Why is construction so backward? - reviewed by Stefan Stern in the FT

We are grateful to Stefan Stern for An industry built upon the sand in the Financial Times on 24 March 2004, his review of Why is construction so backward? If you wish to contribute your critical review please email Ian Abley.

It is hard to conclude from this impressive book that the UK construction industry is anything other than mad, bad and dangerous. Just how dangerous is confirmed by Health and Safety Executive figures, which show that six times more deaths have occurred in construction than in any other industry since 1974. Nearly 900 workers and 50 members of the public have been killed on or near building sites in the past decade.

So, dangerous clearly, but also bad and quite possibly mad. Even though the HSE warns contractors before it carries out site inspections, conditions were so awful in 2002 that HSE inspectors put a stop to work on nearly half the 1,100 sites they visited.

It is statistics like these, added to the chronic UK housing shortage, the endless and often chaotic patching-up and extending of ageing properties, the disappointment of too many big building projects, the "quango quagmire" and the overblown reputations of celebrity architects that provoked this book's big question - why is construction so backward?

Construction is, the authors suggest, an industry barely worthy of the name. Projects take too long, cost too much and deliver too many sub-standard buildings. New technology is adopted late, if at all, and then mishandled. Too many architects have become "irrelevant visionaries".

This all has serious implications for the UK economy, as the Treasury is beginning to admit.

"Britain's construction industry is simply not strong enough to support the rate of renewal of habitat and workplace that the country needs," James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley declare. "Construction flags in output growth, and does its own bit to retard UK plc." Individuals and businesses suffer.

After suffering at the hands of that widely franchised firm of builders, Bodgit and Scarper, many turn to do-it-yourself. DIY is now a £10bn business - the price of despair at finding competent, affordable, available staff.

And if we dare look through the fencing that surrounds commercial building sites, the authors ask, what do we see? A black economy of inefficient, labour-intensive, on-site assembly and construction, staffed to a worrying degree by badly trained, inadequately protected migrant workers.

But, as the authors are quick to point out, "It is not Polish bricklayers who drag UK construction down - rather, the sector's brutish nature makes it rely, for much of its existence, upon the almost feudal practice of day labouring."

This is cheap, flexible, and gives contractors deniability if dodgy practices come to light. But the situation is complicated. "Without unregistered builders, Britain would face even slower construction activity and even higher building prices."

What has gone wrong? A false dawn came in 1998, with Sir John Egan's taskforce report "Rethinking Construction". Drawing on his motor industry experience, Sir John identified waste, inefficiency and outdated practices that stifled productivity improvements in the sector.

But, Mr Woudhuysen and Mr Abley say, Sir John's incisive analysis was rejected by the authorities in favour of a more modish narrative, where "emotionally intelligent" management (the "therapeutic" approach), partnership, and a bogus environmentalism (the "naturalistic" perspective) became dominant. Planning became more, not less complicated, as quangoes, targets and micromanagement were introduced.

It is the holy trinity of naturalism, therapeutic management and obsessive measurement that, the authors believe, is holding construction back.

Real innovation and risk-taking are discouraged. Why has BAA spent so long struggling to get Heathrow's Terminal 5 built, only to come up with a relatively mundane building? Because "everything that can be measured, monitored and controlled, is". It is an approach unlikely to generate great architecture.

Post-Enron, corporate leadership is nervous. And post-September 11, architects, designers and builders have adopted an absurdly apologetic approach.

"Forgotten in the new ultra-precautionary stance is the fact that terrorists are responsible for deaths through terrorism, not architects or engineers [their italics] ... Is saving lives from a putative terrorist strike really the criterion on which [architects] want to be measured? Cars are not safe against terrorism, but we don't demand that automotive designers make them so."

What positive solutions are on offer here? The authors are radical, libertarian even. They suggest that the right to develop land should be "denationalised" - that is, open to those who own the freehold. That is the way out of planning paralysis. Yes, there is the risk of the occasional monstrosity being built. But the risk is relatively small. The extension of so-called "type approvals" would also speed up the construction process.

Prefabrication should be pursued, but to build desirable new homes, not ludicrous little bolt-holes. "It is bad enough that housing shortages inflate the price of living space," the authors write. "It is worse still when architects respond with the naturalistic prejudice that urban space is so precious that people should have less of it."

Britain urgently needs more homes, which are not being built. We need better office buildings, too.

This book is a well-aimed hand-grenade launched into the regulators' and architects' offices. It is a devastating critique, exhaustively researched, entertainingly written. If you need any more convincing, look around you.

Stefan Stern, Financial Times, 24 March 2004

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