The impact and speed of change is only something that we see with hindsight. I was issued with my first mobile phone and laptop a quarter of a century ago. Now I can barely remember a time when they didn’t exist – but I can’t pin down the moment when something actually changed. Some of us can remember the Betamax versus VCR debate, but few of us recall when they both became redundant. Are we on the cusp of something similar in construction, or is it that I am now more aware of such things?

The last few weeks have seen a flurry of publications – just in time to provide us with some summer holiday reading. A few key ones include:

• The government’s Industrial Strategy/ construction sector deal
• The Construction Leadership Council’s Supply Chain and Business Models Workstream Procuring for Value report and its Skills Workstream Strategy and Action Plan
• The House of Lords science and technology select committee’s Off-site Manufacture for Construction: Building for Change
• The Housing Forum’s Stopping Building Failures
• The National Infrastructure Commission’s National Infrastructure Assessment
• Dame Judith Hackitt’s Building a Safer Future – Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Final Report
• The Infrastructure Client Group’s Project 13.

The question is: do we have the appetite to make what is after all a relatively small change in approach and behaviour? I would say: absolutely. The prize is massive 

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