Tag Archives: Open Data

New SkillsPlanner Intelligence Briefing

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SERIO 3rd briefing

Keeping SkillsPlanner stakeholders updated on key developments, Plymouth University’s SERIO applied research unit is producing a series of intelligence briefings covering construction skills in industry and government. SERIO’s third briefing (PDF – will open in new tab) is now available in our media section, along with the first (published in February 2016 – post) and second (July 2016 – post).

Written in clear, non-academic English, these briefings are intended to inform and engage our audiences with our ongoing R&D project. The latest looks at four topics:

Apprenticeship Levy: In August 2016 the government released further details concerning the specifics of the Apprenticeship Levy. This includes a 90% apprenticeship training co-investment from government for non-levy paying businesses; and the introduction of 15 funding bands that will cap the maximum price government will co-invest towards the cost of each apprenticeship.

Further Education Provision: The findings from a panel chaired by Lord Sainsbury into the ‘over-complex’ technical and professional qualification environment have been released, alongside a series of recommendations which have been accepted by the government. The Post-16 skills plan sets out a streamlined technical education system where students will be able to choose from up to 15 distinct technical education routes, with the first routes being made available from 2019. In addition, the QAA have announced that they are developing a new characteristics statement for Degree Apprenticeships. Currently there are 13 Degree Apprenticeships on offer and this move will ensure that they are formally recognised within the higher education system.

Farmer Review: This month, a report on the state of the skills crisis within the construction sector has been published, detailing 10 critical areas where the construction industry is showing signs of failure. The review notes how an ageing workforce and surging costs driven by a shortage of skilled workers have stalled investment. Among the recommendations set out in the report, several refer to the need for skills and training to better reflect the needs of a future modernised industry, including the use of OpenData to address the construction skills gap, specifically mentioning SkillsPlanner (read our blog post).

Neighbourhood Planning Bill: A series of new amendments have been made to the Neighbourhood Planning Bill which are now due to be considered by a Public Bill Committee. The Bill seeks to simplify how plans can be revised as local circumstances change and measures will support more housebuilding and provide more local say over developments.

Farmer Review highlights SkillsPlanner opportunity

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farmer review cover

Mark Farmer’s review of the UK construction labour model for the UK’s Construction Leadership Council, starkly titled Modernise or Die (PDF available here), has been published today (read news release). It has been widely reported in both trade press and national newspapers, and somewhat cautiously welcomed by the CLC’s co-chair Andrew Wolstenholme.

We have been awaiting this report for some months, as previous blog posts attest (here and here, for example), and our patience has been rewarded. Farmer’s hard-hitting report prominently highlights the SkillsPlanner opportunity, with an entire page (p.34) devoted to a case study about the project.

Time for action

According to Farmer, Britain’s construction industry faces “inexorable decline” unless radical steps are taken to address its longstanding problems, which include its dysfunctional training model, its lack of innovation and collaboration as well as its non-existent research and development (R&D) culture. He also said the industry needs to be far more joined-up with its clients in how it approaches skills.

With more people leaving the industry each year than joining, the construction workforce is shrinking, placing increasingly severe constraints on its capacity to build housing and infrastructure. Reliance on a fractured supply chain and self-employment also means there is little incentive for contractors to invest in long term training for the labour force. Farmer says:

“… carrying on as we are is simply not an option. With digital technology advancements pushing ahead in almost every other industry and with the construction labour pool coming under serious pressure, the time has come for action.”

Break down the ‘data silos’

His review includes several case studies, each showing how to improve different dimensions of the industry’s performance. SkillsPlanner is particularly highlighted in a section titled “Lack of Collaboration & Improvement Culture”:

SkillsPlanner case study from Farmer Review“Lack of collaboration and joined up thinking also means the ability to use ‘open linked / big data’ principles to guide the industry on current and future skills requirements have not been maximised. The increasing importance of data means that such approaches would better enable the business case for investment in training and new ways of delivering by better aligning investment to a demand pipeline. … The culture of ‘data silos’ within the industry needs to be broken as part of the wider societal democratisation of data.”

(This was something touched upon in the government’s response to the Sainsbury review in its Post-16 Skills Plan in July 2016 – post.)

Encouragingly, the Farmer Review (p.31) also mentions two sister projects addressing the skills gap through brokerage: BuildForce, and the former Crossrail brokerage which has now been transferred to an Ethos-managed initiative called Build London.

