Paul Sheffield hopes the logo will encourage investors to visit the campaign website
The industry needs to capitalise on its Olympics success story to gain the trust of both government and the private sector investors and bankers needed to unlock infrastructure investment, a new campaign heard today.
At yesterday’s launch of the “Creating Britain’s Future” campaign, UKCG chairman and PPCIOB James Wates said: “The Olympics has shown that construction can be trusted to deliver programmes of work successfully. But time is running out – this campaign highlights the need and urgency of investing in construction as a way out of recession.”
Industry chiefs from 23 major contractors rallied behind the new UKCG campaign, reiterating calls on government to turn the aspirations in the National Infrastructure Plan into action, and recognise construction’s efficiency in generating jobs.
The campaign logo is being displayed on hoardings on 90 prominent construction sites across the country in the run up to the Olympics, including sites lining London’s main transport routes.
The hope is that members of the public, key decision makers and even investors from overseas will visit the campaign’s website and watch an information video – www.ukcg.org.uk/future.
Former Arup chairman Terry Hill said: ‘The industry can generate value and reduce costs more than government thinks – have trust in us, and we will deliver more than you can imagine.”
The UKCG calculates that construction is 40% better at creating jobs for the same level of spend as manufacturing, and 75% better than financial services. To help get the message across, Wates said that UKCG was working to ensure that every Local Enterprise Partnership included a member of the industry at board level and on key sub-groups.
But speakers also identified the need to influence a new audience: the pension fund managers and City investors needed to back a new generation of public-private infrastructure and PFI projects to get the industry and economy moving again.
Coalition politicians have raised the need for government to guarantee private sector loans for major projects and new affordable housing, but there has been little action so far.
Rhian Kelly, director for business environment at the CBI, said: “Government recognises the role of the sector and the role of infrastructure but how do you pump-prime with no money? There seems to be a real paralysis in Whitehall, we need government to commercialise policy, and that’s not happening.”
The idea for the campaign came from Kier chief executive Paul Sheffield. Speaking to CM, Sheffield also said that government now had to move from talk to action.
“We’ve never had a stronger voice [in government] than we do today. We’ve had politicians repeating the numbers [on how £1 invested in construction produces £2.84 of economic benefit] back to us, there’s recognition that construction can generate growth and jobs.
“But they’ve identified £200bn of infrastructure spending and said 75% needs to come from the private sector. There is no government money, so the industry needs to come up with solutions and gain the trust of people that we can deliver.”
