Gowling WLG have kindly shared with us some of their podcasts that they think would be especially of interest to our members. They focus mainly on Sustainability and the Building Safety Act.
Please take a look at some of the titles below and click on the links to listen.
- The latest podcast in our ‘How we live Sustainably…’ series, titled ‘How we live… Sustainably: Environment Bank’. This episode discusses the role Biodiversity Net Gain plays in sustainability and how the recent Environment Act has impacted the building industry.
- A new podcast on ‘How we live… Safely’ which takes a closer look at the Building Safety Act, which received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022 and comes into force this week (28 June 2022).
- Gowling’s newly launched playbook, ‘The Language of Leadership: Six Lessons from the Changing Room to the Boardroom’ aims to connect the power of sport to business in a new way and examines the language sportspeople use for clues to their success.
One of UK construction’s most recognised executives has been chosen to succeed Andy Mitchell as the new Co-Chair of the Construction Leadership Council.
Following an open recruitment process, an independent panel comprising industry, members of the CLC’s Senior Advisors Group and Government officials, recommended Mark Reynolds (Mace Group Chairman and CEO) to lead the CLC in partnership with Lee Rowley MP (BEIS Minister for Industry).
The panel also recommended Richard Robinson (CEO, Atkins UK and Europe) for the newly created Deputy Co-Chair role. Mr Reynolds has played a key leadership role in the CLC in recent years, including jointly chairing its People & Skills work stream; and co-ordinating its response to the Covid pandemic. As a member of CLC’s Steering Co-Ordination Group, he shaped the CLC’s 2022 Strategy with its focus on Construct Zero, Building Safety, meeting the skills challenge, and implementing the Construction Playbook. He also chairs the Government’s Construction Skills Delivery Group. Mr Reynolds will be building on the four CLC priorities as he officially takes on the role today- 23 June 2022
Mr Reynolds commented: “I am delighted to take on this exciting co-chair role following the great work by Andy over the last four years. During that time, I have seen first-hand how the CLC can
make a real difference for companies across the whole of the industry”. “We have faced – and continue to face – challenges that no one organisation can tackle on its own,
such as the cost of inflation and impact of rising energy prices; global supply chain pressures and ensuring our collective progression to Net Zero. I am also very pleased to be working with Richard
Robinson, CEO for Atkins UK and Europe, on this agenda; who will strengthen our collective leadership and capacity in his role as Deputy Co-Chair.” “The CLC, working in partnership with Government, provides crucial leadership to the sector. We do this most effectively where we speak to, and for, all parts of industry. Whilst I will continue the
CLC’s focus on its four priorities, I would like to engage and listen to the wider industry over the summer to ensure we continue to deliver on the issues that matter most to us as a sector. I
want to take this opportunity to encourage organisations across construction to get involved with
the CLC’s work.”
Commenting on the appointment, Construction Minister Lee Rowley MP said: “It’s a pleasure to welcome Mark as the new chair of the CLC. He’s been a key part of the Council in recent years,
helping coordinate the industry’s Covid response, as well as supporting job creation in his role with the Construction Skills Delivery Group.
Mark will play a vital role in the months and years ahead as we work to decarbonise the industry through Construct Zero, support it through the Building Safety Act’s introduction, and deliver the
first sector-wide skills plan for construction. I would also like to pay tribute to Andy Mitchell for his outstanding leadership to date, which puts the CLC in a strong position to keep delivering for the sector.” Outgoing chair Andy Mitchell said: “The CLC is in a great position to lead industry transformation, working together to overcome any issues that may affect companies nationwide. I am delighted that Mark will be driving forward the Council’s agenda, and look forward to seeing the outputs of its work in the future”.
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Their UK Construction Industry Forecast 2022-2023 paints a positive picture for construction over the next two years.
Despite disruptions, the sector’s rebound is still on track with the value of underlying project starts set to rise 7% in 2022 and by a further 5% in 2023.
This 34-page report is a must-read for anyone looking for expert and dependable insight into the opportunities and threats that will face all sectors of the construction industry over the next two years.
