustained improvement was achievable if we focussed all our efforts on delivering the value that our customers need, and if we were prepared to challenge the waste and poor quality arising from our existing structures and working practices.
Their challenging targets, based on their own experience and evidence obtained from projects in the UK and overseas, included annual reductions of 10% in construction cost and time, and that defects in projects should be reduced by 20% per year.
Recommendations included radical changes to the processes through which projects were being delivered. They called for an integrated project process to add value around the key elements of focus on the customer, product development and implementation, partnering the supply chain, and production of components.
Sustained improvement should then be delivered through use of techniques for eliminating waste in our supply chains and increasing value for the customer, but they warned that if we were to achieve our full potential, substantial changes in our culture and structure were needed.
Clearly there have been significant moves by government and private clients to procure in ways that encourage collaborative working and foster partnering. And, it is generally considered that much of construction has become more efficient and safer for construction workers following the publication of the Egan report.
The report reenergised interest in offsite manufacturing, Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA), an engineering methodology aimed at optimising the efficiency of manufacturing and assembly processes.
The change agenda was driven by several organisations including the Reading Construction Forum, Design Build Foundation, Construction Best Practice Programme, Movement for Innovation (M4I), Rethinking Construction, Be, Constructing Excellence, Construction Clients’ Group, all of which united under the Constructing Excellence umbrella.
Despite these changes and efforts, it is fair to say that the values and principles set out in the report have not been entirely embraced by the industry. Ten years after publication of the report, Sir John stated: ‘…we have to say we’ve got pretty patchy results. And certainly, nowhere near the improvement we could have achieved, or that I expected to achieve…. I guess if I were giving marks out of 10 after 10 years, I’d probably only give the industry about four out of 10’
Some quarter of a century later, how are we now doing in relation to Egan’s values, targets, and strategies for improvement? And how relevant are these in meeting today’s challenges and opportunities? One of Lord Prescott’s mantras might be helpful here: “Traditional values in a modern setting.”
Applying this mantra means taking Egan’s values and principles (maybe with some tweaking) and applying them with renewed vigour but in the context or setting of the new wave, with its shift away from fossil fuels to a green economy; new technologies including renewable energy production and storage; the deployment of AI; along with new structures and cultures and ways of conducting business such as business ecosystems. And in doing so also helping to meet the government’s aspirations to build 1.5 million homes and replace our ageing and increasingly decrepit infrastructure.
