There’s cautious optimism in the air as we look ahead to 2014. It’s cautious and being kept tightly under control: after five years of declining or flatlining output, and losing at least 10% of the industry’s headcount, we have become so accustomed to bad news that there’s a universal tendency to de-emphasise the positive and look for the caveats.
Certainly, there are good grounds for anyone working in construction to be wary at the moment. Most companies cut back in the recession, reducing staff overheads and perhaps not replacing skills. Now that better times are here across most sectors and regions, it would be unwise to assume that businesses have the same capabilities to take on new work and new risks as they were in 2008. There is less capacity out there, and stretching it unwisely could still lead to business failures or loss-making contracts.
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Skills shortages are now the words on everyone’s lips, although quite how industry employers are expected to create extra training places for the workforce of the future and at the same time plan for a more efficient, and increasingly offsite industry is certainly not obvious.
And while we’re looking for caveats, there’s currently something of a BIM backlash. Throughout the gloom and doom years, a shaft of BIM evangelism kept many people focused on the appealingly distant horizon of 2016. But now, just two years before the public sector BIM mandate is due to kick in, some are questioning whether it actually will usher in new efficiencies and an outbreak of industry harmony, or whether it will just boil down to a few more contractual clauses for everyone to argue over.
But let’s emphasise the positive. Many progressive ideas, such as the imperative to train apprentices, design sustainably and minimise waste in every form, have become embedded in the past five years. And, quite simply, we can build some pretty amazing buildings. Zaha Hadid’s Softbridge in Oxford, on site with BAM Construct, is going to be a delight for everyone who comes into contact with it. Its design is perhaps atypical, but it’s typical of what the industry, working at its professional best, can achieve.
And as we explore in our 2014 feature, the industry is soon going to be delivering buildings with features that will take us into a digital future. It’s an exciting step forward, as the built environment adapts to the changes that are taking place in every other aspect of our lives.
And that, ultimately, is why BIM definitely does have a future in our industry. BIM isn’t just about contracts, risk and liabilities: it’s about smartphones, apps, the cloud and making life easier and more productive at an individual and project level. And that’s why this editor’s New Year prediction is that BIM will increasingly take hold and work.
