Accelerating change is the son of Egan's Rethinking construction report. We report on the latest targets for the industry to adopt.
Accelerating change – the title says it all really. The latest missive from Sir John Egan "builds on and reaffirms" the principles he laid out in his landmark Rethinking construction report four years ago; secretly, Egan must be fed up that progress has been so painfully slow.

Accelerating change is Egan's swansong as chair of the Strategic Forum for Construction. His latest set of targets now become the responsibility of new chair Peter Rogers, director of Stanhope.

So the Rethinking construction annual goals – cuts in construction times and costs of 10%, defects and accidents down by 20% and a 20% increase in the number of projects completed on time and to budget – are confined to the scrap heap in favour of some shiny, new targets.

By the end of 2004, says the Forum, 20% of construction projects by value should be undertaken by integrated teams and supply chains; and 20% of client activity by value should embrace the principles of the Clients' Charter. By the end of 2007 both these figures should rise to 50%.

The Forum also aims to reverse the long-term decline in the industry's ability to attract and retain a quality workforce. It is to develop strategies that will enable the industry to recruit and keep 300 000 qualified people by the end of 2006 and result in a 50% increase in applications to further education by 2007.

While developers such as Rogers' Stanhope and volume builders like Egan's former company BAA need no convincing of the merits of integrated teams, many clients are new to construction and are incapable of providing the necessary leadership. The Forum aims to produce a toolkit by April next year to help clients assemble integrated teams and promote effective teamworking skills.

The DTI has administrated the Forum up till now, so it is ironic that many public sector clients, particularly in local government, are the ones that think no further than lowest tender when it comes to procurement. Construction minister Brian Wilson promises change: "I am determined to help ensure that the public sector, as the industry's largest client, plays its role in driving forward the change agenda. I want to see that the taxpayer gets value for the money we invest in schools, hospitals, roads and so on. To achieve this clients need an industry that works in a joined-up manner, where integrated teams move from project to project, learning as they go, driving out waste and embracing a culture of continuous improvement."

The Forum, where m&e contractors' interests are represented by the Specialist Engineering Contractors' (SEC) Group, clearly sees collaborative working as the panacea to the industry's ills. "Integrated teamworking is key," says Sir John Egan. "Integrated teams deliver greater process efficiency and by working together over time can help drive out the old style adversarial culture and provide safer projects using a qualified, trained workforce."

As well as the integrated teams toolkit, the Forum sees revisions to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations as a powerful tool to accelerate progress towards integrated teams. The Health and Safety Executive is set to publish a discussion document on the subject this autumn.

As collaboration allows risk management issues to be addressed by the whole team, it seems logical that insurance products should be offered across the team. At Terminal 5, BAA is taking out project insurance covering both professional indemnity and contractor's all risks, reducing the costs of the premiums by removing overlapping cover. The Forum will be using such pilot projects to evaluate the idea further.

The Forum is also to produce new payment mechanisms by April 2003 and will develop key performance indicators for payment to benchmark best practice. The SEC Group is also to examine the impact of insolvency law on construction supply chains and put forward ideas for change by July 2003.

If integration is one central tenet of the report, the other is people issues. Its recruitment and retention targets may seem ambitious, but in reality are necessary just to tread water. Too few young people are interested in joining the construction industry; no wonder, so long as it is perceived as being a dirty, unsafe working environment.

The Forum aims to address the issue of site conditions and develop a code of good working practices by the end of the year. It is also promoting the use of the Respect for People toolkits, Investors in People and diversity. On health and safety, the Forum expects integrated teams to have an impact but is also looking to initiatives such as the Major Contractors' Group's target to have a fully certificated workforce by the end of 2003.

Like its predecessor, the Accelerating change report covers a lot of ground. Peter Rogers is aware that many in the industry failed to act upon the Rethinking construction message. "We need to make sure that the Forum is as inclusive as possible and its strategy as clear and as simple as possible. We need to find ways of carrying the message throughout the industry not simply to a small minority," he says. Let us hope that the message starts to filter down beyond the big boys soon.