The industry has made significant progress on late payment, pre-qualification, and competence since the formation of the trade bodyBuild UK ten years ago, according to its chief executive.
Suzannah Nichol told a recent edition of the Behind the Built Environment podcast that average payment terms of Build UK’s contractor members had improved from 45 days to 29 in the past seven years.
“We improved payment metrics…when we started benchmarking them. Transparency is key, when you put things in a league table, it starts to drive different behaviours,” she told podcast host David Frise, CEO of the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
She said the government was also showing more appetite for enforcing payment performance. For example, contractors will now have to pay 95% of their invoices within 60 days or be excluded from public sector work.
Nichol said that when Build UK was formed in 2015 arguments about payment were “adversarial” and heavily reported in the media, but today they were “much less combative”. She added that later this year companies would also be required to start reporting on the amount of retention payments they were holding. “Then we'll see where the money is sticking.”
She added that BESA members had “a lot more power to their elbow than I think sometimes they realise” and should feel able to refuse to work for companies with poor payment records.
“I know it's brave to say I'm not going to work for you, but at some point that is a business decision you make to work for somebody who is going to pay you or isn't going to pay you. And we make it easy because we show you exactly what their payment terms are.”
Nichol added that Build UK’s introduction of a Common Assessment Standard (CAS) was another benefit for specialist contractors because it helped to “unravel the very complicated landscape of pre-qualification”. There were 21 separate schemes in 2015 and now the single CAS is offered by a range of recognised assessment bodies.
This also helped the industry prepare for the Building Safety Act as it provided a ready-made scheme for assessing organisational capability. However, she admitted there was still widespread confusion about new building safety responsibilities and that asking members of an industry with an average reading age of 11 to deal with complex legislation was unreasonable.
“I'm used to reading legislation, I understand hopefully quite a bit of this, and it [still] hurts my brain just trying to understand what the requirements are, what that looks like, how do you deliver it? So why we think writing 90-page reports and giving [industry members] complicated legislation is going to change behaviour I've honestly got no idea.”
Responsibilities
Nichol believes trade bodies like BESA can play a leading role by simplifying the messages on behalf of their members and focusing on specific responsibilities. Frise said that was exactly what the Association had set out to do with its Play It Safe guidance which explains the legislation and breaks it down into: “What is your role and how does it impact you?”
Skills shortages were another issue addressed during Build UK’s first decade, Nichol told the podcast, citing the ‘Open Doors’ initiative as one of its top 10 achievements.
“We have so many jobs in construction that we find it difficult to explain in a 30-minute careers talk. And we know from our research that 88% of our visitors [to a site opened up to school, college and community groups] would then consider a career in construction,” she explained.
However, Nichol added that industry was “missing a trick” by not getting more older workers into college when they can no longer work out on site. “They've got to be the best people to inspire that next generation…by teaching the skills they have and talking about all the best parts of their work.”
This is also being addressed by BESA’s Skills Legacy programme which was recently launched to encourage experienced engineers to qualify as trainers, assessors and building safety auditors. The initial aim is to recruit 100 to meet an increasingly urgent need in colleges and The Manly Trust has provided the funding for the first 50.