The reshuffle dust settles …

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GCS 2016-20

As the UK political establishment settles down after the EU Referendum (post) and the resulting spate of resignations and changes of office, the UK construction sector is now beginning to identify the new figures who will be leading key initiatives on areas such as housebuilding and planning, construction strategy, and skills.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet reshuffle saw a plethora of new appointments, and as the various Cabinet ministers have begun to settle into their portfolios and some tasks have been moved between ministries, various junior minister posts have also been finalised.

Succeeding Nick Boles, Harlow MP Robert Halfon is the new apprentices and skills minister, appointed by education secretary Justine Greening – the skills brief having been moved from the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS, now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, BEIS). Halfon appears well-suited to his new brief. He employed the first parliamentary apprentice, and says he has “led from the front in championing apprenticeships.” We assume he will be taking responsibility for pushing forward the Government’s Post-16 Skills Plan, its response to the Sainsbury Review, published last week (post).

From our point of view on the SkillsPlanner project, another key appointment has been Croydon MP Gavin Barwell, appointed the new housing and planning minister in the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Barwell is also minister for London; our two-year SkillsPlanner project is strongly focused on London and the southeast, and we expect Barwell will be working closely with London Mayor Sadiq Khan (post).

And, Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer, MP for Ipswich, will oversee the government’s own construction strategy (post) and programme, lead on its procurement policy, and also look at digital transformation of government. The latter particularly interests SkillsPlanner; data, much of it provided by government or government-funded organisations and projects, is at the core of our open linked data platform, and the wider construction industry is also engaged in a deeper digital shift outlined in the February 2015 Digital Built Britain strategy (post).

Update (1 August 2016) – At BEIS, Jesse Norman MP, minister for industry and energy, will be responsible for industrial policy covering infrastructure and construction.

Government skills plan promises reform – and data!

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Post-16 Skills Plan

Skills minister Nick Boles has said the UK government accepts and will implement every one of Lord Sainsbury’s 34 recommendations on technical education reform ‘unequivocally where possible within current budget constraints’ (reports Infrastructure Intelligence today).

The government’s Post-16 Skills Plan has been published simultaneously with, and as a response to, the Sainsbury independent panel report on technical and professional education, having been delayed due to the EU referendum (both are available online here). Sainsbury says the UK’s current system of technical education is overly complex and fails to deliver the skills most needed – as a result, the UK lags behind countries including the US, Germany and France in productivity per person.

Sainsbury’s recommendations include setting up distinct and coherent technical education routes for young people, with two modes of learning: employment-based, typically via an apprenticeship; and a college-based option. Government will build this new technical education route, simplifying the system by establishing a common framework of 15 technical education routes – including one for construction – encompassing all occupation types. Currently there are over 13,000 different qualifications available for 16-18 year-olds. Sainsbury also calls for a common initial core of maths and English for all technical qualifications before specialisation.

The report has been welcomed by EngineeringUK chief executive Paul Jackson, who said:

“It’s vital for the future health of the UK economy that young people in sufficient numbers develop the engineering skills that employers need. And it’s equally vital that the routes to developing these skills are student-centred, offering every young person the best possible opportunity to thrive in their chosen industry. …

“Putting employers front and centre of the development of the routes and providing more structured work placements as part of a technical education programme will have a positive impact on the work-readiness of those entering employment, with new recruits and employer both reaping the benefits. Government’s Post 16 Skills Plan is reassuring and has now to be backed with the practical and financial support their implementation will require.”

The Post-16 Skills Plan – some details

The Post-16 Skills Plan shows that construction – currently employing over 1.6 million people – is among the most critical routes to employment, second only to ‘business and administrative’ (2.2m), and currently ahead of ‘engineering and manufacturing’ (1.3m). The Plan will create high-quality, two-year, college-based programmes at the start of each route, suitable for 16–18 year-olds, but which can also be accessed by adults (students aged 19 and over).

New specialist training providers will also be introduced. The provision of university technical colleges (UTCs) will be expanded, and, where industries of national economic or strategic importance are facing particular challenges in recruitment, new National Colleges will be created. These will lead the design and delivery of technical skills training in five key sectors: nuclear, digital skills, high-speed rail, onshore oil and gas, and the creative and cultural industries.

