Construction project management specialists, Copronet says the construction industry must work together rather than against each other
‘Trade without trust’, this was the excellent headline in a recent article published by The Economist on the subject of the Huawei fiasco. But I actually thought that it was a headline that was very appropriate for describing the UK construction industry.
Another week brings yet another story about a main contractor allegedly withholding cash from struggling subcontractors in order to bolster their balance sheet – this time the accusation is levelled at Galliford Try, who defended themselves by saying that they are “committed to maintaining collaborative relationships with our supply chain and subcontractors”.
Do we have to accept that all of this talk about collaboration is just nonsense? What a tragedy that would be. Construction is the largest industry in the world but still we don’t seem able to get our act together:
- Clients worry about collusion and a lack of transparency in the tendering process
- Main contractors rely on change orders to bolster their profitability
- Subcontractors feel that they are being played off against each other
- Subcontractors feel that they are used as cheap bank funding by their employers.
The construction industry is littered with inefficiencies:
- Enormous wastage of time and money on tendering processes
- Duplication and repetition in the design process because specialists are not engaged sufficiently early
- Reworking caused by inefficient sharing of the correct information at the right time
- And on it goes.
McKinsey estimated that we could boost our industry by $1.6tn each year by working more collaboratively and embracing digital solutions. To appreciate just how much that is I want to write it out as number –
$1,600,000,000,000
So, in essence, that is how much money our industry is wasting each year by not working smarter. Come on – let’s work together rather than against each other. At Copronet, we are committed to making the industry fairer and more efficient. Are you?
