Part of the difficulty of the industry forging a more positive relationship with government is the absence of a single voice
Paul Morrell: I have a tinge of guilt about the fact that, having pointed to the overwhelming amount of reading that anybody who wants to get to grips with low carbon construction has to wade through, the Innovation and Growth Team Report added about another 250 pages. There is, however, an executive summary, and I would urge people to read it. The key points vary from sector to sector, but there are three high- level messages that cut across all three sectors. The first is about the problem of complexity, compounding the problem of the sheer amount of material involved, and the need for clarity – for all involved in setting policy and making plans to help the many different constituencies in the industry to chart their own path through relevant parts of the agenda. The second key message is about collaboration, and for the need for government and industry to work together so that policy is informed by the capacity and skills of the industry, and so that the industry has some visibility of how policy might shape the future business environment. And the third message relates to confidence – for market failure to be addressed so that building owners and occupiers are incentivised to become customers for commercial offers aimed at carbon reduction. Overarching all of these, and perhaps the clearest message
of all, is the need for a well laid plan – partly because that would be necessary to meet the commitments of the Climate Change Act, but also so that industry can lay its own plans for investment with reasonable confidence that there will be a market for their wares.
The Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team Report
ECA Today: The IGT report recommends that the industry, via a collaborative forum, should produce a tighter definition of precisely how an integrated supply chain should come together. How is this progressing? Paul Morrell: Progress is slow. It has been said a thousand times that part of the difficulty of the industry forging a more positive relationship with government is the absence of a single voice. I don’t actually think that’s the problem – but rather the absence of a coherent view of how an industry that is totally focused on its customers’ needs would look. One of the more depressing experiences of the first year in the job is to notice how often pitches made to the government by one part of the supply chain are effectively asking for government to sort out problems in the relationships within the supply chain itself. Having spent my life in a partnership, I recognise the phenomenon – but I also know that the answer has to be worked out within the supply chain, and not as an imposed solution. It is, therefore, time for the industry to ask itself whether it really wants to be integrated and, if so, who the integrator should be, and then to identify the practical steps that get us from where we are to where we should be. If it can’t sort itself out, then it is effectively asking customers to partner with a dysfunctional set- up, and it would be understandable if some customers decided that they would prefer the relative protection of an arm’s length relationship brokered through a competitive tendering process. I would add that I would regard that as a tragic waste of
opportunity; and looking more positively, there are propositions emerging that point the way towards integration, and which I hope can be developed further as part of the follow-up to
32 ECA Today March 2011
the IGT report. If we believe our own propaganda, then integration will increase competitiveness, and if that is so then once a few integrated teams have shown the way, the rest will have to follow to stay in business. In the meantime, I would suggest that the reason that
we’re lagging behind is because the industry is still waiting for its clients to deliver projects to integrated teams, rather than the other way round.
ECA Today: In your view, are the government’s carbon reduction targets achievable? Paul Morrell: Yes – particularly bearing in mind that we really only have one target now: an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050. Admittedly, the last part of that reduction is going to be really hard to secure, and we really don’t know how we’re going to do it yet, but the scale of innovation that has developed over the last 10 years or so gives wholly realistic grounds for believing that we can make it. This will, however, require a clear plan, and it will also involve the government pulling almost every lever at its disposal, and the industry showing that it has effective and affordable propositions to meet the needs of customers incentivised by those levers.
ECA Today: Are current measures to encourage young people to enter the construction industry sufficient? Paul Morrell: It’s a bit of an enigma this one, and it has been one for a very long time. On the one hand, even people working in the industry have tended to be fairly negative about it, referring to the uncertainty of workload, the adversarial nature of some of the relationships and time wasted in argument, associated restrictions on cash flow, working conditions that can sometimes be less than conducive, and so on. On the other hand, the vast majority of people that I meet in the industry would not choose to work in any other. There is, therefore, no single set of measures that will encourage young people to join. Rather, it is a case of working on all of those negatives, to persuade people that it can offer a secure career (and I have been saying for many years – recognising that almost everything that we do can be replicated in Asia at significantly lower cost – that plumbers and electricians will inherit the Earth); and to convey just some of our enthusiasm for the industry to those who might be attracted into it. We also have a new factor in play, which is the recognition
of the strategic importance of the industry to a low carbon economy. I think the opportunity to be involved in this, and to leave a responsible legacy behind, represents a terrific platform for recruitment.
ECA Today: Why do you think that there are so few women and ethnic minorities entering the industry? Paul Morrell: I think at least part of the reason lies in custom and culture. In my previous day job, there was a tradition in Asia of women coming into the profession, and about 60 per cent of our staff in Singapore were women – and in the offices in Asia, of course, Anglo Saxon males were the ethnic minority. By encouraging movement around the business internationally, we probably achieved a degree of diversity in the UK that wasn’t available to many; but there is no doubt that in the UK itself the industry draws less than
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