The CIOB is launching a new pre-election campaign to brief the next intake of MPs about the changing face of the modern construction industry: high-tech, value-creating and home to high numbers of skilled, educated professionals.
It has produced the new CIOB Guide to the Built Environment to give all MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates a better understanding of construction and how it is impacted by decisions made in Westminster.
The innovative guide will also be supported by a specially-commissioned report, The Real Face of Construction, which examines the economic impact of the industry.
Both documents will be hosted on a dedicated new website due to go live on September 8, but all MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates will also be sent a hard copy of the Guide in the run-up to the party conference season.
The Guide and report will then be launched into the political world at a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester in September 22, followed by events at the Conservative conference in Birmingham and the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow.
The campaign is a new departure for the CIOB, which has previously limited its pre-election lobbying to joint efforts with the Construction Industry Council.
CIOB chief executive Chris Blythe and head of policy Eddie Tuttle say that the guide spotlights the role of construction managers and innovation in an industry often over-simplistically viewed in terms of the numbers it employs.
Blythe commented: “We’re saying, in backing construction, you’re backing an innovative, high-tech industry that employs the best minds the country produces.” The guide does not promote any specific industry-boosting policies, but instread sets out the strategic importance of the industry to other national agendas, such as boosting economic productivity and well-being; cosntruction’s contribution to mitigating climate change and its appetite for highly-skilled, digitally savvy professionals.
And rather than seeking short-term policy ‘wins’, the CIOB aims to build engagement and seek dividends over the long term. Blythe explained: “MPs need to have an understanding of the industry within their constituencies. We’re raising the profile of the industry and of construction management, and looking to influence people at the right time. It’s about developing a ‘fan base’ at local level, that we can then plug into, so we can then move to raise our profile and influence people who understand the issues.”
Another thrust of the campaign – and a key aspect of The Real Face of Construction report – is to highlight the industry’s impact in the regions. The guide argues for policies that spread the benefits of construction and infrastructure beyond the over-heating south east to the major cities of the north, with the accompanying report containing “recommendations for placing construction front and centre of a rebalanced economy”.
Chris Blythe: “MPs need understanding”
The guide also spotlights the role of technology, BIM and offsite construction, and the knock-on implications for the skills and higher education agendas.
But rather than highlighting an impending “skills shortage”, it addresses the need to promote innovation to boost productivity. “If the industry keeps doing things the same way, we will just end up with the same problems,” Blythe commented.
Meanwhile, housebuilding and the housing crisis are expected to be an election issue picked up by many other organisations in the sector: the National Federation of Builders and the National Housebuilding Council, for example, are staging joint panel debates at both the Labour and Conservative conferences as part of the wider “Homes for Britain” campaign.
But the CIOB is hoping to widen MPs’ and PPCs’ focus beyond housing, with Blythe saying that “house building accounts for roughly 10% of the output, and 90% of the discussion.”
