It was Warren Buffett who said “in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks”.
That is where I disagree with the Farmer Report and its conclusions regarding the CITB.
It recommends that the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) should be comprehensively reviewed and a reform programme instituted. If ever there was a leaking boat it’s the CITB. Rather than waste time trying to reform what has proved un-reformable in the past, it’s better to start again from fresh.
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Overall though, there is not a lot in the Farmer Report which comes as news to readers of CM. It concludes that the industry suffers from poor productivity, an ageing workforce, a dependence on migrant labour and a lack of genuine collaboration. This has been caused by a lack of investment in training and research and development.
“What infrastructure we do seems quite dull and hard work. A recent trip to Southern Spain had me travelling over many kilometres of viaducts and many more though tunnels. The landscape was spectacular and the civil engineering complemented it.”
As ever the focus seems to be on housing. The one recommendation I would get behind is the proposal for the government to incentivise manufactured housing solutions such as using government owned land directly, not selling it to developers.
With the decision about a preference about the third runway for London imminent, the hot money is on Heathrow. Even if a decision goes in its favour it could be a year before Parliament gets to vote on it, six years before work would get underway and another 6 before the first aircraft takes off or lands.
I can imagine the courts being filled with litigants claiming that whatever scheme is chosen will be falling foul of various EU laws, laws which could very well disappear by the time the cases come to any conclusion. It’s a barmy way to develop vital infrastructure.
What infrastructure we do, though, seems quite dull and hard work. A recent trip to Southern Spain had me travelling over many kilometres of viaducts and many more though tunnels. The landscape was spectacular and the civil engineering complemented it.
You compare that with the Hindhead Tunnel. At 1,830 metres, the tunnel is the longest non-estuarial road tunnel in the United Kingdom but it’s dull and has no mystery about it. Not when you compare it to some of the tunnels I went through in Spain where the approach to a 2000-metre long tunnel is a 500m viaduct with a similar viaduct on exit from the tunnel.
It just begs the question “how did they do that” not once or twice but five or six times. The trip from Granada to Malaga was 130km of breath taking spectacle, and passed too soon.
Somehow or other we need to bring back into our industry some spectacle, whether it be in the buildings or civil engineering that we create. Having creations that takes the breath away and stimulates the curiosity is what will help bring bright people into the industry, not just putting down more asphalt or adding a few quirky buildings.
Worthy words in another report are no substitute for an industry that looks dynamic, innovative and creating wonder. It happens in other industries unfortunately just not here. Exciting construction projects become dull, tedious and tetchy due to the long winded and turgid way we go about designing, approving (or not) and implementing them. Farmer won’t change that.
