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CHAPTER 2
Our Ambition for UK Construction

Drivers of Change

17. We have looked at what has driven manufacturing and service industry to achieve these radical changes. We have identified a series of fundamentals to the process which we believe are just as applicable to construction as to any other business concern. These are:

• committed leadership: this is about management believing in and being totally committed to driving forward an agenda for improvement and communicating the required cultural and operational changes throughout the whole of the organisation.

  In construction, there is no part of the industry which can escape this requirement: it affects constructors, suppliers and designers alike. The Task Force has met many managers of companies in the construction industry over the last few months and, while many wish to improve company performance, we have yet to see widespread evidence of the burning commitment to raise quality and efficiency which we believe is necessary;

• a focus on the customer: in the best companies, the customer drives everything. These companies provide precisely what the end customer needs, when the customer needs it and at a price that reflects the product's value to the customer. Activities which do not add value from the customer's viewpoint are classified as waste and eliminated.

  In the Task Force's experience, the construction industry tends not to think about the customer (either the client or the consumer) but more about the next employer in the contractual chain. Companies do little systematic research on what the end-user actually wants, nor do they seek to raise customers' aspirations and educate them to become more discerning. The industry has no objective process for auditing client satisfaction comparable with the 'JD Power survey' of cars or the 'Which' report. We think clients, both public sector and private sector, should be much more demanding of construction;

• integrate the process and the team around the product: the most successful enterprises do not fragment their operations - they work back from the customer's needs and focus on the product and the value it delivers to the customer. The process and the production team are then integrated to deliver value to the customer efficiently and eliminate waste in all its forms.

  The Task Force has looked for this concept in construction and sees the industry typically dealing with the project process as a series of sequential and largely separateoperations undertaken by individual designers, constructors and suppliers who have no stake in the long term success of the product and no commitment to it. Changingthis culture is fundamental to increasing efficiency and quality in construction.

• a quality driven agenda: Quality means not only zero defects but right first time, deliveryon time and to budget, innovating for the benefit of the client and stripping out waste, whether it be in design, materials or construction on site. It also means after-sales care and reduced cost in use. Quality means the total package- exceeding customer expectations and providing real service.

  The industry rightly complains about the difficulty of providing quality when clients select designers and constructors on the basis of lowest cost and not overall value for money. We agree. But it must understand what clients mean by quality and break the vicious circle of poor service and low client expectations by delivering real quality.

• commitment to people: this means not only decent site conditions, fair wages and care for the health and safety of the work force. It means a commitment to training and development of committed and highly capable managers and supervisors. It also means respect for all participants in the process, involving everyone in sustained improvement and learning, and a no-blame culture based on mutual interdependence and trust.

  In the Task Force's view much of construction does not yet recognise that its people are its greatest asset and treat them as such. Too much talent is simply wasted, particularly through failure to recognise the significant contribution that suppliers can make to innovation. We understand the difficulties posed by site conditions and the fragmented structure of the industry, but construction cannot afford not to get the best from the people who create value for clients and profits for companies.

18. We believe that these fundamentals together provide the model for the dramatic improvements in performance that UK construction must achieve if it is to succeed in the 21st century. Among many leading clients and construction companies this model is already being turned into reality, and is beginning to deliver dramatic improvements in the efficiency and quality of construction. We want to see this progress accelerated and spread to the rest of the industry and its clients.

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