Elizabeth Whatmore

Construction was left feeling like a spurned lover. The new multi-tasked minister, Brian Wilson, seemed too busy with his energy portfolio to show much interest; the sense of rejection was compounded in March when John Hobson, the long-serving head of the directorate, took early retirement. Insiders said he was unhappy with the move to the DTI.

His replacement, Elizabeth Whatmore, is two civil-service grades lower than Hobson and more than two decades his junior. Confirmation, some feel, that the government is withdrawing its support from the industry still further.

Whatmore shrugs off snipes at her lack of seniority, describing her grade-five status as "irrelevant", and sidesteps the first tricky question: is the industry right to think it is getting less attention from the people at Buckingham Palace Road?

"The DTI is the natural home for the construction industry. There are an awful lot of synergies with other industries; we can spread best practice. And there are things construction can teach other industries."

However, the hand-holding days are most definitely over. "We're looking for an industry that comes up with solutions to its own problems," Whatmore says. "There was a tendency in the industry to just keep going as things were, knowing there were problems, but not seeking to address them. Construction has to take charge of its own destiny ; the vision for change has to be the industry's own vision."

The single, 38-year-old shares with her predecessor a propensity for straight talking – although while Hobson relished peppery diatribe, Whatmore is unflappably cordial. A career civil servant, she deftly returns slanted questions and serves her on-message responses with dashes of sharp insight. She is good on the vision stuff, but seems less willing to go into the fiddly details.

There was a tendency in the industry to just keep going as things were, knowing there were problems, but not seeking to address them

Her superiors will be delighted at her ability to withstand over an hour of questioning without giving away a morsel of departmental gossip; she similarly manages to play out the entire interview without furnishing a single figure or statistic. Staff in her department describe her as highly competent, co-operative and approachable; Sir Michael Latham recently described her as "a very capable lady" and deserving of rapid promotion.

She is understandably protective of her boss, the minister, who has been given a lot of stick for neglecting the industry. "Brian is very interested in the construction industry and he's done a lot for it over the last year," she says. And, she adds, his focus has been sharpened by the loss of the industry bit of his energy, construction and industry brief at the start of May. So was that move a response to industry complaints? "It came out of a wish to do even more with the industry."

The cornerstone of the DTI's strategy for the industry is the strategic forum, the Egan-chaired umbrella body created by Nick Raynsford just before last summer's reshuffle. Whatmore cites the forum as the key achievement of the past year, creating for the first time an industry-wide consensus on how to achieve major strategic change. "Construction's not really had a strategic vision before," she says. "The industry has really taken the need for change to heart and is working on it through the strategic forum."

Over to you
The DTI presently sponsors the forum but, in accordance with its arm's-length policy, is looking for an exit strategy. As part of its response to Accelerating Change, the draft consultation document published by the forum last month, the industry is being asked whether it wants to take hold of its own bootstraps. "The question put to the industry is do you want a strategic forum? It looks like the answer to that is going to be yes, but it's a choice for the industry to make."

The crucial question of who will succeed Egan, who steps down as chairman in the summer, is also one for the industry. The grapevine is buzzing with names of potential candidates – Wates Group chief executive Struan Robertson has popped up more than once, but Whatmore insists: "It's industry's responsibility to find someone who they agree is a key player. I'm not aware of any shortlist."

Accelerating Change, essentially an update of Egan's 1998 Rethinking Construction report, sets out the forum's vision for the industry. It has three key strands: the need for integrated teams; greater respect for people issues such as safety and working conditions; and client leadership. The first two build on ideas in the first Egan report, but the third point represents a significant strategic shift: rather than urging the industry to change for its own good, Egan and the government want change to be driven by clients demanding better service.

You shouldn’t be talking about delivering a project on time, but delivering something that contributes to the client’s business

Whatmore believes this will require firms to radically rethink their strategies. "Clients are looking for a different relationship with the supply side and they're looking for a different attitude – don't ask me what I want, understand what I'm trying to do and tell me how you can deliver into that. You shouldn't be talking about delivering a project on time and on budget, but delivering something that contributes to the client's business and the requirements of the end users.

"Historically, the contractual methods and the focus of individual companies has been very much on the technical side of building a structure, whereas the shift proposed in Accelerating Change is actually to say the structure is almost incidental. What you're doing is delivering something that has a certain effect on somebody's business; on how quickly people recover in hospitals and so on."

The government, desperate to make good its promises to rejuvenate public services, is taking a keen interest in progress. Two weeks ago, Whatmore was summoned to 10 Downing Street to brief the prime minister's advisers. "There's a huge investment programme and clearly there's concern to make sure products are delivered on quality and on time."

The future of Constructionline
Since the government is querying the industry's competence, the industry might rightly ask how the government is getting on with troubled initiatives such as the quality mark and Constructionline – both of which are Whatmore's responsibility.

The quality mark – the much-delayed certification scheme designed to help domestic clients choose reliable builders – has only signed up 187 firms. Whatmore, who ran the quality mark as part of her last job, insists it's going well, but claims there are no targets for uptake of the scheme. "We'll promote it until it reaches a critical mass. At this point in time we haven't put a timeframe on it."

Constructionline, an online contractor vetting service for use by public sector clients, has had almost as troubled a start. Whatmore believes this was the result of a misunderstanding about what it was intended for. "It's just stage one in the tender process; it's not the complete prequalification process for a contract. Contractors thought if we're on Constructionline that's all we will be asked for; the client side thought it's not giving us as much information as we thought it would." Whatmore says it's now back on its feet (it has 10,241 firms signed up), but adds that public sector bodies will not be compelled to use the scheme. "We're looking to a situation where if a local authority is procuring something they'll think of using it." And again, she won't give targets for the scheme's growth.