Five minutes five things

five minutes : five things

Does the Construction Industry need to transform?

Yes:

• One: The world is changing faster than ever before

Consider just one of the global megatrends shaking up the construction industry: the population of the world’s urban areas is increasing by 200,000 people per day, all of whom need affordable housing as well as social, transportation and utility infrastructure.

•

Two: The construction industry lags behind all other leading manufacturing by at least 21% in productivity terms. The industry has stood still.

Our built environments are still by and large produced with methods in use for 50 years. As an industry Construction and Engineering has been too slow to innovate, has weak training and it’s image is poor As a result there is huge skill shortage of the kind of right brains in the industry.

The WEF advises 1% increase in construction and engineering output would create 10 billion dollars of additional capital for investment into our global and national economies each year.

•

Three: There is a trillion dollar annual market shortfall in the supply of built infrastructure.

This lack of infrastructure holds back our global economies, societies and communities.

The construction industry has a moral imperative to change in order to meet this shortfall and deliver social and economical change. Major projects have a massive role to play in this. Yet our world population is growing (ageing and new-born) rapidly creating pressure on global financial resource.

• Four: Sustainability: Our world’s natural resources are running out and our global economies cannot afford to waste them.

Construction and engineering is the biggest single user of global steel output. The UK construction sector currently uses 460 million tonnes of material per year. 120 million tonnes are this is waste.

To this amount we must also add, lost and embodied energy. Our built assets also require greater resilience against climate change A more efficient, smarter, radically-improved highly productive industry must emerge to do more with less and for longer.

If change is needed, what is Government's role in this change?

• Five: People, Policy & Process: As both a regulator and a major client the govt. too needs to take action

The industry is very much affected by politics and regulation and thus needs to optimize its relations with the public sector. Govt. must also evolve its own processes, in some cases perhaps radically in order ensure transformation can occur. Other major industries have had their disruptive moment, Henry Ford, the Internet, the global financial crash. IT. The construction industry has not.

The disruptive moment waiting to occur for the engineering and construction industry perhaps might stem from government and from new policy events. These events should both create the new space for the industry to evolve so as to efficiently and economically serve the needs of its citizens, and also to take up the opportunities in emerging technologies, data systems and new materials. Then the industry can be tooled up by policy to engage with the new markets and new challenges that face it.

I’d like to end on a positive note and agree with the World Economic Forum View view that the industry does have the potential to transform within its grasp. We must make sure policy government creates helps it to do so.

Thank you.

This ends my short presentation. I have also prepared a series of evolved notes to act as resource to support further conversation.

Both this presentation and these notes  have been published on www. Issuu.com at 10am this morning and are available for your future reference, download and comments. www.Issuu.com Five minutes five things.

Michael Cant FRSA