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Murray Rowden, Construction Excellence

Collaboration: an old word but a vision for the future

For the industry to truly move forward to embrace the current optimism and opportunity it really must move from talking about collaboration to actually doing it, says Murray Rowden.

After several lean years, these are brighter times for UK construction – and official government figures released this month confirm the industry has posted year-on-year growth for 23 months in a row.

The industry’s vision, optimism and sense of opportunity have combined to produce the Construction 2025 joint strategy, the National Infrastructure plan and the IUK Routemap.

"We need a supply chain that collaborates on BIM and technology. A supply chain that integrates the “consultant and contractor” functions to provide seamless delivery. A supply chain that is truly rewarded for the value it creates."

But while there is broad consensus on the direction of travel, there is an important debate to be had about how the industry as a whole can improve.

There remains much to be done around the issues of skills, better methods of procurement, client leadership, pipeline certainty, application of technology and data, industrialisation of the process, supply chain investment and innovation, government intervention and the way we do business. 

The big question we face is how does government, clients (by which we mean developers, owners or operators) and the supply chain work together to move the industry on?

Technology such as BIM will play a key role in closing this circle - as a disrupter of the industry’s current business practices. So too will the rise of companies offering data-led and manufacturing-led approaches.

But the solutions are not all rooted in technology, and there is an old word that is coming back to the fore. Collaboration. Constructing Excellence has championed “excellence through collaboration” for more than two decades.

Over the years we have seen time and again that successful collaborative models deliver better outcomes, and better value. 

"We need a supply chain that collaborates on BIM and technology. A supply chain that integrates the “consultant and contractor” functions to provide seamless delivery. A supply chain that is truly rewarded for the value it creates."

Constructing Excellence’s global network is reporting growing interest in collaboration - with the approach used at Terminal 5 often cited as a model.

In the UK, we have a growing community of strong client leaders who have applied the relational principles established on T5 to their own businesses - with significant success. 

This approach is still not applied consistently though. We need an industry that fully recognises collaboration as a key leadership skill that is central to business planning.

We need the industry to embrace supra-collaboration. We need greater collaboration between clients in the adoption of consistent delivery and procurement systems. We need clients to adopt the principles of the National Infrastructure plan, and to collaborate to create an integrated master programme that smooths out the peaks.

We need a supply chain that collaborates on BIM and technology. A supply chain that integrates the “consultant and contractor” functions to provide seamless delivery. A supply chain that is truly rewarded for the value it creates.

Finally, we need government intervention in the labour market to create an environment that allows the industry to invest in new skills for the future.

Collaboration may be an old word. But if we truly embrace its spirit, we will create an industry that’s ready for the future.

Murray Rowden is Managing Director of Infrastructure at Turner & Townsend and Chairman of Constructing Excellence