Paper weight

It shouldn't have been so difficult. After all, we were the team that a top developer had appointed to do the job. So transferring us to his development partner, the local authority, because it wanted to take this first building forward faster, should have been painless. But it wasn’t.

The project wasn’t large – more of a jewel, giving real amenity to local taxpayers. It’s the sort of thing my partners keep saying we should do more of – before getting diverted by prospects of redevelopment and corporate relocation. But here we had been invited by a favourite developer to work with a great architect. This was absolutely right to do.

The first thing that happened on transfer was that the council emailed 36 pages of questions.

The equal opportunities questionnaire was the largest. Apparently, our data would be used only for monitoring. Monitoring what? Our policies seem OK and we keep statistics on staff gender, age and ethnicity. But I was alarmed that, unable to answer the question on staff sexual orientations, our HR team was apparently committed to “monitor it over the next 12 months” – presumably to ensure we don’t discriminate. Surely neither knowing nor caring about a person’s sexuality is better proof against discrimination? Though undoubtedly well-intentioned, HR is so full of spooks and traps that simple humanity is the loser. It could one day finish off all businesses.

The HSE audit was something else! The borough’s external auditors advised that despite our full responses to their questionnaire, the abridged HSE pack we appended was inadequate and they needed the complete document. Our manual runs to three volumes. We hold a hard copy but, beyond this, it’s published only on our intranet. I explained that producing a copy for somebody to skim once would be inconsistent with our environmental policy, but they were welcome to inspect it at our office. Apparently, this was highly irregular – not surprising, perhaps, as a day visit by a skim-reader with a wetted thumb was charged at £750. I trust council taxpayers will feel the visit was good value.

Surely not knowing or caring about a person's sexuality is better proof against discrimination?

My blood pressure was tested by the auditors when they rejected our environmental policy and sent a replacement text with the injunctive that we would get the necessary tick-in-the-box by signing and returning it. Our environment policy is a fibre of our belief

system, mainly focused on climate change and recognising it’s where we can make the greatest difference. Their substitute was a list of anodyne blab that ranked “reducing business energy use and minimising CO2 emissions” only sixth, adding “minimising water consumption” as an afterthought.

Their policy set out that “current environmental regulations, laws and codes of practice will be regarded as setting the minimum standards of environmental performance”. So it seems that any suppliers that operate just about at the rim of lawfulness will be admitted, provided they sign up to a long checklist of environmental undertakings – often so vaguely drafted as to be worthless. Thankfully, one of my partners sorted it out for me; we are back with our own policy and I am returned to reasonable health.

We hold ISO 9001, 14001 and 18001. They are supposed to be differentiators that mean we and our services stand for something. But they seem to mean little to the public sector. Instead, each public client asks the same sort of questions – but, of course, differently. Why can’t the public sector at least standardise its questionnaire? Responding to detailed questions is expensive and, because some sectors seem none-the-wiser for the answers, often a waste of energy.

But, of course, probity in the public sector is vital. I was surprised, therefore, that the one question missing was whether we could demonstrate specific competence to do the project. It seems strange to take that on trust.