Fast forward

It is exactly 10 years since the publication of Constructing the Team and it is sobering to realise that nine out of 10 firms in the construction industry have never heard of it. Most contractors and consultancies are small. They concentrate on the daily slog of finding work, doing it and then trying to get paid. They work directly with a client who is either a householder or a small trader, and who is totally “uninstructed”, on a one-off project or basic maintenance requirement. The client simply wants the job done as quickly and cheaply as possible. When people write to Building saying that Sir John Egan, Lord Foster or Sir Michael Latham do not know what the industry is really like, they mean that we are not involved in tiny building or consultant firms. That is true, but we run big ones and often employ little ones.

Here is another sobering story. A distinguished architect, whose name often appears in Building, addressed a group of young designers in his large practice last year. He asked them who had ever heard of Sir Michael Latham. Not a hand was raised. He then asked them who had ever heard of Sir John Egan. A few hands were raised. These young people had joined that eminent practice to design. Procurement, best practice, contract conditions, value management – such issues do not appear on their radars. They would probably regard them as coarse interferences with creative art.

I can understand that. Collaboration to produce a team does not come easily to the fragmented construction industry. One distinguished professor of business management regularly writes that power structures are what drive business and that partnering is inherently uncommercial. About 13 years ago, a leading exponent of collaboration wrote an excellent book on partnering. When it appeared, a prominent business magazine declined even to review it because the editor said that collaboration and teamwork had no part to play in a commercial environment. Every serious supporter of partnering knows that there are many doubters, not just about whether collaboration will work on their project, but whether it happens on any project.

If i had to write constructing the team again, i would lay more stress on partnering

Sir Michael Latham

Well, it does. If I had to write Constructing the Team over again, I would lay more stress on partnering. While teamwork and collaboration are at the core of the report, partnering is mentioned briefly. I thought it might be a step too far for the industry and its clients in 1994. Ten years ago, the whole atmosphere was immensely adversarial. Persuading clients or the supply side to contemplate working together on an integrated basis was a tremendous challenge. To do so on a genuinely open-book basis, where client and main contractor agree on preliminaries and overheads at cost and then built up a predetermined margin, was something that most 1994 participants would have thought fanciful. It was happening then in the USA, led by the Corps of Army Engineers, but the very word “partnering” was barely known in Britain. In retrospect, I should have been bolder and advocated it as a prime recommendation. However, the collaborative message was taken up by professional clients and the supply side from my report. It was emphasised by the Egan report four years later, which made partnering a key feature. It is now widely accepted and here to stay.

There is still much to be done. Reform never finishes. But the bigger players are now committed to a better way. The next 10 years must see the message and its benefits passed along the supply chain, involving materials manufacturers and subcontractors, and thereby dramatically widening the delivery of team working. I only hope that by 2014, when I am 72, I will no longer be addressing partnering seminars. If the message still needs preaching then, it will be time for another Latham/Egan report. Any volunteers?