Has the UK Government Construction Strategy delivered? R Garvey
4. What is this really, really about; how to influence change to become common practice?
Rethinking Construction (Egan, 1998) was heavily influenced by changes that had taken place
in the automotive industry3. The report promoted amongst other things the ideas of partnering
with the supply chain and the principles of lean and what, as previously mentioned Green (2010) refers to as codified best practice. The question is whether there are lessons from how
3 not entirely surprising given the chair of the task force, Sir John Egan, had previously worked as chief
the automotive industry adopted change? Initial investigation highlights that whilst there are differences between automotive and construction industries (Gann, 1996, Crowley, 1998), it is possible that the most significant instigator of change in the automotive industry was a research project investigating the future of that industry. The research was undertaken by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, funded by the industry and published in the book The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al, 1990). Whilst lean production theory appears to be the principal initiative that resulted from this work, the research project involved a study of comparative performance between all the automotive companies and their individual production facilities. It looks as if this transparency over performance enabled the automotive companies to appreciate their differences and to seek an alternative approach. Hence, is the catalyst for change an organisation’s increased awareness of its comparative performance, and if so, how is performance compared in construction either by clients or contractors? Given this, it would seem understandable that a key aspect of Rethinking Construction was to establish a
movement for change that incorporated effective performance measurement.
Rethinking Construction initiated the creation of the Construction Best Practice Programme
(CBPP) and the Movement for Innovation (M4I). Initially funded by government and the forerunners for Constructing Excellence, both initiatives sought to collate and share industry best practice. To date more than 600 demonstration projects have been recruited to share their innovations and learning. Therefore there is a significant source of available information on projects for others to learn from and compare their own performance. The question is how has the industry learnt from this body of knowledge? Constructing Excellence and more recently Glenigan have collated key performance information on the industry from data supplied by those companies willing to share information. Whilst there are tools available for comparative performance, but a major downside is that performance data is not collated for all projects and actors within the industry. Moreover, there is a potential inherent bias in any comparison, as only those companies that are willing to share and, presumably, performing well provide data. What does appear evident is that performance management is required. Indeed, there was a task group on the subject as part of the Government Construction Strategy implementation.
However, the brevity of the resulting report Delivering Excellence in Construction provides
limited understanding as to questions such as: What data is required to be collate data? Should data be collated for all projects and at what level, project or organisation?
Another argument is that change will occur due to some disruption in current business operations. Often it is a disruptive technological solution of which there are many examples, most notably the internet. Does construction have a disruptive technology on the horizon? Is it building information modelling? Even disruptive technologies would appear to comply with the law of diffusion of innovation (Sinek 2009). This law states that to for idea or innovation to achieve mass-market acceptance requires between fifteen to eighteen per cent of the market to tip the system in favour of the idea or innovation. Whilst this may be predicated on mass-market products and goods, Sinek does cite the influence of other examples such as the civil rights movement. The premise is that a population is broadly categorised into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards – those who never change. Does this present a model for researching the construction population? As previously mentioned, given that the
Government Construction Strategy is focused on the public sector, can it be categorised in this
way? Moreover, it raises questions with the author to consider how ideas and innovation are currently diffused within construction and whether sufficient understanding is made about influencing the early majority. The implication is that innovators and the early adopters already understand and don’t need influencing, but if the early majority are not identified and not
5.
Conclusion
This paper started with a focus on the Government Construction Strategy, the latest in a long
line of government-sponsored papers advocating change to construction. The premise was made that the approach adopted by the Government Construction Strategy was different to
previous reports by concisely articulating the problem and proposing an implementation plan to address the key issues. This approach was later identified to be in line with the Kotter model for change. A summary of the progress of the strategy was provided and highlighted the significant volume of work undertaken and the documentation produced. The question was posed as to whether the laudable aspirations of the strategy will achieve its desired aim for long- term sustainable cost and carbon reduction. Moreover, will the industry change?
This question was debated in the next section. Evidence was presented that depicted the industry as a complex web of interconnected forces restraining change to occur. Moreover, the industry’s resistance to change was highlighted to be due to structural forces within the supply chain as well as the dominant business model promulgating sub-contracting as well as a disincentive to invest in development. An alternative perspective was presented in the form of strategic procurement; here the argument is that the supply side are unlikely to change if there is no business imperative and implies it is incumbent on the demand side with a more dominant power position to be the lead influencers of change. The role of the state was also raised with the principle of an entrepreneurial state as positive instigator for change and citing the example of one of the Government’s trial projects as evidence. The section concluded with reference to the aforementioned Kotter model for change and highlighting that the Government Construction Strategy could be seen as following the first six steps; however it is the final two
steps that relate to achieving sustainable change and doubts were raised over whether this was achievable particularly given the concerns over the ongoing leadership of the strategy. What is more, given that solutions appear to be known, why has change not been embraced and, even it does, at what point does it become common practice?
The third section considered how to influence change to become common practice. The catalyst for significant change in the automotive industry was indicated to be transparency over the comparative performance of all companies and their individual production facilities. Hence the debate considered whether such approaches should be more rigorously deployed within construction. Another principle presented was the law of diffusion of innovation, questioning the approach by construction to influence the early majority in order to achieve mass-market acceptance of the any change.
Hence, the focus for further doctoral research would appear to be the need to concentrate on understanding change within construction. Does change even need to happen? Given the overwhelming number of reports imploring change, one can only presume the answer is yes. Is the change promoted appropriate? Who should influence change, the demand or supply side? With respect to the first question, is change needed, the Government Construction Strategy does
present a different proposition by urging for the industry to achieve cost and carbon reduction. In this respect, the argument is not so much the industry has to change, but how does it achieve this aim; however the answer still predicates the need for change. The strategy does provide strategic direction, with the implication that if the client, i.e. the public sector, is clear on what needs to be delivered, the supply chain will develop the appropriate solutions. Moreover, it highlights the importance of the intelligent client principles referred to by the Procurement and Lean Client Task Group and questions whether further study would be beneficial to assess the maturity of the public sectors clients. However, does the principle of the supply chain developing appropriate solutions contradict the argument presented by Cox? Cox argues that suppliers will not change unless there is a business imperative; in which case how does the
demand side create that business imperative? Is it the demand side that has the dominant power position to be the instigators of change? Further investigation is necessary of Mazzucota’s principle of the entrepreneurial state to assess whether public sector clients could adopt this approach. All three points, creating the business imperative, instigating change and being less risk averse are incorporated within the intelligent client maturity profile and all demand strong leadership.
The strategy’s implementation task groups have produced a considerable number of outputs, including inter alia the aforementioned intelligent client profile, standards developed for BIM as well as the case studies of the procurement reform trial projects. Hence is the issue to explore how these ideas are being diffused into the industry?
There is an issue to explore with regards to the continued leadership of the Government Construction Strategy, given the prominence the incumbent Chief Construction Adviser has
placed on the Industrial Strategy for Construction: Construction 2025. Whilst the Government Construction Strategy can be seen to align with Kotter’s model for change, the achievement of
its strategic aims and its lasting legacy is dependent on completion of all steps. Failure to do so, will mean change has once again not happened and the industry will not have learnt the lessons of the past.
To that end, it is considered prudent that further study should focus on whether the Government Construction Strategy can have a lasting legacy. Focusing on local government, the intention
is to assess local government’s awareness of the Government Construction Strategy and its
adoption of the strategy’s four principal streams; procurement reform, the intelligent client, building information modelling and soft landings. Moreover, to assess the diffusion and take- up of the guidance and best practice, with the aim to identify the tipping point in local government for when best practice becomes common practice.
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