Without a new approach to guarantee performance across the built environment, professions risk becoming irrelevant, warns Paul Morrell, former government chief construction adviser.

Built environment professionals must embrace regular TripAdvisor style feedback from clients to guarantee their professional standing, former government chief construction adviser Paul Morrell said this week.

To “close the gap”, he said, between design promises made by industry and outcomes delivered, institutions must boost the level of direct response from clients and the ultimate users of infrastructure.  

“Certainly if I was in the hotel business I would hate TripAdvisor. But it would focus me on the needs of my customers.” Paul Morrell

Speaking at the Vision show in London last week, Morrell said that introducing formalised feedback would focus professional minds on learning from the successes and failures of a project, allowing design and delivery performance to be better measured. 

And while details of how such a system might work had yet to be discussed, he urged the professional institutions to take the lead and work together to set up and administer this new “body of knowledge”.  

 “The industry needs to have a TripAdvisor style monitor of performance to provide vital feedback that will guarantee professional performance,” he said, highlighting that currently there is no way for clients to rate and so to compare outcomes from one project to the next.

“In any other industry it would be a scandal,” he said, reflecting that in the motor industry, for example, it was the norm for products to be recalled for mass repair if defects were highlighted. 

Use of a public feedback system similar to that offered by TripAdvisor to travellers, is a key recommendation of the recent “Collaboration for Change” report produced by the industry-backed Edge Commission under Morrell’s chairmanship.

This report recommends that professional institutions collaborate to develop a shared vision to tackle 21st century challenges and urged industry to seek ways to boost confidence in professional competence.

Boosting feedback on project outcomes, the report said, would help to better “guarantee” the quality of individual professionals and bridge the gap between the aspiration of designer and the reality of the infrastructure created.  

“The standing and perceived value of the professions is being challenged, with detractors seeing in their conduct and practice a tendency towards protectionism, resistance to change, the reinforcement of silos and the preservation of hierarchies,” Edge Commission report.

The TripAdvisor model would, Morrell said, enable frank and open feedback to be given by both knowledgeable and lay clients and so help to influence industry behaviour towards becoming more customer and quality focussed. 

Morrell acknowledged that the practicalities would have to be considered further and ideas about safeguards should be employed to prevent malicious postings. 

He added: “Certainly if I was in the hotel business I would hate TripAdvisor. But it would focus me on the needs of my customers.”

For the construction industry, he said ‘value starts when constructions finishes’. The true success of a building, he said, cannot be judged until post-construction when the building is in use and design flaws can become apparent.

Morrell also urged built environment professions to step outside their historic sector silos, think big and collaborate to tackle critical issues facing the 21st society.

In particular, his report highlights the need for the professions to develop a shared vision of how the built environment industry must respond to climate change – both to mitigate and to adapt to the threat - and establish cross-institutional policy to lead on the major issues facing society.

“Few in the industry believe that it is organised in a way that works well for clients and the full depth of the supply chain. There is little or no integration between design, product manufacture, construction, operation and asset management," says the Edge Commission report.

A cross profession approach to bolster ethical behaviour is also critical, the report adds, highlighting the need for sanctions against those falling short. 

“The standing and perceived value of the professions is being challenged, with detractors seeing in their conduct and practice a tendency towards protectionism, resistance to change, the reinforcement of silos and the preservation of hierarchies,” says the report.

“There is also a risk that the institutions lose control of the very things that are claimed to differentiate their members from those lacking a professional designation,” it warns.