Denise Chevin, acting editor, CM
Would you recommend that a 17-year-old pay £27,000 for a construction degree? That was the question we posed in our on-line poll in April, following our feature on Molly Brett and her tough career decisions with the prospect of £9,000 a year tuition fees.
As you can see overleaf, a huge number of you said no. But why is this? Understandably leaving university loaded up with that much debt is a scary prospect for anyone. But most people in the sector seem to love the industry and their jobs and although rewards are not in the same league as those earned by City bankers and lawyers, construction managers aren’t at the bottom of the salary pile either.
So, could the antipathy to studying a construction-related degree stem from the fact that the skills graduates come out of university with don’t equip them well enough to manage a construction site? The CIOB’s new on-line members’ survey this month (page 8) certainly points to a frustration with graduates’ competencies with 42% believing universities don’t teach the necessary skills. Similar sentiments are expressed in our feature (page 16) on what it takes to be really great construction manager.
Of course, there is bound to be a degree of overinflated expectations conferred on new recruits. More experienced folk often forget what it’s like to be a novice — and these days the demands of a site manager are tougher than ever. A quick scan of any CMYA entry brings home just what a multi-faceted and demanding job it can be. The sort of motivational skills and technical prowess past CMYA winners talk about in the feature is just the start. Add to this financial nous, awareness of industry-changing issues like sustainability, decisiveness and diplomacy, budget cuts, demanding clients, not to mention the patience to spend a friday afternoon reading to school kids, as part of firms’ CSR programme, and you might wonder if even superman could do the job.
But is the five plus years some experts estimate it takes graduates to get to know their way around a construction site acceptable? The demands from the respondents in the survey for construction degrees to include 12-month placements makes sense. But where exactly will these work placements come from? Mr Nazir, commenting on our website (see overleaf ), can’t be alone in failing to find an employer to give him a berth.
What’s becoming clear is that employers — and institutions — will have to rethink the path to professional qualifications. If we return to the CIOB survey, a quarter of respondents said they expected higher tuition fees to lead to fewer people entering university degree courses.
Before the rise of New Labour’s “everyone must have a degree” mantra and the 1990s crash, a mixture of work and study was a common way for site managers to earn their stripes. University degrees can certainly bring an intellectual rigour and a broader outlook, particularly for those firms which invest in the appropriate training, such as Mansell’s new management academy (see page 17).
But if more employers can rise to the challenge and create more opportunities for on-the-job training, it will provide a much-needed addition to the mix. And if they want to recruit the future crop of CYMA winners they may have no choice.
Denise Chevin, acting editor
Illustration by Tim Ellis
Vox pop
The government has launched a website asking people what regulations should be scrapped. What do you think?
Bernard Keogh, MD, Arque Construction
Health and safety practice is far too paper-oriented and legislative when it should be focused on what’s actually happening on sites.
Recent CDM regulations have tried to tackle that but there’s still far too much emphasis on paperwork and managing risk assessment, which detracts from the direct assessment needed on sites. I approve of the idea that Building Control inspectors also carry out the HSE’s safety checks because they are on site on a regular basis and can easily pick up what’s going on.
Today there’s a paranoid claims culture, which makes people think that if they haven’t got the right paperwork in place they could be susceptible to legal claims, and new manslaughter legislation only makes things worse.
Charles Meynell, Senior innovation adviser, iNet sustainable construction innovation hub
Environmental regulation is almost too huge a subject to begin to consider as there are kilometres of red tape. Planning needs a desperate overhaul, and there are some very weird exemptions in terms of what renewable technologies you can install, some boilers for example.
The SAP energy ratings system, used by local authorities and housing improvement programmes to assess the energy efficiency of both new and old housing, is complete nonsense and needs replacing with something less clumsy. I just had my Victorian house assessed and they literally walked around in about 30 minutes, which is hardly enough time to make
an appraisal.
