A report has just been published on ‘the future of professionalism’ in construction (see news). ‘Collaboration for Change’ is in fact about the future of the professions; contractors and materials and product suppliers are outside the scope of the report and would be injured at the suggestion there was no professionalism in the industry outside the ranks of architects, engineers and surveyors.
Some angry clients might argue that professionalism is in scarce supply from any source, but most at least accept the need for architects, engineers and surveyors. What the report suggests however is that the professions might not be around for too much longer unless they change.
That suggestion sounds a bit iconoclastic, but who predicted the decline in the power and status of the construction professions that has been seen over the past 30 years or more? Remember the status of the engineer under the ICE fourth edition? Only a distant memory now at Great George Street.
To some extent the professions have only themselves to blame. Snug in their respective silos, they present a far from united front, and members seem ever ready to denigrate each other’s skills or capacity to lead the industry.
Contractors in particular have stolen ground from engineers and architects and we have seen a huge growth in design and build contracts and other procurement routes that have reduced the influence of the professional parties.
What can the professions do about all this? The report details a host of challenges faced by the construction professions as they struggle to remain relevant in a fast changing world. The report’s author Paul Morrell, former government Chief Construction Adviser, says the threat is not yet to their existence, but soon could be. A wide ranging series of actions is recommended across areas like ethics, education and competence, institutional organisation and collaboration on strategic issues.
The scale of the challenge is such that only a collective response is likely to be enough, the report acknowledges. There was a near unanimous agreement about the need for inter profession collaboration from those attending a series of evidence sessions used to produce background for the report. There was a similar level of agreement that the professions have so far been poor at collaborating.
The report accepts however that there is no realistic prospect of the professions merging into a single institution; it also says there would be no particular need for one. There is no need to agree on everything, but there is a need to agree a series of critical topics on which it is both necessary and realistic to collaborate.
There are three issues over which there was a consensus in favour of collaboration; addressing the silo based nature of the industry, the challenge of climate change and the absence of a ‘feedback loop’ from clients to the industry on how the assets provided by the industry perform.
Even this level of cooperation might prove beyond the collaborative appetites of the construction professions. They are not quite in the last chance saloon yet, but as this report highlights, the time to at least start talking about change is upon them.
Nick Barrett
Editor