What the forum’s for

The Strategic Forum for Construction has existed for four-and-a-half years. Just before the 2001 general election, the Construction Industry Board, created in February 1995, was about to disappear. It had done excellent work in its six years of life. Its detailed working groups had put flesh on the bones of Constructing the Team and many changes to construction law, contract conditions and procurement practice had been introduced.

By 2001, two significant changes had occurred.

The first was the election of Labour in 1997. Deputy prime minister John Prescott was impatient with progress in industry reform, and he commissioned Sir John Egan to chair the committee that produced Rethinking Construction in 1998. There followed an uneasy period in which the CIB (set up by the Conservative government) was implementing a Constructing the Team agenda, while new bodies such as the Movement for Innovation were delivering Egan. The second factor was that the Construction Clients Forum decided that it would no longer participate in the CIB. That rang the death knell for the board, since client participation was essential in delivering best practice.

In early 2001, I was a guest of the Institution of Civil engineers at their annual dinner. Over drinks beforehand, Nick Raynsford, then construction minister, asked me how I thought the government should involve itself in the likely collapse of the CIB. I replied that it should insist on a new strategic forum being set up, which he should either chair personally or appoint Egan.

A couple of months later, Labour was returned to office but Raynsford moved to a different ministerial role. Responsibility for the construction industry was transferred to the DTI and Brian Wilson became the new minister. Both he and Raynsford ensured that a forum was set up, and Egan became its chairman.

A year later, the forum published the report Accelerating Change. The production of that document was very rushed. The timing was dictated by Egan’s wishing to hand over the chair, and the last few days before printing were frantic. The report itself, while having good features, had too many action points, some of which were not properly thought through because of Egan’s tight deadline.

Is it addressing issues that divide the industry? If the forum closed down, would the industry notice?

In autumn 2002, the forum was restructured with a new chairman, Peter Rogers of Stanhope. He has done an excellent job and has continued for at least 12 months longer than he intended. One of his first, very wise, decisions was to reduce the number of targets from the vast collection in Accelerating Change to a manageable seven.

The forum has since published its progress towards those targets. There have been good achievements in recruitment to the industry, certification, education and training and the design quality indicators, but there is still far to go in spreading partnering. In particular, rippling partnering along the supply chain to specialist contractors, let alone to their sub-subcontractors, is far from normal. The involvement of manufacturers and component or materials suppliers has barely happened, as the Construction Products Association has pointed out.

As Building has reported, the search for Rogers’ successor suffered a setback when the designated choice left the industry. At the September meeting of the forum, I suggested that before we found another person, we should decide what the forum should be doing. Do we still need it? Is it addressing the issues that divide the industry from its clients and within itself? Or is it only talking about non-contentious issues? If the forum closed down, would the industry notice? Most forum members clearly wanted to keep it, but the rethinking is now in progress.

The real key to the forum’s future lies with the clients. They seem committed to it and the Construction Clients Group has now joined up with Constructing Excellence. That alone should give the forum another 12 months. But it will have to find funding and convince the funders that it still has a clear and necessary role to perform. Its targets will need realistic benchmarking and it will be for the industry and clients to ensure that they are truly met and effectively publicised.