Ian Abley confuses co-operation with submissiveness in his attack on collaborative working (14 October).

He is right to object to a world in which weak-willed generalists are taught to avoid confronting each other’s bad ideas, but where is it? Most decision makers in construction are firm-minded specialists and we need them to be. In that specialism, expertise is created and defended but it is also true that these differing strands of expertise are insufficient on their own. They need to be aligned and orchestrated if that joint intelligence is not to founder amid confrontational posturing and blinkered single-issue advocacy.

It is exactly that simplistic, winner-takes-all aggression that causes architects, engineers, constructors, clients and so on to accept the compromises that cover their backs but satisfy nobody. Of course vehemence and confrontation are needed but they are useful spices – they are not a diet. Diminishing the role of the team in construction serves only self-absorption, self-promotion and the protection of status.

Breaking out of conventional thinking to create something of value to the wider world needs inventiveness, depth of thinking and co-ordinated effort. Since we aren’t all superhuman, that means working in teams. In those teams, the creativity that society needs and clients pay for will thrive.

Postscript

Paul Kirby, Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment, University of Cambridge

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