Understanding the construction industry’s priorities in the North-west for the new government

“It’s a global region, and you want people to be able to connect in globally and do business easily. That’s a huge thing for the North-west,” said Ian Aldous, director for UK North at Mace. “But even that’s been unhinged a little bit by the confidence from decisions like HS2 and Airport City being reimagined. So yes, that is a big challenge, but a big opportunity is to be had if we can have commitent to big infrastructure.”

Aldous was speaking at the Building the Future Think Tank roundtable in Manchester, which was held days before the general election to provide a comprehensive understanding of the sector’s priorities in order to identify key challenges, opportunities and solutions that will shape the construction agenda for this pivotal region.

The session, chaired by Building’s editorial director, Chloë McCulloch, focused on what the sector needs to do in order to capitalise on and drive potential policy decisions, and attempted to discern where the industry requires support from government and in which areas it can drive change itself.

The session was part of the wider Building the Future Think Tank, which is being run in partnership with Constructing Excellence and supported by sponsors Fenwick Elliot, Gleeds and RLB. 

Uncertainty around HS2 and transport infrastructure

Aldous said there is deep-rooted disappointment about the decisions made on the North and HS2 but that it will bring hope if the government commits to other big infrastructure.

“It is such a shame that HS2 looks like it’s stopping in the Midlands. But there is a great opportunity with the Northern Powerhouse Rail,” he added. Aldous said that while there have been efforts to get private investment to keep the Manchester leg of HS2 alive, there is still optimism that the government will invest towards this.

Simon Tolson, senior partner at Fenwick Elliott, agreed that the lack of commitment from government for infrastructure in the country’s north has been detrimental for the region in general, not just the construction sector. He said: “Because of what happened last October, with pulling the parts of the network up here, a lot of investment is just gone. International companies were thinking about locating here and they just aren’t any more.”

For his part, Stephen O’Malley, chief executive and founding director of Civic Engineers, said the impact of the HS2 cancellation has been significant for all parts of the construction sector because investor uncertainty is holding up other schemes. 

“HS2 was meant to have a station here, and all of a sudden the promoters of [office and residential] schemes are going to be holding them up. They’re saying, ‘Is it coming? Is there another version of this coming?’ That really does affect their plans.”

He said that long-term certainty in infrastructure is vital if the region’s construction sector is to flourish. 

But O’Malley did add that the industry needs to reflect on some of the drivers for the cancellation within its control, pointing out that it seems prices for consultancy on HS2 in some instances were too high. He added: “You kind of go, ‘that’s just profiteering and that’s just gross, [and it means] everybody suffers’.”

O’Malley also flagged the need for investment in infrastructure at a smaller scale, saying: “Transport for Greater Manchester’s (TFGM) own statistics talk about how 80% of peak-time journeys were less than 5km. So converting those journeys to walkable or cyclable choices is a question that is about the quality of the infrastructure, and that’s still not where it needs to be.” 

The impact of devolution

Despite the challenges the region has seen from an infrastructure perspective in the past 12 to 18 months the panel did express optimism over the impact of devolution in the north, suggesting the devolved powers could help the region to have a greater say over its decisions for infrastructure.

“The role of devolution in some of these infrastructure approaches has been really good. It’s given the powers to local people to do the right thing,” said Aldous.

He added that the way Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and Liverpool city-region mayor Steve Rotherham have “linked together” in the region is a stepping stone to unifying the North-west. 

Paul Munro, UK and Europe commercial director at Currie & Brown, concurred. He said: “It’s actually rooted [in delivering] what the locality needs rather than being imposed from Westminster. So it’s really powerful. That is what devolution in the North-west would means for the region.”  

“HS2 was meant to have a station here, and all of a sudden the promoters of [office and residential] schemes are going to be holding them up. They’re saying, ‘Is it coming? Is there another version of this coming?’ That really does affect their plans.”

