What happens when a construction firm goes bust? People lose their jobs, suppliers and subbies lose contracts, clients and unsecured creditors lose cash, the industry as a whole loses productivity. We know all this in theory, but at times business failures can seem abstract and remote. We hear the news of yet another insolvent firm and put it down to the inevitable consequences of working in a tough sector, and think someone must have slipped up somewhere. But we rarely take time to consider the impact on individuals, what it actually feels like to go through the process of winding up your own business – in short, the human cost of the way this industry works, or, more accurately, does not work.

But in this week’s issue this is precisely our focus, as we talk to Richard Dors and James Sinclair, the founding directors of Dancourt – a £15m-turnover, Bristol-based construction firm that carried out civils, ground and earth works and that entered voluntary administration in July this year.

“It will take a huge shift in mentality as well as regulation to overturn what has become standard practice, but that is what is needed to put an end to all the waste, lost productivity and human distress”

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