David Emery, consultant at the Supply Chain Sustainability School, discusses his research into the effects on mental health and wellbeing of offsite construction, and how the construction industry can lift its workforce up, instead of wearing them down
Emirates or EasyJet? Rolls-Royce or Reliant Robin? Gucci or George at Asda?
Fundamentally, all airline passengers enjoy a similar experience, departing from and arriving at the same airports, flying in largely identical planes at around the same speed and altitude. Yet some passengers choose to pay massively higher prices than others.
Similarly, our cars travel the same roads at roughly the same speeds and are subject to the same traffic laws. The average motorist travels little more 20 miles per day, so what makes a buyer spend more than £100,000 instead of less than £20,000 to move such short distances? The conclusion is that “value” has many definitions, and “good value” may look different to each of us.
In the early years of my long career in construction, it was easy to define value: I never saw a tender that wasn’t simply lowest price wins. Today, the industry balances many criteria in determining its procurement strategies and contractors are asked to provide – and evidence – multiple benefits beyond just low price, such as legislative, environmental, social, technical and so on.
Benefits to mental health and wellbeing of offsite construction
But during my research for an MSc in Offsite Housing Construction, I believe I’ve identified another benefit that construction could – indeed should! – deliver, and that is making decisions that can improve the mental health of the workforce.
From my many experiences in both traditional and offsite projects, I had felt that offsite construction delivered a form of value through enhanced project certainty.
For example, costs were less likely to vary, the programme was more likely to be achieved, defects would be reduced, and so on.
Simultaneously, having worked with many site managers over the years, I’d developed an appreciation of the breadth of their responsibilities, as well as the stressors they experienced, especially when dealing with problems!
Therefore, for my dissertation I asked whether if “offsite” really did deliver project certainty, would that bring consequential positive benefits to the wellbeing of those responsible for delivering those projects?
The answer, I believe, is yes.
But why should we be wondering whether a site manager is enjoying his or her day?
To answer that question, we must acknowledge the potential harm that workers in construction are exposed to. They risk not only physical injury but also harm to their mental health and wellbeing and, while we go to great lengths to prevent workers physically injuring themselves, our approach to supporting their mental health is sometimes less clear cut.
This is not to criticise the industry in any way; indeed, I found great examples of processes for ensuring staff had mental health support. But construction workers suffer disproportionally from mental ill health compared with the general population and sufferers often exhibit poor behaviours such as alcohol or substance abuse.
These behaviours can occur away from the workplace and hence can affect their families, friends and wider society.
In economic terms, the annual cost of poor mental health runs to billions of pounds of losses.
But perhaps the most shocking statistic is that we lose an average of two construction workers a day to suicide.
Mental health and wellbeing of offsite construction: The data
My research revealed ample quantitative data about the incidences of mental ill health, including specific information about mental health in construction.
However, testing my proposition that offsite construction brought about an improvement in site managers’ wellbeing required me to carry out my own research, in the form of semi-structured interviews. The results – although qualitative rather than quantitative – were unanimous.
All interviewees were senior site managers, experienced in delivering both traditional construction and offsite construction solutions. They were unequivocal in their belief that offsite construction did indeed deliver project certainty and that this did indeed result in fewer stressors.
Talking about his offsite project, one site manager said: “The beauty of this job is I can go home and put my feet up and I’m not worried about it because I know everything’s in place. It is a dream job for a site manager.”
So, the question that arises is this: if you are in any way involved with the commissioning of new buildings or infrastructure, how will you assess any tenders? What value will you apportion to an offsite solution that has the potential to reduce the stressors on the delivery team?
Would you be comfortable choosing the ‘traditional’ solution that is shown to be more likely negatively to affect the workforce’s mental wellbeing?
Construction is experiencing a diminution of the workforce that is unsustainable. We must halt this decline and create new and exciting careers to attract future generations.
An industrialised construction industry, factory, rather than site-based, will be accessible to more people, will offer long-term careers instead of project-based opportunities, will provide a safe working environment and so on.
Will we make future procurement decisions that could lift our workforce up, or will we continue to wear them down?
