Pressure is mounting on the construction industry’s late payers to get their houses in order and find ways to stop log jamming the industry’s cash flow.
Blog and Comment
Intelligent client needed
Our news pages are full these days with stories about public sector procurement. The public sector has always been crucial as a client for construction, but changes in procurement have made it increasingly so.
Plea bargaining to combat corruption
Corruption in business is endemic across the European Community, costing the EU economy almost £100 billion a year in lost tax revenues and foreign investment; and the problem is getting worse.
‘Day of shame’ for Whitehall contract managers
The UK government is pushing ahead with plans to outsource more government services despite the growing evidence that the UK public sector is nowhere near capable of managing the large contracts involved.
Need to reset ground rules
Public sector construction procurement is in crisis. Stories of procurement foul ups across the public sector have been headline grabbing for years of course, and there have been government responses, such as sending some civil servants off to be better educated in project management.
Bribery Act must show its teeth
Evidence has been coming thick and fast recently that despite the introduction of the UK’s supposedly harsh Bribery Act in 2010, corruption is still endemic in construction. Corruption is endemic in life generally, it has to be said, and in no way should construction be regarded as anything unique in this respect.
Funding needs planning
What is the best way to end decades of floundering, delay and indecision in the planning of the UK’s infrastructure? Few would probably say let’s create a quango to tackle the problem, but that is what has emerged as the main recommendation of the review of UK infrastructure planning by Sir John Armitt.
End feast and famine first
Construction in 2025 will certainly be a hugely different industry from the one it is now if even a fraction of the ambition revealed in the government’s new report Construction 2025 is realised. Construction costs to be down by 33 per cent, projects to be completed in half the time that they are now, planning reformed, late delivery and cost overruns a thing of the past, no more accidents … the list goes on (see news).
Big projects mean big disputes
While the UK government dithers and delays over the precise shape and size of its infrastructure plans – we must take it on trust that it will eventually come up with some appropriate to a modern industrialised economy – the rest of the world’s major economies are getting on with developing their own.
Bleak future for PF2
News that some schools were at last being released by the Education Funding Agency has come as welcome relief to work starved contractors, but as many questions have been raised as answered about the future procurement methodology for all public sector infrastructure.