Farmer Review

Rebecca Lovelace of EthosVO in conversation at June 2016 Westminster launch of BuildForce.Importantly, the Skills Plan also commits (sections 7.4 and 7.5) to “taking action in response to the review we have commissioned from the Construction Leadership Council and Mark Farmer (the Farmer Review) of the functioning of the labour market, including skills provision, in the construction sector.” The government will also review the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), seeking to boost domestic construction skills and drive up productivity in the construction sector. We are pleased to read this – Mark Farmer has taken a keen interest in EthosVO’s SkillsPlanner and in related initiatives such as BuildForce, launched at the Houses of Parliament on 29 June.

More open data (hurray!)

And, of particular interest to SkillsPlanner and its development of an online skills platform driven by Open Linked Data (if you’re not sure what this is, watch Sir Nigel Shadbolt’s explanation) there is also a commitment to releasing more data. Chapter 6 of the Skills Plan makes “Information and data” the first of its key enabling factors. It aims to guide people through the system and make informed choices about what to study by:

“… making more information available about what students go on to do and how much they earn after taking particular routes or apprenticeships, and how the performance of colleges and other training providers influences students’ performance in working life. This information needs to be easy to access and understand so that people can use it to compare different education and career options and make confident and informed choices.

“… For the first time, we are using information held by the Department for Education; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Department for Work and Pensions; and HM Revenue and Customs to get a better understanding of how young people move through education and into work, and from autumn 2016 we will be making more of this information publicly available….”

Demonstrating SkillsPlanner

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SkillsPlanner interface slide

Explaining SkillsPlanner has started to get a bit easier. While it is not yet ready for public consumption, we have been developing some of the concepts first shown at the project’s official launch in February and now have our first demonstration environment.

In February, the images used in Sir Nigel Shadbolt’s presentation (watch the video) at the Institution of Civil Engineers were what he described as “slideware”. Today, we have some working prototypes of key elements of the SkillsPlanner platform. For example, in an internal project webinar run by our data and platform package leaders, Gary Hunt and Ian Millard, on 26 April, we were able to show:

  • examples of the kinds of data we are collating from public sources, project partners and collaborators
  • our data catalogue (the list of datasets that we have collated to date to populate the platform)
  • examples of different types of data reports – from simple tables, to pie-chart graphics, to maps showing geographical spreads and densities of data

We are currently exploring a variety of “user stories” – essentially, analysing how individual end-users will interrogate the datasets and understanding what insights they are seeking to get. In some cases we can map their requirements to data that we already have; in other cases, we are learning what data we need to add. Gary outlined some of the next steps:

garyhunt“Some of this data might be publicly available and we’re making good progress cataloguing these. Other data, such as individual learner data, is available but under a restricted license so we’ll be working to gather that data. In all our work, we are being scrupulous in how we filter, aggregate and anonymise data so that no commercially sensitive information is shared and to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act.”

Questions included: How do we decide what data to include? How will we link training provider courses to job roles? How is our data managed and maintained? and How do we ensure data remains current? (The webinar recording and Q&As are available for collaborators). We will be sharing further developments with project collaborators in another webinar next month (June 2016) as we build towards the point where we can start to show the demonstration platform to a wider industry audience.

To change the image, first change construction

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We need to tackle some of the fundamental issues in the construction industry before we can effectively change “the image of construction”, and wider sharing of data should be part of the solution.

“The image of construction” has featured heavily this week for me (to be honest, it often does – as previous posts probably show).

On Tuesday, I was part of a CIMCIG-led roundtable discussion in London with Mark Farmer, the consultant helping the Construction Leadership Council to address issues relating to construction skills and the future needs of the industry (see gov.uk news release).

Yesterday I joined a panel discussion at the Women in Construction and Engineering Awards day, part of which focused on how current images of construction and engineering make them unattractive to potential entrants, parents, teachers and even careers advisors.

And today, I have been reading in Construction News (YouGov poll finds two-thirds of public would not consider career in construction) about a survey for Construction United showing:

  • more than half of the public view construction work as ‘strenuous’ or ‘dirty’, with just 11 per cent saying it was ‘exciting’
  • 23 per cent viewed construction work as creating ‘mess, traffic and inconvenience’
  • people do not see the industry as academically driven, with 41 per cent saying it was one the least likely sectors to require a further or higher education qualification

Such survey findings are nothing new. They simply confirm that the “image” problem persists year after year despite numerous campaigns to change popular perceptions. Industry insiders maintain that we need to “present how fantastic it is to work in construction and change some of those perceptions… all of us who work in construction love it; we just haven’t been very good collectively at expressing that message” (to quote Suzannah Nicol of Build UK).