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UWE have been working on a project with Costain, Network Rail, Highways England and other partners to simplify the complex business of bringing large assemblies and modules onto site at the right time, minimising storage and simplifying lorry routing. The BIM software we’ve created also helps to track embodied carbon for compliance with Part Z regulations.
The software isn’t yet quite ready for use in live projects, but we’re seeking feedback from potential users before we commit to further development.
There’s some information about the software here https://advanced-logistics.co.uk/home and we have a quick demo available.
Could you spare 10 minutes via Teams or Zoom to give us your opinion?
Please contact: Helen.Baker@uwe.ac.uk who will get in touch to set up the demo.
TIES Advanced logistics project is a state-of-the-art advanced logistics system based on digital twin technology to revolutionise modern methods of construction and improve productivity. We are team of researchers at UWE Bristol, led by Professor Lamine Mahdjoubi investigating four key areas that can improve efficiency and quality within the construction industry: artificial intelligence data mining, advanced logistics, conversational artificial intelligence and quality assurance.
The Green Construction Advisory Panel at Exeter College is creating a pack of Top Trumps. This will consist of around 30-40 young professionals in construction across a range of varying roles. The aim of this is to showcase the large variety of job options that are available within our industry.
These Top Trumps will then be sent off for printing and issued to schools in the South West to try and encourage young people to consider a career in construction. They are looking for around 40 people.
If you are interested, please can you respond to Olivia olivia.moorey@coreusgroup.com with your name, role, company and email.
This is an initial sign up to the project which is very flexible as the organisers are hoping to work around anyone that is keen to sign up in order to get a variety of as many roles as possible and they understand that everyone has very different schedules.
We do hope that you will be interested in taking part.
Does it no longer match the purpose and desired project outcomes of enlightened clients? Or are reports of its demise greatly exaggerated? And have the substantial headwinds we now face given it a new lease of life? This month, Martyn Jones examines the current proposition that while T, C and Q are still of course vital criteria, they are not the only ways in which long-term value can, or indeed should, be measured – if we are to overcome present headwinds and transform the industry.
There are important project outcomes beyond the T, C and Q, including the health, safety and wellbeing of the end-users of our buildings and their constructors. But there are others too including the need to add longer-term value to our built assets, particularly with regard to tackling climate change, and reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption, which are all too often relegated to the lower levels of the list of project priorities – or indeed overlooked altogether.
Will the lure of the short-term, lowest-cost approach now be seen as even more attractive to clients and their advisers given the breath-taking rises in supply chain costs. But beware, we know of course that adopting a lowest-cost procurement strategy comes with huge risks: the biggest being that clients end up with a facility that doesn’t meet their longer-term desired outcomes. Every week of the Grenfell inquiry vividly exposes how cost-driven solutions can negatively impact on the client, cause grief to end-users, and loss of reputation for the whole supply chain downstream of the developer. And there are repercussions for the wider institutional and regulatory framework too. In short, too many lowest-cost projects fail to deliver their full potential and harbour future risks created by the systematic ‘devaluing’ of desired project outcomes.
That’s why the Construction Innovation Hub has created the ‘Value Toolkit’: an initiative which looks to transform the way our sector thinks about, measures, and articulates value. It offers a richer definition of what constitutes value, going beyond the deployment of the Time, Cost, Quality Triangle in the conventional design and construction phase, to address the whole lifecycle of a facility and to understand its overall lifetime worth.
The Value Toolkit is heralded as offering clients and their advisers seismic shift, a gamechanger in their procurement strategies, which will move the sector from being cost-focused to value-driven, with benefits for society generally but also driving a new culture of competence and professionalism. The argument is that those who use the Value Toolkit, particularly in conjunction with the Construction Playbook and digital solutions, will be better able to understand and unlock additional value currently buried in projects, reduce risks, and give all project partners a significant competitive advantage.
The proponents of the Toolkit argue it will help deliver more cohesive and intelligent value-based decisions across the design and construction process. It offers a framework to help clients and their advisers to work collaboratively to develop a unique Value Profile for a project or programme, enabling them and their stakeholders to articulate what is important to them and to translate these into measurable project outcomes.
