Creative tension

Egan and Rogers … are they by any chance related? Anyone listening to the proposals of the two recent industry taskforces might be forgiven for thinking they had been commissioned by two different governments. Sir John Egan's construction taskforce builds a machine with a zeal that would have made Baroness Thatcher proud. Lord Rogers' urban taskforce offers a social vision that devolves decision-making powers to fallible humans – just the sort of thing Sir John is trying to avoid. What enormous fun for John Prescott, as he begins to meld their thinking.

The Egan report asked the industry to reinvent itself as a component-based machine. But, like any machine, its output can only be as good as its input. It's such a shame that the taskforce did not have the vision to nurture construction's forgotten resources: namely the inventiveness, enthusiasm and creativity of the people who work in it. It falls to Prescott, the rest of government and the industry to fill this gap.

Those hoping to benefit from Sir John's construction machine must do some component-based design of their own: developing its raw materials by participating in the education, or re-education, of the industry and its clients.

Successive governments have cut funding to universities so far that construction students are now usually taught by research-funded academics who are the first to admit that they couldn't design their way out of a paper bag.

No wonder half of all construction graduates never join the industry.

The new creative design course at Imperial College is one example of how this problem is being tackled right now. Funded by the Arup Foundation, it gives nearly 300 top civil engineering undergraduates a taste of real design every year for less than half the annual cost of a single graduate engineer. More industry sponsorship would help, but the real need is for the best construction people to give up their time to inspire the young. Their reward will be the exquisite pleasure of delayed gratification, giving now to receive later.

Creative thinking does not feature in the Egan report, but it is a process nonetheless. Even creative people can have a great time in Sir John's virtual world. There is no risk in ideas – if a virtual idea falls down, you can learn from it and try something else. A taskforce's recommendations could be tested in a series of what-if scenarios on a palmtop.

Sir John’s industry could become the tool to deliver Lord Rogers’ vision but not if it sacrifices creativity

This country is good at design but it needs more free thinkers to take advantage of all the possibilities raised by the two taskforces. Many of them may be pursuing arts careers now, happily oblivious to the debate.

To deliver the vision, clients need to get their hands dirty and deliver more leadership and less management. This is so rare that on a job I once worked on, the project team invented a thing called "concurrent clienteering" to encourage the participation of the client. This was defined as mountaineering up the client until you reach someone who can make a decision, or, less contentiously, as the simultaneous development of design and client decisions. Strangely, it did not catch on.

Still, it is amazing to see directors who get stuck into the detail of projects only as an extracurricular activity because they think details unworthy of serious attention. The world is littered with late decisions that show what a false economy this is.

Sir John has told us publicly and privately what is wrong with the way designers do things and we are trying to learn how to do better. Although it's a bit like asking criminals to police themselves, contractors, educators, clients and government all need to be self-critical, too. But real dialogue is very difficult because of the master/servant culture that prevents construction people speaking their minds for fear of being sacked by their clients. If you've ever asked a client to explain your project's business case, you'll know that, here, communication fails. Until we have openness, even a herd of taskforces would not be able to make their ideas stick.

In our data-fondling age, it is tempting to reduce everything to a system that can be monitored on a spreadsheet. Sir John's construction industry could become the tool to deliver Lord Rogers' vision and more, but not if it sacrifices creativity on the altar of process management. Of course, you can digitise the number of air-handling units you need, but you cannot make an algorithm for the creativity that invents a building in which you can do away with air-conditioning completely.