Movemeent for Innovation Where are we now?

So what is the Movement for Innovation? The Movement (otherwise branded the M4I) was largely borne out of Sir John Egan’s report Rethinking construction. Among other things, Egan called for cuts in capital costs and construction time, fewer defects, improved health and safety on-site and an increase in industry profitability.

On one level the M4I is a rebranding of the government’s sponsorship of the industry, while on the other it is a slick marketing exercise which is trying to help construction bootstrap-haul itself into a world-class industry. Inevitably, the M4I has the ring of a self-fulfiling prophecy about it.

The M4I has four distinct arms: the Government Clients Construction Panel, the Local Government Task Force, the Housing Forum and the M4I Board itself. Currently the M4I is financed 100% by the Government, but moves are afoot to transfer at least half of the cost to industry.

Who runs the Movement for Innovation?

The M4I was founded in June 1998 to take forward Sir John Egan’s agenda of cutting construction costs and increasing value.

The Movement is largely an enabling organisation, comprised of 24 secondees from both the supply and demand sides of the construction industry. The Movement’s front man is Alan Crane of Christiani & Nielson.

M4I working groups

The M4I operates seven working groups, each of which is championed by a senior industry figure. These working groups cover benchmarking, the knowledge exchange, partnering the supply chain, education and training, cultural change, sustainability, respect for people and Key Performance Indicators.

These groups meet to discuss M4I policy, but as of yet do not generate much output themselves.

What are Key Performance Indicators?

Industry performance is based on self-assessment using a set of benchmarking tools developed between the Construction Industry Board, the M4I, the DETR and the Construction Best Practice Programme. These are the Key Performance Indicators (KPI), which enable participants in a demonstration project to assess themselves on matters of health and safety, client satisfaction, construction defects and site productivity. So while the Government pays for the administration and marketing of the scheme, the construction industry does the actual analysis.

The KPIs are a set of ten graphs covering issues such as defects, safety, profitability, and predictability for cost and time. The line graphs provide a relationship between the industry’s performance and prevailing benchmarks.

Some of the KPI graphs are based on solid, understandable data – safety, for example, uses the data for the industry’s best and worse accident rates to set the benchmarks – while other KPIs are of more mysterious origin. The performance curves for client satisfaction are particularly opaque to users. The M4I working groups intend to issue two extra KPIs covering sustainability and respect for people.

Some of the KPIs have recently been revised. The KPI for productivity is now reported as value-added per employee (as opposed to turnover per employee), while the construction time KPI uses the Tender Price Index in place of the Resource Cost Index. The M4I has just published the KPI data on the industry’s performance in 1999 (‘Record’).

What are demonstration projects?

The DETR has been enthusiastically signing up as many building projects as possible to get Egan principles understood and practiced.

Over 80 demonstration projects, worth £3 billion, have already been signed up, and another 50 are on the cards. Some existing research projects have also been reversed into the M4I agenda to present consistent messages.

The projects are being arranged in clusters, grouped by geographical location. Representatives of each project meet regularly to share their experiences and innovations, and the M4I itself organises site visits.

How is the M4I spreading the word?

The M4I is encouraging “openness, sharing and learning” in three main ways: by sponsoring an annual conference (the next one is on the 22 May), hosting a ‘knowledge exchange’ web site (www.M4I.org.uk/) and, most notably, by administering and disseminating the results of over 130 demonstration projects which government hopes will show radical improvements in the construction industry’s performance.

The impressive looking web site contains background information on all the demonstration projects, although the material tends towards self promotion. The M4I is committed to establish beyond doubt that the industry is improving, which is a rather questionable basis for honest and balanced reporting, particularly as so much of the data is generated by the industry itself. Nevertheless, the M4I does arrange workshops and one-day company visits so that the industry can see first-hand the fruits of the innovation and best practice.

Don’t confuse with

The Construction Best Practice Programme, which was set up in 1998 to collect and disseminate examples of best practice across the construction industry. However, the CBPP will be disseminating the innovations and lessons from the demonstration projects. Current industry research projects are also being asked to modify or otherwise dovetail their research plans with M4I objectives.