Target practice

It likes to make us think that it is accountable. So we get bold stuff like: “we’ll get to 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.” Or Labour’s commitment when it came to power in 1997 to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2010.

It’s fun to watch the back pedalling. Energy minister Malcolm Wicks now says that the EU renewables deal struck by Tony Blair earlier this year did not specify that all member states had to meet the 20% level, so long as it was achieved across Europe as a whole (page 7). So it’s okay then for the UK to manage 10-15%, along with the poorer countries in Europe.

Sir John Egan liked targets too. Do you remember the casual way he tossed them into his two reports into how the construction industry could be remodelled: Rethinking construction and Accelerating change? Among the good intentions was a desire to see 50% (by value) of all projects to be delivered by integrated teams by 2007. No prizes for guessing whether that particular landmark will be reached by the end of December (pages 19-20).

While much has changed since Egan, and Latham before him, it’s hard not to concur with former construction minister Nick Raynsford who, in his recent submission to a Trade and Industry Select Committee inquiry into construction, said that there was a “feeling across the industry that the momentum has to some extent been lost.”

The government has shown its lack of commitment to change by dropping plans to revise the Construction Act from the recent Queen’s Speech. So much for targets.