Construction's contradictions
Mark Anthony
Founder at DemolitionNews.com, Demolition Insider and Diggers and Dozers; owner and host of The Break Fast Show; demolition industry ghost writer.
To the outsider, construction is a mature and respected industry. To those within, however, it is a sector wrought with contradictions.
I spend virtually every waking hour thinking about, talking about, writing about or broadcasting about demolition and construction. And I am OK with that. The industry has afforded me a living for more than 30 years and I love the business. I love the people, the equipment, the innovation and - of course - the way in which the sector changes the very landscape of our world.
But I am often struck by the fact that the industry is characterised by contradictions. What do I mean? Allow me to explain.
It is an industry with a leadership council yet lacks leadership.
It greets a skills shortage by making it more difficult and more expensive for experienced workers to stay within the industry.
There are?300,000 construction SMEs?and between them they employ 2.7 million people and are responsible for nine percent of the UK's GDP, some ￡117 billion per annum.? Yet they are dictated to by a handful of main contractors that are allowed to set the industry agenda.
It is generally the first into a recession but is always expected to lead the nation out again.
Had a construction minister that recently told a Construction Leadership Council that she would be in post for the remainder of the year…hours before being moved to a new governmental role.
It strives for efficiency whilst constantly adding burdensome bureaucracy.
It consistently fails to heed calls for drug and alcohol testing because it knows precisely what such testing might find.
It speaks loudly about gender equality while operating sites that remain stubbornly and mindlessly misogynistic.
It has a lower than average level of literacy yet requires workers to sit exams, read operator manuals, heed warning signs, and to interact increasingly with text-based computer systems.
Favours classrooms and cards over actual competence.
It bemoans the ongoing skills shortage while trained and experienced operators and operatives are sat at home praying for work purely because they have the wrong piece of plastic.
Shouts about its mental health awareness even while having having a suicide rate that is almost four times the national average.
And it has trade federations that actively exclude more of that trade than they claim to represent.
See what I mean?
Getting specialist contractors paid in full & on time from major contractors | Dispute Resolution & Contract Coaching | Send me a DM to see how I can help ??
11 个月Mark well said. I couldn’t agree more. The industry is back to front and is not serving those who are the industry, that being the specialist contractors. The top tier contractors have rigged the system with the help of their legal chums to put them at the top and those who actually do the work at the bottom. It’s why I setup my coaching side to address this and the contractual awareness skills gap and to ensure we level the playing field. Main contractors cannot do what the specialist (not sub) contractors can do and yet widely abuse them as you note. 4,400 insolvenices in the year is a mind boggling statistic. For me in addition to giving specialists the knowledge and confidence to tell these charlatans to do one, we need reform in many areas, including the Construction Act which although good doesn’t go far enough. It’ll take lots of people like us to drive the changes desperately needed to help us contract better and build better relationships. I feel that this will lead to a less toxic industry and better mental health all around. Keep up the good work!