Be heard now

Earlier this year, I chaired an important seminar of the Major Projects Association at Templeton College, Oxford. The attendance was impressive. There were about 80 senior representatives from client organisations such as BT and BAA, large consulting firms like Mott MacDonald and Halcrow, main contractors including Balfour Beatty and Sir Robert McAlpine, construction managers such as Bovis Lend Lease and Mace, as well as large law firms like Freshfields and Herbert Smith, influential university academics and representatives of the Office of Government Commerce and the National Audit Office.

The theme of the meeting was alliancing and partnering and excellent presentations were made by representatives from Thames Water, Railtrack, Mace and Barhale, a civil engineering firm partnering with water utilities.

These delegates were big fish. The members of the ECA/HVCA Joint Major Contractors Group and other member firms of the two associations work regularly with most of them. Their projects involve process engineering, building and civil engineering. But where were the specialist contractors? Major firms like Amec Building Services, Crown House Engineering or Drake & Scull would have had a tremendous amount to contribute to the top level discussions that day, particularly about the vital need to integrate specialist design. But they could not do so. No specialist contractors were there.

I don't blame the specialist firms for their absence. Perhaps they have never been invited to join the Major Projects Association, and so would not have known about the occasion. But this was not an isolated incident. In the many seminars and conferences that I address during the year, specialist contractors of all kinds are usually conspicuous by their absence. That is understandable if they are small, family firms, where the owner is on site or working the telephone or laptop to try to win some work. But large firms employ many hundreds of people. They can spare one senior figure for a day.

Why should this matter? Every firm has to choose how to do its own networking. Some may prefer to avoid such seminars. However, the specialist sector has always complained that it does not receive the attention that its importance to the construction process deserves.

Plenty of people do not feel the need to hear the voice of the specialist contractors

The Constructors Liaison Group (CLG) exists to bring together under one collective voice the combined expertise of mechanical and electrical firms in the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group and trade contractors in the National Specialist Contractors Council.

The CLG has many achievements to its credit, of which the Construction Act is the most visible. Its current campaign against retentions is making steady progress – some major clients have scrapped retentions and are ready to say so publicly.

The CLG could not achieve anything if it did not sit at the top table. It was always an equal and vocal participant on the Construction Industry Board (CIB). When I was CIB chairman in 1995/6, Allan MacDougall, now md of Shepherd Engineering Services, was the full-time CLG chairman. He attended every CIB meeting. He was excellently briefed, and had carefully studied all the papers for each meeting, including the minutes of the previous one. He would never miss any opportunity to stress the views of the specialist contractors, in courteous but direct terms, sometimes to the obvious discomfort of the main contractors' representatives, though frequently with their agreement and support.

Although I am not involved with the new Strategic Forum for the Construction Industry, chaired by Sir John Egan, the CLG remains very much at the top table. It needs to be supported at more local levels as well as in the top-level seminars.