“It’s a buzz like no other,” says Richard Dobson, London area director at Morgan Sindall. What’s he talking about? The feeling that you get from handing over the keys to a new school to staff and students.

“It is the best thing in the industry,” Dobson adds. “You can absolutely tell you are making a difference to the lives of those teachers and students, and you can absolutely feel it. You can see the energy it gives.”

The sad fact is, however, that Dobson is describing an experience that is in seriously short supply right now. According to a highly critical National Audit Office report  from June last year, contracts for jobs under the government’s flagship school rebuilding programme were already coming forward at just a third of the expected rate even before the RAAC emergency hit in earnest late last summer, putting the Department for Education into full-scale crisis mode.