To change the image, first change construction

At this week’s CIMCIG meeting, I repeated my view that the “image of construction” is a symptom of a more deep-rooted reputation issue. Bluntly, the industry’s reputation is not just the result of what it says and what others say about it, but – importantly – about what it does and how it behaves.

The reality, evidenced in report after report (read my Ethos blog post: Building a better built environment industry), is that the UK construction industry has for decades been recognised as:

  • overly-complex, fragmented and price-fixated in its procurement approaches
  • adversarial in its supply chain relations
  • poor in its payment practices
  • wasteful in its project execution
  • conservative in its adoption of new technologies, and
  • short-termist and reactive in its approach to human skills development and R&D.

Add to this the ‘macho’ culture on many sites and the painfully slow progress in addressing diversity issues (see: Let’s share more data on skills and diversity), is it any wonder that the industry currently known as construction has an image problem?

At a Constructing Excellence conference in 2014, I said the industry needed to stop thinking of itself as a monolithic entity and start to identify changes it could make across its many disciplines, and then get them communicating, running long-term, integrated, pan-sector campaigns, and working collaboratively with partners, trade bodies and (most importantly, perhaps) its customers and end-users. Currently though, we seem to be more focused on trying to fix the image, rather than fixing the reasons behind that image.

It’s not just about campaigns

CITB’s Jane Gleave was at the CIMCIG meeting and talked about the GoConstruct campaign (read my pwcom post); last month I noted the launch at Ecobuild of Build UK’s new video; and this week’s story in Construction News (which launched its own #LoveConstruction campaign in July 2013) is based on a poll undertaken for yet another campaign, Construction United, launched in February 2016 and building towards a week of events in October.

And while we’re talking about “image”, to me it is unfortunate that the campaign’s home page perpetuates a view of construction as site-based. Efforts are being made by the Chartered Institute of Building, among others, to get government agencies to accept wider definitions of construction that take account of the inputs of product manufacturers and of professions such as architects, engineers and quantity surveyors, according to a Construction Index report today. We also tend to underplay the key roles played in many construction businesses by accountants, lawyers, marketing, PR, HR and IT people, plus a myriad of administrators.

Nonetheless, Construction United does recognise that there is already an industrial strategy looking to address some of the underlying problems:

constructionunited“Construction 2025 identified a number of areas that needed addressing, so Construction United aims to bring everyone with a vested interest in construction together to raise awareness of the key issues facing the sector, including image, skills gaps and the wellbeing of employees at all levels.”

It’s not just about raising awareness of the key issues, but actually doing something about them. Construction 2025 and the Government Construction Strategy 2016-2020 (see previous post: Tackling skills gaps – can we learn from BIM?) prescribe a suite of changes aimed at making construction and the built environment more cost effective and sustainable. The BIM programme has shown that the industry can collaborate to tackle the underlying fragmented structures, silo-based attitudes, anti-collaborative behaviours and out-dated technologies – and BIM shows we can be sophisticated users of technology and data, not just stereotyped wielders of bricks, concrete and steel.

If government can inspire such changes in project delivery, surely it can work with industry so that construction skills provision also benefits from even more collaboration and more sharing of data? Incidentally, the UK was confirmed yesterday as the world’s leader in Open Data (see the 3rd Open Data Barometer report).

WhereTheWorkIsWhere the Work Is

Through the SkillsPlanner project, we see some signs this is beginning to happen. Yesterday, for example, SkillsPlanner programme director Rebecca Lovelace attended an Institute for Public Policy Research launch of a jobs and skills tool called Where The Work Is. This jobs data platform draws on historic data on over 1.5 million jobs posted online by employers across all sectors in the UK from 2012 to 2014 and normalised against government data on vacancies, and we have incorporated some of the same datasets into our developing SkillsPlanner data catalogue. Clearly, we would welcome more contributions of data to help improve our understanding of the construction skills supply and demand challenges.

Incidentally, Where The Work Is also provided supporting data for a report, “Jobs and Skills in London: Building a More Responsive Skills System in the Capital” (download PDF), which recommended that the Greater London Authority might be given a more active role in funding adult education providers, and be given the capability to shift to a results-based funding model for adult skills in the future. This fits neatly with some of the aspirations we have for SkillsPlanner – if we can demonstrate its success in construction, we feel its data-driven approach can be applied to many other sectors of the economy too.

