The construction industry faces a skills shortage, which is being addressed with innovation. The key is collaboration, writes Morgan Sindall’s Steffan Speer MCIOB
Like all major contractors, Morgan Sindall wants innovations that make construction work easier, faster, greener and safer for everyone involved, all while maintaining exceptional standards of quality.
Those innovations will include new software, materials, and products and processes. But we won’t learn about many of them and their proven benefits without ongoing collaboration with the supply chain.
Almost every improvement we are seeking to make as an industry involves our supply chains. I don’t prepare groundworks, construct steel or timber frames, or put the finishing touches to the internal fit-out. There are specialists with years of collective experience to do that. They are the people at the coalface of construction who have seen change and know what will make their work life easier and more productive.
We are all proud of the projects we deliver. But many (myself included) get the most fulfilment from being able to do more, achieve our client goals faster, and create a great customer experience.
Engagement with the supply chain
A vast proportion of Morgan Sindall’s work is carried out through our supply chain. We put around 6,000 people to work daily, a large proportion of whom are involved in contractor design.
When we think about the designs we’re bringing to life on any project, we all know that if it is not nailed down at the start, the last 5% of design resolved on site will impact the construction process in terms of potential cost increases, delays and team morale.
When we refer to early engagement with the supply chain, what it looks like is the scrutiny of how we take the drawings to a finalised building – the design, the methodology, the sequencing. Done collectively, it obviously saves time on site later, but it also saves design management teams time in preconstruction as they’re not reinventing the designs multiple times.
It is also during the design phases that work conducted by Morgan Sindall teams and our supply chain is focused on ‘designing out’ things like waste and carbon. Again, this is at an early stage, so it can simply be removed and not considered later on site.
“Morgan Sindall’s 10 Tonne Carbon Challenge has seen our business remove 62,671t CO2e from projects since 2021.”
Initiatives like our 10 Tonne Carbon Challenge have resulted in the removal of 62,671t CO2e from our projects since 2021. It has only been achieved by our supply chain knowledge and innovative thinking: coming forward with new low-carbon products on the market, ideas for alternative processes or sequencing or rationalisation of the design to get to this impressive achievement.
Use of greener fuels like hydrogen and HVO that power the machines we use to dig the holes and pour the concrete has been recorded on numerous projects as part of the 10 Tonne Carbon Challenge. And listening to our supply chain and understanding how energy technology is advancing has helped us meet our clients’ net-zero demands.
Digital innovation
When it comes to BIM and digital technology, we have worked with ETH Zurich University on semi-automated excavators. We can put these excavators on site, feed them a BIM model, link it to the equipment’s actions, and it will deliver the earthworks. As we continue to re-evaluate productivity or reskilling the workforce in new technologies, these are examples of products at the forefront.
Taking designs from blueprints to the ground (setting out) is another challenge because of a perceived lack of those specialised in this field of work. On some of our projects, we’ve been talking to Leica about using robots that will help to complete this process, improving productivity.
We all talk about early engagement. Every contractor in the industry wants early engagement and sees success on the back of this. We know we can support and drive a better outcome when our clients involve us to discuss their aspirations earlier, and we can then respond by actioning early engagement with the correct supply chain partners.
We’re in a competitive market and margins are low, so introducing innovations isn’t always easy. Another challenge can be implementation – getting the buy-in from all stakeholders to try something different. But investment in trials and knowledge-sharing successes means that we can collectively work towards better outcomes.
From a business perspective, if we don’t continue to drive innovation and think about the construction site and product or role of the future, how can we continue to make positive change in sustainability and create long-term opportunities for people and communities in a large UK employment sector?
The pace of innovation continues to accelerate. Ray Kurzweil wrote in 2001 that every decade our overall rate of progress was doubling. “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
So yes, there is always work to be done, and the rate of change can feel daunting at times, but I, for one, am positive that the progress we are making should be celebrated.
Steffan Speer MCIOB is technical director at Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure.
