Summit meeting

The industry has had a few weeks now to think about how it can achieve the two main targets thrown down by the Strategic Forum for Construction in its Accelerating change report: more integrated teams and many, many more bright young things entering the industry and staying in it once they have joined.

Pertinent then that these two themes dominated proceedings at the HVCA's Summit 2002 conference. In fact, perhaps one is dependent on the other. Only when the industry starts taking collaborative working seriously, constructing higher quality buildings to time and budget on sites that are safe, can it ever expect to attract people away from other career options.

In her keynote address, Zara Lamont, chief executive of the Confederation of Construction Clients, addressed the question put to her in the introduction by HVCA director Robert Higgs: will clients take on the leadership role laid out in Accelerating change, or are we expecting too much from them?

"Accelerating change calls for client leadership, and that's fine," said Lamont. "But it's not our industry, it's your industry, and you have to take responsibility for it. Without a commitment to change, we will still be talking about it in five years' time, in ten years' time and time is running out."

Lamont identified the client's role as doing their homework, setting out the brief, the business need, the attitude to risk…setting the tone in terms of procurement routes such as integrated teams. "Clients need to go and visit the sites of their prospective contractors – your sites are your shop window," she told the audience.

"The supply side has to offer clients something they can choose," said Lamont. "If we are to move away from lowest cost, we have to be able to show added value and we need differentiators. Measurement is fundamental – it is the only way we know if we are moving forward."

Lamont saw the use of integrated teams as really quite simple: "Clients are not buying individual services, they are buying an end product and we will only get that if you are all working together. Integrated teams will go a long way to solving things. A lot of clients are satisfied with the service they get but that is far from common practice. We need to accelerate change and have an impact right down through the supply chain."

On people issues, Lamont felt that clients had a right to expect a qualified workforce and the industry needed to respect those at the sharp end: "If you do not respect and reward your employees, they will not deliver for your clients," she said.

The issues of respect and reward featured heavily in the second session of the morning: how to address the predicted shortage of plumbers, electricians and gas fitters joining the sector. Baroness Sharp, who recently led a House of Lords debate on the subject, asked delegates: "Are we doing enough to get young people into training?"

Baroness Sharp painted a backdrop of dwindling numbers entering any sort of Modern Apprenticeship, even fewer interested in engineering and construction crafts and many more failing to finish courses.

What can be done about this chronic situation? "We should question government about why the emphasis is on a target of 50% of young people entering university. This is the wrong message to young people and places a lower value on craft courses," said Baroness Sharp. "There is no awareness that the apprentice route can lead onto an HND and a degree."

She also attacked the apparent discrimination against older potential entrants who may be interested in the industry but for whom it is more difficult to attain funding, as well as the bureaucracy of modern apprenticeships where small firms struggle to cope with all the paperwork involved.

Delegates also got a rap on the knuckles: "25% of those running small businesses in this industry have no qualifications whatsoever – you have to put your own house in order," said Baroness Sharp.

Stuart Lyon of MITIE Engineering (Scotland) and head of the HVCA's National Training Forum admitted that the industry does not have a long-term strategy for reaching its recruitment and training goals. "There has never been more funding available for training so why aren't we training enough people?" asked Lyon. He wondered whether it was time for voluntary involvement in training to come to an end – is a training levy on the cards?

This theme was picked up in one of the morning workshop sessions on training led by HVCA president Robert Stirland. "Employers need to provide opportunities for young people, but there is a shortage of employers willing to give young people a start," said Stirland. Indeed, the argument these days seems to have shifted away from what can be done to attract more youngsters to the industry, to one of getting more employers involved so that training places can be found for all those that see m&e contracting as offering an exciting career path. "The best opportunity we have of getting our house in order is to introduce a training levy," thought Stirland.

While the idea is bound to meet with much resistance, few can argue that something needs to be done to get employers taking on more apprentices. Simon Bartley, chair of the implementation group for SummitSkills, the proposed sector skills council for the electrical, mechanical and plumbing trades, argued that studies have proven that apprentices do generate money for the employer over their training period. "There is no reason for businesses to see this as a cost," said Bartley.

One reason put forward by delegates for not taking on more apprentices was bureaucracy. "We have 86 apprentices on the books," said Mike Taylor of Lorne Stewart, "but employment legislation is a problem and agency labour gets round that problem. As long as you are careful which agency you use, output is often better."

Use of agency labour could take up a whole conference in its own right and it was no surprise to see a workshop dedicated to the controversial topic here. Taking on temporary labour to complement the directly employed staff, the core and top-up approach, has become a way of life, among major contractors at least. But the boundaries have become blurred in recent times, with composite companies entering the fray and use of illegal, poorly qualified labour rife in the south east.

Simon Bartley chaired this session and argued that the industry needs to persuade government to look at the issue of composite companies, but on the issue of employment red tape he said: "The government is not going to roll back legislation that has been put in place largely because of Europe." Also coming up is a new Directive on temporary workers that could see agency labour on the same terms and conditions as directly employed operatives. "Agencies may need to take on a different form," thought Bartley, "otherwise things will go down the illegal labour route with all the attendant health and safety and quality issues."

Some contractors in the audience using agencies were doing their utmost to maintain quality. Limiting the number of agencies to a handful with whom you develop strong relationships seems to be the name of the game.

The accusations with agencies is that they erode quality contracting by not training. This seems open to question. "If we need to train staff, we pass the costs back to the agency – that is in our terms and conditions," says Mike Taylor of Lorne Stewart. "No new person comes on to one of our sites without health and safety training."

An interesting move from Network Rail may precipitate a trend away from agency labour. It is insisting that maintenance contractors have a minimum of 85% direct labour: clearly the company thinks there is a relationship between safety and use of agency labour.

In a health and safety workshop, contractors called for guidance on an issue now reaching epidemic proportions in the south east: the fact that English is the minority language on many sites. Unfortunately, margins in contracting do not allow for interpreters.

The workshop also identified something which rarely comes across in health and safety statistics: it seems that there are more serious lost time accidents in maintenance than new build. "There is more complacency in maintenance," said Taylor, "and electrical isolation is one of the worst areas."

The workshop formula of the conference allowed delegates to concentrate on areas of most concern. The Summit concluded with four conference champions reporting back on what they thought were the most important issues of the day.

Kevin Thomas, GlaxoSmithKline's director of facility investment planning worldwide saw integration as the burning issue. "The industry is fragmented and collaboration is the only way forward," he said. "We have to learn to promote the whole."

Promotion of engineering as a sexy career option was on the mind of Ruth Kelly of m&e consultants Max Fordham. She saw the need to get into schools early and thought the industry should collaborate to sell itself via the tv, much like successful ad campaigns for the Army and the NHS.

Former Crown House Engineering boss Richard Lumby, now running sister companies at Carillion, wondered whether the m&e sector is embracing diversity; is it capable of attracting the best from other sectors to allow it to sit at the top table in integrated teams? He had been dismayed, while in the sessions on labour issues, that the debate "had appeared to miss the fact that there are opportunities to attract and retain workers from overseas."

CIBSE president Doug Oughton of FaberMaunsell focused on the skills shortage and called for the industry to come together to address the barriers stopping employers taking on more trainees, to take the messages from the day to those not attending, to raise the profile and image of the industry and get a consistent message out there into schools.

That must be the overriding message of the day: more collaboration is needed, in terms of working together in integrated teams to achieve better buildings, and of working together to promote image and career structure holistically rather than along sector-specific lines.