We stress the need to unite in the cause to be heard.
The ECA and HVCA are both strong and respected organisations. Many of their members, especially in the ECA, do much of their work outside the construction process. However, the members of the Joint Major Contractors Group (JMCG) are particularly closely linked to construction, and several of them are part of larger construction industry companies. Firms like Amec Building Services, Emcor Drake and Scull and Balfour Kilpatrick are always big players. They insist that their voices are heard at the highest levels of government, and they can, if they wish, achieve such high level attention through political contacts of their own.
That is not true of smaller m&e firms. They need a collective voice on their behalf and that has long been provided by the Constructors Liaison Group (CLG). In past years it has brought together the specialist engineering sector, the trade contractors such as scaffolders or roofers and also the groundwork and external cladding firms.
The last section, organised as the Building Structures Group, sadly left the CLG some years ago, which was a step backwards for specialist representation. More recently there have been protracted negotiations between the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group (in which the ECA and the HVCA are major participants) and the National Specialist Contractors Council, on behalf of the trade contractors, as to how the CLG should develop over the next few years. Those discussions, in which I gave impartial advice, have not been easy, as the two groups had differing views about the make-up of the CLG and its future structure and workload.
My feeling, which was shared by members of the JMCG, was that the overriding priority must be to ensure that the concerns of the specialists are heard forcefully in the new Strategic Forum for the Construction Industry, headed by Sir John Egan and the inner circles of government. Every other issue, however sensitive it may be for individual trade associations or groups, must be secondary to that.
The requirement is for a united presence for the specialist at the top table. All the rest is detail. If there are rocks in the road, drive round them until it is possible to remove them by general consent.
The warning signs have been there for 12 months that this government is less involved with construction than it used to be and it has a natural inclination to reduce the number of voices to which it listens
It is easy to lose sight of that overall requirement because of the perfectly reasonable concern about detailed practicalities. The warning signs have been there for 12 months that this government is less directly involved with construction than it used to be, and also that it has a natural inclination to reduce the number of voices to which it listens.
The previous Construction Industry Board worked very well, but it eventually had to close because the newly formed Confederation of Construction Clients (CCC) pulled the rug from under it by refusing to join. What the CCC really wanted was no board at all. It favoured one client organisation (itself) talking direct to one supply side grouping. That grouping would not have been the CLG.
Fortunately, construction industry minister Nicholas Raynsford was able to head that threat off shortly before the general election 12 months ago. He devised plans for the Strategic Forum for the Construction Industry, in which the CLG has been a full and equal participant. But the CLG is there as one unit. There will not be room for two specialist organisations, as the government has made very clear.
Forming the Strategic Forum was Raynsford's last action on behalf of the industry as its highly effective minister. Following the general election, sponsorship was handed over to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), for whom construction was only a very small part of its responsibilities.
The new minister, Brian Wilson, wants to be supportive, but he has many other duties to perform, including the vital national interest of energy supplies. The retirement of John Hobson means that the Construction Industry Directorate, which has not been happy in the DTI so far, is now headed by a middle-ranking civil servant rather than a very senior one. That may change, in that the very capable lady now doing Hobson's work may receive well deserved promotion. But it sends a signal that the DTI sees construction as just another arrow in its large quiver, and not a high priority for its attention compared with a possible trade war with the USA over steel exports or the admission of China to the World Trade Organisation.
Source
Electrical and Mechanical Contractor
No comments yet