SkillsPlanner formally launched

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SkillsPlanner launch holding slide

SkillsPlanner was formally launched last night (Wednesday 24 February 2016) at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London.

Over 130 industry guests were welcomed by SkillsPlanner programme director Rebecca Lovelace. She then introduced Andy Mitchell, CEO of Tideway, one of our SkillsPlanner partners, who described the challenges of delivering a mega-project under London that will require contributions from 20,000 workers during its design, construction and commissioning. With research suggesting 44% of firms struggling to recruit people with the right skills, he was adamant that the industry needs to collaborate more in order to attract the people it needs to deliver future built assets. He finished with a resounding call to arms:

Tideway Andy Mitchell at SkillsPlanner launch“This is a bold and ambitious two-year pilot…. SkillsPlanner has the potential to link employer demands for skills qualifications and behaviours to a responsive education and training sector who can train the individuals who can and will be the future of our industry. And I really hope this vision becomes a reality over the next couple of years …. let’s see what we can do to make something of this because we do need change. And this is a really exciting opportunity to secure that change….”

Sir Nigel Shadbolt, chair of SkillsPlanner partner Seme4 and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, then described the opportunity that Open Linked Data provides to give greater transparency on industry skills supply and demand, using the Tideway project and London boroughs as illustrations of the potential power of the data-driven platform being developed. “SkillsPlanner is a planning tool, an engine to help us draw conclusions about future skills,” he said. But he twice identified challenges in gathering data:

“The challenges will not be technical. Ultimately, they will turn out to be human, about how far we can persuade collaborators to actually provide data – data that is fit for purpose and that we can move from a very siloed world.”

He continued:

“Whilst we will be able to furnish the technical platform, the real challenge is getting hold of the data, finding out if it has any of the quality attributes we care about, and is it actually categorising the things we care about. Data is often presented to us with the wrong codes or the wrong sets of divisions. Given the modern workforce, it’s collected against categories that seem fit for the 1950s. How do we build dynamic classifications of this workforce? Data should not be fixed – it should be dynamic and vary through time.”

A Q&A session allowed audience members to quiz a panel of experts involved with the project. Issues included how the data might be sourced and verified, how SkillsPlanner could be used by schools to enthuse teachers and parents, and how the industry needs to be more committed to guaranteeing worthwhile jobs and future careers following training.

Reviewing the event today, Rebecca Lovelace said:

Rebecca LovelaceIt was an amazing evening. There was a real sense in the room of people truly understanding the potential of SkillsPlanner and fully agreeing with the principle of open collaboration. The number of emails I have received today committing to supporting SkillsPlanner has been quite simply brilliant.

The number of organisations engaged with the project is a reflection of our belief that SkillsPlanner must be built collaboratively with its future users. If your organisation is interested in collaborating with SkillsPlanner, please do get in touch. It’s a truly exciting time and we will achieve so much more by working together.

Twitter stats SkillsPlanner 24 FebJudging from Twitter (see our Storify stream from the event, and we have more shareable content here), the event created a lot of industry buzz, with many follow-up discussions about how training providers, construction businesses and other industry bodies can get involved, particularly by supplying data. If your organisation would like to contribute to the project, please email [email protected].

SkillsPlanner: data for efficiency and growth

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SP-circular-infographic

SkillsPlanner’s planned use of linked and open data to collate construction skills supply and demand data fits with wider ambitions to make data a driver for economic growth and prosperity.

According to a recent RICS survey reported in the construction trade press (see this Construction Enquirer article, for example), skills shortages are hampering construction projects across the UK. With subcontractors facing rising wage bills, it is becoming more difficult for them to accurately forecast project costs, causing delays to project planning.

And this is not just a short-term problem. Significant skills gaps lasting into the next decade have been identified by research including the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry/KPMG 2014 report ‘Skills to Build’ (PDF here) and the September 2015 National Infrastructure Plan for Skills (PDF here). It is timely, therefore, that the Ethos-led and Innovate UK-funded SkillsPlanner research and development project is now well under way.

What is SkillsPlanner?

SkillsPlanner is an innovative, collaborative, data-powered approach to addressing construction industry skills shortages. Its ambition is to help ensure that the UK has the right people, with the right skills, in the right places, at the right time.