Will it work? Or will it be set back by current difficult headwinds and we continue to use the old T C Q Triangle all too often skewed towards lowest price? Clearly the headwinds we face, such as disrupted supply chains and hikes in material and energy costs, are far from helpful. And there’s our history to overcome too. We’ve seen a raft of change initiatives in the past – Latham, Egan, Jones and Saad, Wolstenholme, Farmer – that were heralded as gamechangers, which have not yet resulted in the transformation that was foreseen at the time.
That’s why there is still much work for CESW to do, particularly through our Theme Groups, in supporting clients and their advisers in using the Value Toolkit alongside the commercial best practices set out in the Construction Playbook, and our forthcoming publication, Enlightened Clients’ Guide to Quality.
When I opened the October 2021 newsletter, I was the newly appointed chair of Generation for Change South West (“G4CSW”), a sub-group of CESW. I used this opportunity to introduce G4CSW, and briefly explain our strategy and its aims. Hopefully by now you are familiar with our key agenda item: to help address the diminishing labour supply in the construction and engineering industry.
I’d like to open this July 2022 newsletter, therefore, with a quote from a recent product availability statement issued by the CLC: “price inflation and a diminishing labour supply are now of greater concern than product availability in most construction sectors”. It’s excellent to see key players in the industry also turn their gaze to the issue of the diminishing labour supply, particularly given the challenging landscape the industry has been navigating as a result of (multiple) unforeseen crises.
Although we cannot take credit for CLC’s prioritisation of this issue, I’m going to use this opening statement to update you on the fantastic progress G4CSW has made over the last 9 months:
- Podcast series: We have released 13 podcasts, where we have interviewed inspirational individuals in the industry about their passion and the vast range of roles (and career routes) available. We want these podcasts to reach teachers, learners/students and parents, to help learners/students make an informed decision about the career opportunities available in the ever changing the world we live in. We are collating a list of schools/colleges throughout the South West who we can share the podcast series with, and so if you have any direct contacts we can add to this list please let me know.
- Future Skills Theme Group: CESW re-jigged its theme groups earlier this year to include the Future Skills theme group. The Future Skills theme group has aims aligned with G4CSW. We attended the first 2 theme group meetings to discuss the agenda for the group, and we look forward to working with everyone involved.
- Constructing the future report: We helped produce the Constructing the Future report (link: New construction report reveals how to breathe new life into ageing industry – Constructing Excellence SW). The report looks at the current recruitment problem within the industry (and its aging workforce), and the barriers which discourage young people from pursuing a career in the industry. The report contains several recommendations to help encourage the next generation to get involved with the industry, which G4CSW are helping to implement.
- Breakfast events: We have hosted 2 breakfast networking events in Bristol and Gloucester. The aim of these events was to spread the word of G4CSW, discuss our strategy and agenda, and establish a ‘pool’ of G4CSW contacts who we can call upon to assist with careers events at schools/colleges etc. We have 2 more breakfast events planned in Exeter and Truro this year. Our plan is to roll out more regular networking events simultaneously across the South West next year.
- Existing initiatives: We have been researching existing initiatives in the South West who are already working hard to address the diminishing labour supply. We have begun to team up with them on events. For example, our G4CSW contacts will be presenting their projects to a large group of students at the Battle of the Builds event in Exeter on 15 July 2022. Our G4CSW contacts will also be taking part in the Green Construction Panel’s pack of ‘Top Trumps’.
If you have any young professionals in your business who would be interested in becoming a G4CSW contact, whether that is to attend our networking events or take part in careers events with students/learners, they can sign up using the following form: G4C South West Sign-Up Form (office.com). We suggest they follow us on social media as well: Twitter (@G4Csw), LinkedIn (@G4C South West) and Instagram (@g4csw).
Myself and my committee are also more than happy to discuss G4CSW direct if anyone has any specific questions.
Hopefully by next time I am asked to update you, we will have even more good news to share!
