NEWS EXTRA TAKEAWAY TIME


Oliver Stanley picks out some of the key points from the Guest Speakers at the BMF Members Day Conference.


James Cleverly MP


Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and former foreign secretary


construction businesses involved, because they believe that our builders build best.


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Thank you builders’ merchants, your sector disproportionally supports small and medium sized enterprises in the UK, the spine of the UK economy.


There is for admiration the UK construction industry on the world stage. The ‘lazy builder’ stereotype is a caricature that only we believe. In Qatar, in the run-up to the FIFA World Cup, they were desperate to get British


Internationally, Britain has a reputation for working round problems. We may call it ‘bodging it’, but the bottom line is, we have a reputation for figuring out how to get stuff done.


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We should embrace this reputation for flexability and adaptability. We are seeing a less predictable world, and we need to try and be as flexible as possible, because predicting is hard, adapting is better.


Having flexability in your business is an important function, but when margins are tight, that is hard.


Hemming you in whether through taxation, regulation,


or bureaucracy, makes you less adaptable and therefore creates a risk in the UK economy.


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When talking to those who represent you, to the Government, remind them that limiting your agility could stifle the very thing they seek to deliver.


If the Government are to deliver the 1.5 million homes, they need to commit to make it happen.


I will tell the Government that what they must do is unlock


the sector. 10


Kate Richardson-Walsh Olympic Gold and Bronze Medal winning Team GB hockey player


women had their dream made, but there were also 10 women on that pitch who had their hearts broken, and yet we were all there together.


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Over the time I played international hockey, I became obsessed with people and with teams. We have got to look after our people, and work together with our teams.


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On the run up to the 2012 Olympics, I remember looking to my side, and seeing all my teammates picking each other up, giving each other encouragement to go again. I had this overwhelming sense of pride and belonging to this group of women.


With three weeks to go, we had already had selection. 16


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Everybody had value, everybody had worth, and everybody had a role, even after some of them had had their hears broken. That says everything about that group, and the culture that we built.


When we won bronze against New Zealand, in the corner of the stadium we saw eight of those women in the stands, and we knew, as did they, that the only reason we had that medal was because of the effort of them.


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We aligned ourselves around our coach, around that vision of gold, and importantly, we started to talk about behaviours. We called them our gold medal standards. It centred around one simple question. Would a gold


October 2025 www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net medallist do that? 7


After the Olympics, there was change in goals, change in leadership, and we didn’t manage that change well. We were not respectful of the lessons that had come before. We built ourselves up again, but we did not talk about behaviours


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If the culture is toxic, it is down to all of us every day, we needed to draw a line in the sand, we needed to heal. Rebuilding that culture was hard work.


We centred ourselves around having a bit more wisdom, a bit more inspiration, healthier competition, and knowing your own Super strengths, and the strength of your teammates.


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It still lights a fire in my heart in my chest, standing here in front of you, and if this sparks something in you, and if it helps your team thrive, that’s the good stuff to me.


The ingredient that is most in the hands of the government Is the taxation/ regulation environment. If the Government can change that, then you as a sector will be able to deliver.


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I thought I knew about building multi billion-pound projects until I worked on Heathrow Terminal Five. That’s when I really learned how to do it. When I went to work on London 2012, we used what we learned on Terminal Five. We did the basics, and we did them very well.


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We made sure that we go the supply chain properly paid. We were paying the bills from our supply chain in 18 days, that was a Government commitment.


In the time I was CEO at Mace, we took the business from a $1bn business to a £2.6bn business, employing 8,000 people.


I am only a custodian of the business. I am here to make sure that it has a long-term future.


Our projects tend to be over £100m in value, but I guarantee that every one of them will rely on you and your businesses every day.


100,000 people join the construction sector, 30,000 of them actually get a job and a long-term career. What happens to the 70,000? They dissipate and go elsewhere.


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We do not have an attraction problem we have an absorption problem.


We need everyone to be the voice of industry to promote our opportunities.


Support the transition to net zero, help build greater resilience and drive a circular economy.


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Increase access and availability of the digital tools to drive productivity, reduce waste and enable greater efficiency gains


13 Mark Reynolds


Executive chairman of Mace Group and co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC)


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