Donald Loe MCIOB, Director, FK Howard
Planning legislation should be revised to force planning departments to take a more proactive stance, they don’t currently seem to have any notion of time passing and are totally bogged down in bureaucracy.
Some of my clients have had projects delayed by six to eight months as a result. On a current job I’ve been waiting up to six weeks just to speak to someone and now you also have to pay a fee for the privilege.
Bizarrely, the number of planning applications has gone down, but the cost of planning departments has gone up. Departments need to be held more accountable, they don’t seem to have any sort of commercial outlook and don’t care whether a job will go ahead. Rather than working with the industry, they seem to be working against us.
Dan Preston, Solicitor, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain
I appreciate that Building Regulations are important from a health and safety and quality aspect, but there are currently about 18 individual pieces of legislation that would benefit from consolidation for clarity and to cut the amount of administration for contractors and employers alike.
Revisions to the planning system are vital to breathe new life into a stalling industry. By simplifying the system and consolidating the Town and Country Planning Orders, the government could ease the administrative burden and build upon the funding that is gradually becoming available again for high-quality developments.
Mike Smith, Managing director, Corniche Builders
There are several laws and regulations that need a complete revamp, rather than adding to them continually, which creates confusion. The H&S at Work Act is a prime example. Since 1974 it has been continually added to, which means people who are less well informed about it are tripped up.
John Gray, Chairman, Diamond Build
The planning process needs simplifying because it has become extremely unwieldy and the Localism Bill is likely to make it even more tortuous with minority local interest groups being able to influence projects. It could mean many more schemes are put through the bureaucratic loop of being appealed.
Even now, layer upon layer of requirements are being added to planning requirements, you can end up with documents a foot thick for basic schemes. Ecological requirements are a major bugbear — you find two newts on your site and you have to formulate a newt migration plan.
Obviously you don’t want to harm the environment, but how much of this is actually sensible or is it just about ticking boxes for the sake of it?
Contact us
Do you have an opinion on any of this month’s articles? Email:construction-manager@atompublishing.co.uk
Feedback: Building information modelling and council housing heyday
We need to educate the sector if BIM is to succeed
Claire Walker, Leeds Metropolitan University
True collaborative working has been touted as a panacea to pull the construction sector out of the doldrums, with BIM the magic pill we’ve all been waiting for. But the term, though used by many, is still understood by few.
So the construction sector in Yorkshire has welcomed our new network of CPD-accredited seminars, backed by undergraduate through to postgraduate qualifications.
For the Construction Sector Network BIM is not only a visualisation tool, but has true potential as a technology, a process, a data sharing model and a risk reduction tool. But it’s essential to stop people racing in, without understanding the limitations. Nor can they presume that old processes and procedures will adapt to this new technology.
At a recent conference, Dr Stephen Hamil of NBS was quoted as saying: “The industry must not fall into the trap of seeing 3D CAD as BIM — it is much more than 3D modelling or geometric information from a CAD model. The key here is rich information.”
The government’s chief construction adviser, Paul Morrell, indicates that BIM will be adopted by public sector clients for projects over £50m. But the level of awareness, understanding and adoption of BIM remains low.
In March, our first thinkBIM event attracted very well placed speakers, including the head of the capital programme division for Manchester City Council and chair of the Constructing Excellence BIM working group, John Lorimer, BIM Leader at _space Group, James Austin, and Laing O Rourke’s strategic leader of design and construction delivery within a BIM platform, Sam Collard.
Cross-sectoral debate covered the cost value and performance improvements BIM can deliver and the financial savings for contractors, through early clash detection and risk elimination.
Leeds Metropolitan University is well placed to back BIM through upgrading existing undergraduate provision to built environment and engineering undergraduate students, while developing a post-graduate diploma qualification in BIM to meet the demands of construction professionals.
