Delivering greater value infrastructure, together

The last few years have been challenging for the infrastructure sector in Wales (and across the UK) for a number of reasons including the Covid19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the uncertainties caused by Brexit, and an increasing awareness of the impacts of climate change and the need to adapt or even stop what we’re currently doing. These impacts have manifested themselves in different ways across our sector with:

• inflationary pressures, not experienced at this level for decades, impacting investment and project budgets

• project risks being passed along supply chains with little regard for who is best placed to manage these risks –and increasingly less suppliers willing to take these risks on

• skills shortages impacting delivery with employers struggling to attract and retain new workers

• uncertainties over what “net zero” looks like making it hard to adapt to this “new” environment.

And amongst this somewhat chaotic mix of challenges we should not underestimate the impacts on the health and wellbeing of our workforces– clients, consultants and contractors alike.

But as ever, challenges such as these bring forward opportunities for change which, if we embrace them and deal with them head on, could mean a far more positive, inclusive and productive future for our sector – and far more satisfying for our workforces. A future based on adding value through what we do rather than a focus on confrontation, risk transfer and lowest price.

Each year CECA Wales, representing Wales’s civil engineering contractors, and ACE representing consulting engineers, meet at a joint conference with the County Surveyors Society (CSS) Cymru, who comprise senior local authority highways and environment managers. We share experiences, pool knowledge and develop solutions across public and private sectors for current key issues facing the infrastructure sector in Wales. Our 2022 conference considered how, as a whole sector working together, we can drive far greater value through what we deliver. We discussed the current state of the industry, the Construction Playbook and how it could lead us all towards greater value, what we really mean by “value” and how we can better define, measure and deliver this “value”. We looked at project risk and how its management is crucial to successfully delivering “value”, the behaviours that are most likely to lead to greater “value” and why our choice of procurement route is crucial to successfully delivering “value”. More specifically we agreed that carbon needs to be at the heart of our “value” definition and that social “value”, if applied sensitively, can help us to attract and develop our future workforce. Finally, we explored how the public and private sectors should work better, together to drive greater value, what we need to change to do things better and to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our workforces and what, if anything, is stopping us from introducing these changes.

We’ve captured the thoughts, views, concerns and observations of speakers and delegates in our “post-Conference” report and our Action Plan outlines how we can, practically, deliver greater value. We’ll be using this report to effect change across our sector. I’m sure many of the issues raised in this report will chime with you and I hope you’ll join us and play your part in delivering greater value to the citizens of Wales.

Ed Evans Director, Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) Wales