The Farmer Review is a call for re-education

To the list of Latham, Egan, Crane, Wolstenholme, Morrell and Hansford we must now add the name Farmer - distinguished people with an ambition to reform a fragmented industry that lacks leadership and common purpose.

Their government-inspired reports seem to have come round as regularly as the tide follows the moon, or should I say as recessions follow booms?

For it is this wearily predictable sequence of feast and famine that obstructs the setting of long-term goals, investment in off-site manufacture, training for proper careers, consistency of methods and continuous improvement.

The construction industry, like no other, is used as an economic brake by private and public sector alike, shedding expenditure and people at the drop of a hat when the going gets tough.

When an industry engaged in 3,500 school secondary projects under Building Schools for the Future finds suddenly the spending programme is scrapped overnight, leaving two-thirds of the school estate without investment plans, any sense of stability is rent asunder.

Education can also change attitudes to those under-rated matters such as contracts, if they are seen as something that facilitates creative relationships instead of the preamble to a small-scale war

Compared with the profile enjoyed by, say, the car industry the construction sector’s woes seem to be an accepted part of the background noise that goes with economic cycles, despite being four times the size in terms of employment.

The comparison may be an instructive one as the UK car industry faced oblivion unless it reformed, but I wonder if it ever had to contend with the huge peaks and troughs of demand that construction has had regularly to endure.

In the absence of economic stability and the type of globalisation seen in the car industry, it seems to me that many of the roads to reform advocated by Farmer and his predecessors lead instead to education.

The barriers between architects, engineers and surveyors need to be broken down at college, when enthusiastic 18-year olds are forming their first impressions; a period on site should be mandatory; architecture should be seen more as a craft and not just a fine art; ideas about modern construction methods should be seen as a design stimulus rather than something to be learned at work, as that is too late.

Education can also change attitudes to those under-rated matters such as contracts, if they are seen as something that facilitates creative relationships instead of the preamble to a small-scale war.

For my own part I’m still fired up by the idealistic approach to design and construction that grabbed my attention before the age of 25. This is the age when attitudes that are more durable than booms and recessions are formed.

It may take a long time for the fruits of the education process to be seen in the studios, the manufacturing plants and on the sites, but it will be quicker than waiting for the pattern of economic cycles to disappear.

Rab Bennetts, director Bennetts Associates