Industrial Strategy White Paper published
Her Majesty's Government has published its Industrial Strategy White Paper, the full text of which can be accessed by the following link:
The White Paper includes a number of references to construction, and policies that will be implemented to drive productivity improvements in the sector. Below is detailed the key sections relating to construction that have been included.
Capturing the Value of Ideas (p72) – the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
Transforming Construction, up to £170m
The way we create our buildings has not changed substantially in 40 years and needs a drastic overhaul if it is to deliver the buildings that the UK needs. Construction is currently expensive and too many buildings waste energy.
We need to transform construction so that we can create affordable places to live and work that are, safer, healthier and use less energy. By taking a lead in the UK, we can increase our ability to export. Global demand for efficient buildings is rising rapidly, driven by the pressures of urbanisation, affordability, and the need to cut emissions.
Infrastructure
Invest in Infrastructure to drive growth across the UK (p139)
To improve the productivity of construction, the Transforming Infrastructure Performance programme will use the power of government spending to help drive the adoption of modern methods of construction. This will build on the commitment made by five government departments to adopt a presumption in favour of offsite construction by 2019 across suitable capital programmes where this represents best value for money.
This will bring together government and industry to facilitate implementation of the Construction Sector Deal, including £170m of investment through the Industrial Strategy programme, Transforming Construction, which will support innovation and skills in the sector.
Construction Sector Deal (p197-8)
The government and the construction sector, through the Construction Leadership Council and with the leadership of Andrew Wolstenholme, have agreed a Sector Deal to transform the productivity of the sector benefiting the wider economy.
Construction is one of the largest sectors in the UK economy – with a turnover of £370bn, contributing £138bn in value added to the UK economy and employing 3.1 million people (9 per cent of the total UK workforce).
The deal will substantially boost the sector’s productivity, through greater investment in innovation and skills, creating new and well-paid jobs and maximising its export potential. This will also reduce the environmental impact, improve the efficiency and reduce whole life cost of new projects and buildings to help build the houses, schools, hospitals and major transport projects we need.
What is in the deal?
The deal, the first of a series government intends to negotiate with the construction sector, contains commitments to work collaboratively in three key areas:
Procuring for Value
The sector and the government will work to ensure construction projects across the public and private sectors are procured and built based on their whole life value, rather than just initial capital cost. The sector will aim to develop a procurement standard and work with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority to develop cost and performance benchmarks for assets and contractors and monitor outcomes including increased housing capacity, productivity and pre-manufactured value among other initiatives.
Industry-led Innovation
A joint commitment to invest in a transformative programme which brings together the construction, digital technology, manufacturing, materials and energy sectors to develop and commercialise digital and offsite manufacturing technologies. This will accelerate change in the infrastructure and construction sector, ensuring new technologies that can help deliver the government’s planned investments in infrastructure and our 2015 commitment to deliver a million homes by the end of 2020 and half a million more by the end of 2022 are commercialised as quickly as possible.
Skills for the Future
The construction sector, with support from the government, will work closely in the coming months to drive increased investment in skills development, whilst adopting a more strategic and coordinated approach to recruitment, and equipping workers with the skills that they will need for the future. This will be achieved through a joint commitment to implement reforms to the Construction Industry Training Board to make it more strategic and industry led, and to enable the sector to make best use of funding from the Apprenticeship Levy.
CIAT will be considering the Report, taking into account the key and critical place Architectural Technology has and will have; and its relevance and impact.
In setting some context of the launch, Professor Sam Allwinkle PPBIAT MCIAT, Past President of CIAT, commented:
'Alfred Bossom’s book Reaching for the Skies, published in 1934, was one of the first major criticisms of the standard of performance of the UK construction industry. Bossom was an architect who went to the USA in the early 20th century, where he was involved in the design of skyscrapers. This impressed on him that construction was a process like any other, and that if all the parties worked together it could be planned in advance and then carried out to an agreed schedule. He found that contractors in the USA were able to build faster than their counterparts in the UK, but at the same cost, and as a result they were more profitable and were able to pay higher wages. When he returned home, the deficiencies in the UK construction industry were obvious to him, and he became an advocate for change. He saw an adversarial and wasteful industry in which construction took too long, was too expensive and was not satisfactory for its clients. He wrote, ‘The process of construction, instead of being an orderly and consecutive advance down the line, is all too apt to become a scramble and a muddle.
'He also saw that this inefficiency impacted on the wider economy, writing, "All rents and costs of production throughout Great Britain are higher than they should be because houses and factories cost too much and take too long to build… Bad layouts add at least 15% to the production of the cotton industry. Of how many of our steel plants and woolen mills, and even our relatively up-to-date motor works, might not the same be said? The battle of trade may easily be lost before it has fairly been opened – in the architect’s design room."
'Similar criticisms have followed Reaching for the Skies, most notably; the Latham Report, Constructing the Team in 1994; The Egan Report, Rethinking Construction in 1998; the Government Construction Strategy in 2011 and Construction 2025, published in 2013 and the recent report.
'However, since Bossom, little has changed and if the UK industry is to achieve these ambitious targets there will need to be significant change in practices, behaviours and attitudes, industry reform with a new way of working and collaborating, increasing capability and capacity , investing and implementing research and innovation, benefiting from technology ,digital design and smart construction.
'A further report that we add to the pile, now in excess of ninety since Bossom? Or is it time to challenge and change ? Can we as an industry move from outdated practices and processes benefit from science and technology as other industries have done and at long last move to a new industrial revolution where optimisation of product and its performance are at the heart of what we do and benefit the economy, environment and society.
'Architectural Technology together with the use of technology will be central in addressing these challenges and the creation of modern professional design services and co-ordination, optimising construction processes, shrinking the delivery time of projects , improving client satisfaction and building performance. '