The two-year, £1.3m research and development programme, funded by Innovate UK and the project partners – Ethos, GoodPeople, Association of Colleges, Camden, Islington and Westminster councils, Seme4, Tideway, and University of Plymouth – is initially focused on the London construction sector. However, we intend to develop and expand the project across the UK in the coming months.

Building a data infrastructure

The Ethos-led partnership was successful in the IUK competition, ‘Solving Urban Challenges Through Data’, and was awarded a grant to conduct a Collaborative Research and Development project, which started formally on 1 October 2015. Further project collaborators providing contribution-in-kind include Crossrail and Greenwich council.

SkillsPlanner aims to help industry, employers, councils, trainers and, ultimately, individual workers to collaborate and share data to enable effective planning for future employment needs. It will be based on a cutting edge Linked and Open Data platform that can aggregate, integrate and analyse skills data from a variety of sources to provide a valuable ’real time’ picture of the skills landscape, mapping industry demand against current training provision.

It is particularly fitting that we are using data to supply construction skills fit for our future homes, buildings and other infrastructure.

Data: an “engine for growth and efficiency”

Our world is increasingly data-driven, and government and industry organisations are beginning to adapt to these changes – if we look again at construction, for example, there has been a strong push to get government projects delivered using data-centric building information modelling processes, mandatory from April 2016.

We are also encouraged by initiatives from the Open Data Institute, with whom we have close links – the ODI chairman and co-founder, Sir Nigel Shadbolt, is talking at our SkillsPlanner launch in London on 24 February, and also chairs Seme4, one of the SkillsPlanner partners. The ODI is urging government to consider data as infrastructure that is fundamental to the operation of a modern society and its economy. With the Royal Statistical Society, the ODI wrote an open letter to the chairman of the new UK Infrastructure Commission saying:

“We are not currently treating data as infrastructure. We are not giving it the same importance as our road, railway and energy networks were given in the industrial revolution and are still given now. We risk seeing data only as a tool for transparency when it should also be an engine of efficiency and growth.”

We like this ambition; it fits with Ethos’s culture and with our ambitions for SkillsPlanner. We want this data platform to harness the power of linked and open data and to be scalable and replicable across many industry sectors – improving the match of skills to jobs, reducing unemployment, increasing local labour supply, and enabling training provision to be responsive to industry needs. If we succeed in this mission, then data will be playing a key role in helping to boost our economy.

SkillsPlanner: yesterday, today and tomorrow

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SP-circular-infographic

I had no idea when my construction journey started that I would one day be writing this: today we agreed a £1.3m initiative that has the most fundamental of aims, to connect those that are out of work with an industry full of opportunity, and to do so in the most collaborative means possible.

SkillsPlanner went live today. It is a data platform that will allow stakeholders within an industry or sector to share current and future employment needs, facilitating collaborative planning, training and brokerage to meet the industry’s requirements. We have over 30 organisations already involved and the premise is very simple: share your skills supply AND demand data, do so collaboratively using Open Linked Data (it’s not a database, nor a report that will sit on a shelf), and join other passionate people that want to build a platform that is for use by industry, by training providers, by councils and by job brokers.

SkillsPlanner will one day be free for individuals and it is being built today by those that will use it tomorrow – and in 2050.

Yes, it is a hugely ambitious project. But the reason I’m doing it is because this is one amazing industry, full of opportunity, and it is crying out for workers. But the workers aren’t being trained with the skills employers need. And everybody knows this. And the image of the industry is poor. And everybody knows this. And there are pockets of exceptionally good practice, that not enough people know about. But the industry is fragmented and the challenge is just oh, so big.

BUT if you can get the right passionate people around the table, telling us, for example, that data needs to be standardised to reflect competencies and qualifications, giving time to share their expertise and knowledge and working on this data collaboratively, then together we can do something amazing. We will build SkillsPlanner TOGETHER. We will spend time doing it properly, in collaboration with anyone that cares about those that are unemployed, about those being trained in the wrong areas, about an industry that could be so much more to so many more people.

Come and join us. We’re going to do something amazing.

Building a better built environment industry

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Shard and crane

With collaborative platforms, mobile, BIM, ‘Big data’, the ‘internet of things’, we are tinkering with enablers of change. “Digital Built Britain” envisages entirely new business models for the industry currently known as construction.