Council house heyday? No way
Grahame Wiggin MCIOB
The heading to Stephen Cousins’ report in your March issue — “A new deal for council housing” — suggests that the Localism Bill will enable local councils to return to the heyday of council house building. I sincerely hope not.
During the period which councils may consider their heyday, they somehow created many of the worst planned estates and the ugliest architecture seen for generations. Houses without any sense of vernacular sympathies were built in the same style throughout large estates with a monotony that depresses occupants and visitors alike.
Despite some bright sparks thinking that painting the doors alternatively green, yellow, blue and red would add some excitement to the mix, many of the developments are notorious for being sink estates and are being knocked down (after a life of just a few decades). Yet we are supposed to return to that “heyday”.
I recall the mono pitch roofs from Telford, the metal boxes with portholes from Milton Keynes, the pebble dashed utilitarian boxes from a variety of decades and districts. Lines of boxes built in estate layouts that climb hills with lovely views but deny occupants of the houses any outlook of the world outside their dead estate.
My only hope is that when these new council homes are built, as they surely will be, a true sense of vernacular will be created and estates will embody some of the principles from the Princes Foundation’s design suggestions for urban villages.
Online opinion: Your reaction to the stories in last month’s CM
Flight of the Phoenix
Brilliant, this architect should head north to Sunderland to give impact to a depressed city void of innovation and design. Great work.
John Johnson
Excellent case study with detail and thorough explanation… more like this please!!
Alan Watson
Do I look as if I can afford £27,000 for a degree?
Rick lee is asking student, like myself, to get site experience. How can we when construction companies do not even respond to
work experience letters or emails? Turning up on site and asking the site manager doesn’t work either, believe me I’ve tried as the response I get is: “Health and safety, sorry”, even when I said I would provide my own PPE.
How are students meant get on the graduate/trainee schemes when employers are looking for work experience which they them selves refuse to provide?
Mr Nazir
How about overseas study? www.studyoptions.com/why_go/
Mr Hunter
CPD The art of building a winning team
All good stuff and nice to see more of these articles and “thinking” applied to the construction sector.
Agreed, the composition of a team is critical and approaches like this add real value for the team. I am wondering how the authors deal with the context in which the team is working. I get the impression that the article recognises that individuals must operate within the context of the “culture of the organisation”, although it is not evident exactly how this is dealt with in the methodology, but what consideration is there of the significantly different cultural characteristics one experiences in, for example, China and California (as it is claimed to be applicable)?
From experience I am inclined to think that participation in such a method may simply not be possible in some cultural environments, due to attitudes inherent in the culture to relationships, authority figures, conflict etc. How do the authors handle such situations?
Alan Gilham
HSE and charging for inspection
This is an good idea, and a bargain at this price too. If there is a fear of conflict of interest it would be interesting to see how many times a construction company has succeeded in overturning an enforcement notice to see how often the HSE gets it wrong.
In my experience this is very, very unusual. In Austria health and safety good practice is the direct responsibility of the client and overseen by the client’s insurance company (client insurance of the contractor and third party is mandatory for all, not just commercial).
Breaches are dealt with by fines for increased safety inspections followed by increased premiums. I know of a case where poor safety on a private house project incurred a €5,000 fine on top of immediate corrective action costs.
Julian King
Top five stories in April
One: Do I look like I can afford a £27K degree?
Our article on just how rosy 16-year-old Molly Brett’s future might be as a construction professional had
you all trying to do the maths.
Two: The art of building a winning team
Construction managers showed their softer side trying to ascertain the colour of their Motivational Value Systems.
Three: Hard hats fail safety tests
Silverline’s hard hats fail to make the grade at Brent and Harrow Trading Standards’ school of hard knocks.
Four: Victory for firm in fight against training levy
CITB-Construction Skills taken to task over its £85,000 construction levy.
Five: Sums fail to stack up for Green Deal
The government’s “golden rule” that energy savings must at least equal the cost of the work doesn’t seem so gilt-edged.
