Welcome to our first ever awards, designed to highlight achievement, and congratulations to the winners.
The Building Homes Quality Awards provide a new set of benchmarks for the industry, based on pure business performance.

The awards assess the factors that make modern businesses function and the processes by which new homes are delivered. They recognise the challenges the industry is facing, from its ever more demanding customer base to the Egan agenda and government legislation. They reward the efforts of those who are innovating, improving and investing, to the benefit not only of their own future but that of the industry and its customers.

The winners of our ten business performance categories, plus the supreme awards for private sector housebuilder of the year and affordable sector housing provider of the year, were announced in a celebration dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Their names are printed here, together with details of their winning strategies and our judges' comments.

The winners' good practice should inspire others in the industry to follow their example. It should raise standards within housebuilding as a whole, and help to bring business recognition to an industry that is responsible for delivering everyone's most important product.

Why quality?
My unerring belief is that no one goes to work with the intention of delivering poor quality. Poor quality exists because of something that is not right within the workplace, whether it be the office or the building site.

At the heart of quality is leadership. And at the heart of leadership are clarity of vision, consistency, people and passion.

Your vision must be easy to understand, measurable and achievable. Something like: "to be the best quality housebuilder" doesn't cut it.

You must apply your words and actions consistently. Your staff will listen to your words and watch your feet. Make sure they move in the same direction - especially at year-end! "Never mind the procedures, just get the legals" is the kind of statement that will destroy your vision at a stroke, demotivate your employees and be a nail in the coffin of the next "flavour of the month."

Homes are built, sold and repaired by people - not robots. People selection, training and development are vitally important, as is the strength of character required to rid your organisation of people who ultimately will not share the vision.

But above all you and your team need the passion. You can write enough quality manuals to fill the Millennium Dome. Within them might be the most fantastic processes and procedures but unless your hearts beat in harmony you and your people will surely fail.

  President Kennedy once said: "...that this Nation should commit itself to achieve the goal before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth". This statement galvanised a nation and against incredible odds the vision was achieved. It was easy to understand, measurable and achievable and it was 32 years ago.

As one customer recently said to me: "we can put a man on the moon but my builder can't build me a complete, clean and ready home on time".

There is clearly a lot of scope for a quality movement in housebuilding and I applaud Building Homes for creating awards that recognise those who are moving forward. Malcolm Pitcher

The judges

  • Josephine Smit, Building Homes
  • Malcolm Pitcher, marketing consultant
  • Judith Harrison, The Housing Forum
  • Steve Morgan, formerly Redrow
  • Sarah Peace, partnering expert
  • Jonathan Seal, Hamptons International
  • David Birkbeck, Design for Homes
  • Tom Bloxham, Urban Splash
  • Mike Cohen, formerly The Guinness Trust
  • David Gann, SPRU
  • John Doggart, Oscar Faber
  • Florian Sommer, New Economics Foundation
  • Andrew Forrest, the Industrial Society
  • Kevin Myers, Health & Safety Executive