Client care

No major surprises when it comes to the list of key clients: the major commercial developers; government departments such as the NHS, and HM Prisons Service; as well as retailers such as M&S, John Lewis and Sainsbury. The top 10 UK construction clients account for £1.5 billion m&e spend a year.

For those who prefer to go after smaller projects for their income, the top ten clients by number of projects commission 12000 jobs a year, at an average value of nearly £250k each. And the top three of these (British Telecom, LandSecTrillium and Barclays Bank) procure over half of those projects.

These figures demonstrate that in spite of the size of the construction industry, the building services sector has a relatively small number of clients to keep happy. Compared to other organisations in the business-to-business arena, consultants don't have such a long list to deal with when you look at breakdowns like this.

Unfortunately though, we don't seem to be very good at pleasing customers. In another survey carried out for the Summit, architects and major contractors revealed their thoughts on what they think of us as suppliers. Oh dear. Phrases commonly used included: "lack of knowledge of partnering techniques", "unwillingness to work as a team", "lack of innovative thinking", and perhaps worst of all, "lack of technical expertise".

The message is that this sector needs to pull its socks up pretty fast. We need to focus on what customers are saying, and to understand their businesses better – after all, there are only a handful of sectors we work for. I can already hear the usual cry of "but all buildings are different!". Maybe, though "lack of innovation" suggests that we're not treating them that way. Clients however, pretty much want the same things. And it doesn't take a genius to work out that all we need to do is talk to them to find out what those things are, if we can't already work them out for ourselves.