21 years (and more) of industry reports

While some industry sectors have changed profoundly in recent decades, some have remained resistant to change. The UK construction industry, for example, has for decades been recognised as overly-complex, fragmented and price-fixated in its procurement approaches, adversarial in its supply chain relations, wasteful in its project execution, conservative in its adoption of new technologies, and short-termist and reactive in its approach to human skills development and R&D.

Such issues have been debated many times in a sequence of industry reports stretching back to World War 2: Simon, Emmerson, Banwell, Latham, Egan …. The ripples of the 1994 Report by Sir Michael Latham continue to be felt, not least because it stimulated some changes to procurement (we started to talk about strategic partnering and frameworks), and the change potential of IT was eventually picked up by Sir John Egan in his 2002 report Accelerating Change, and later championed by the first chief construction advisor, Paul Morrell from late 2009 onwards.

By this stage, the global financial crisis was scything through weak companies, projects were being moth-balled or cancelled altogether, thousands of workers lost their jobs, and the industry was desperate to find positive routes forward. Morrell responded to the challenge. Low Carbon Construction (2010) set the foundations, then the 2011 Government Construction Strategy instigated a more wide-ranging set of measures.

To many, this has all been about building information modelling (BIM), but it also created the conditions to test new models of construction procurement. Much of the endeavour, however, has remained siloed. To deliver the latest industry strategy (Construction 2025, published in 2013), we need to break down these silos, build on the progress made during the recession (lessons learned are being forgotten and businesses are ‘reverting to type’), and ensure they extend beyond just the progressive fringe.

‘Disruptive’ trends

The web, broadband and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) have all helped change perceptions about technology and information management (a once paper-centric industry is moving more online). Information mobility has been a factor since the advent of smartphones (c. 2007) and tablets (c. 2010). BIM has, of course, been an increasingly dominant theme over the past five years and is set to continue as the government’s 2016 mandate comes into effect; social media has – maybe somewhat grudgingly – begun to challenge existing models of communication; and we have also become more aware of the power of data – ‘Big data‘, interoperability, linked open data, and outputs from the ‘Internet of Things‘ (in short, some of us are no longer document-centric but data-centric).

However, these technological changes are not, on their own, going to overhaul the construction industry. They are, at best, enablers. We also have to tackle the existing siloed structures, attitudes, cultures and resulting behaviours within the industry. These are holding back business; they helped create the industry’s poor reputation, and this reputation makes construction less attractive to potential home-grown employees at a time when there are deep skills shortages and the existing workforce is ageing.

The future direction and shape of the industry currently known as construction is more likely to be influenced by political, economic, social, legal and environmental factors. Globalisation, carbon, population growth and resource shortages will have an increasingly important and direct bearing on what industry clients identify as desirable business outcomes, making them more alert to whole-life performance and to wider business, social, economic and sustainability outcomes.

New business models

New Business Models

Digital Built Britain, published in February 2015, is therefore a key document. It synthesises four industry strategies: Construction 2025, Information Economy, Smart Cities, Business & Professional Services; it tells a wider audience than construction that it needs to build and exploit a “new digital economy”. It talks about the need for:

  • New ways of doing things
  • New business models
  • New business relationships
  • New institutions
  • New performance metrics

This fits with the Ethos VO view and with Constructing Excellence’s vision which says delivering ‘best practice’ is not enough. The successful businesses of tomorrow will break through the current industry ceiling, making radical changes and building collaborative business relationships so they can deliver exceptional performance:

New Business Models

BIM, mobile and data are part of this picture but only as enablers. Over time, they will become normal – as much part of the way of doing things as CAD, spreadsheets and email. Supply chain organisations in the industry currently known as construction will be rationalised and more integrated, transformed into providers of leaner, safer, lower-carbon and data-supported “asset services” (delivering ‘illumination’, not light fittings, for example – “Buildings-as-a-Service”, BaaS perhaps), rewarded across the life-cycle for the value delivered by the built assets they create, and having the reputations and market valuations more commonly found among sophisticated manufacturers.

And workers will be rewarded for their value-adding contributions; many will be recruited and trained to apply their skills in off-site manufacturing facilities; there will be a more strategic and long-term view of employment supply and demand (managed through platforms such as Ethos’s SkillsPlanner project), and new professions will emerge as we start to exploit the rich data opportunities of Future Cities.

This is not achieved by focusing on technology – it is achieved by radically overhauling existing structures, processes and cultures, driving out waste, creating collaborative business relationships (both corporate and interpersonal) that nurture innovation, and having supply chains focus on what delivers best whole life value.