Stephen O’Malley, Civic Engineers

Munro also suggested that the governmental role of the chief construction adviser should be reintroduced in order to lead the way in boosting private finance in delivering infrastructure projects. The former chief construction advisers were Paul Morrel, formerly of Davis Langdon, as well as Peter Hansford, who has previously worked in engineering roles at Aecom and Amey. 

Finding the funding to retrofit at scale

The panel also agreed that the industry is in need of a dedicated and unified strategy in order to capitalise on the work required as part of a wide-scale retrofit regime.

Gwen Beeken, managing director at ProcurePlus, said that retrofit projects are often slowed down by funding delays, meaning if clients and projects had easier and more consistent access to finance then programmes could take place at pace.

Beeken said: “Getting those projects to delivery has been really difficult, because the money comes to market late and there is a lack of clarity surrounding how that money should be used for the project.”

She also suggested that there is too much pressure on the industry during the delivery process: “You don’t get any time to innovate a solution, if what you’re trying to do is rush to a deadline to achieve something that has to be then documented in a very static manner.” 

While calling for government support, the panel also felt that the attitude of the region towards retrofit needs to change. James Hind, partner and sustainability lead at SimpsonHaugh, said that the region needs to switch up its priorities. “In Manchester we have got a huge number of buildings that are still under-occupied, and there needs to be much more of an incentivised programme to get adaptive reuse back in the primary decision-making process rather than the reliance on new-build.”

Tolson then highlighted how the region could learn from Newcastle’s approach to retrofit. When describing the city’s method, he said: “Instead of refurbishing Victorian terraced houses, they [Newcastle] were doing blocks or small districts and doing PV and getting the insulation right.” 

“You don’t get any time to innovate a solution, if what you’re trying to do is rush to a deadline to achieve something that has to be then documented in a very static manner.” 

Gwen Beeken, ProcurePlus

 

Danny Hope, regional director for the North-west at Stantec, stressed that the region has a lot of potential to create more residential schemes through carrying out retrofits. He mentioned that after looking into sites owned by an unnamed local authority, he noticed there was huge potential for residential development. “It’s unbelievable how much underused space there is which could be refurbished, retrofitted [or] changed” to a residential scheme. 

Hope added: “They’ve got these underused facilities, this huge amount of wasted energy – lights on in every room, but there is no one in there. It’s boiling; the heating’s on. All these little things add up to something that’s pretty big.”

Sheldon Walsh, partner at Ryder Architecture, said there are numerous tools, design choices and products that would help with decarbonisation that are beyond the scope of current legislation.

He said: “As an example, one thing that we could do on every single construction project retrofit and new-build is triple-glazing. It is a known technology that will reduce energy demand massively – just something as simple as that.

“But it’s not Part L, it’s not legislation, it’s not statutory, therefore it’s not being commonly used. It’s going to take time for the Approved Documents to catch up with that. But that’s the sort of thing that we could do on every new project, and it will massively impact.”

Engaging young people and addressing the skills gap

Madeline Sillence, director at Turner & Townsend, said not enough is being done to educate young people about what it is like to work in the industry in the region.

“If anybody walked into a school and talked to one of the children about the construction industry, they’d get a really straightforward answer around what it is that they do,” said Sillence. She and others around the table believe there needs to be a greater level of investment towards raising awareness about the different career paths within the industry. One challenge identified in the discussions was that to reach beyond young people who have a relative who already works in the industry, investment needs to be targeted at creating equal opportunities and ensuring that that socio-economic divisions are not reinforced. 

What industry leaders in the North-west want

With the roundtable drawing to a close after an hour and a half of in-depth discussions, the panel were asked about what they want to see from the new government. 

Beeken said that she wants more people to be upskilled with retrofit skills and that more job opportunities are needed for people who have completed their training for a role within the industry. She said: “The CITB is actually doing a reasonable job of trying to get that [training in place], but what they’re not then doing is linking it to employment. So, it’s great that we do all these training opportunities, but there’s got to be a job at the end of it.”

Robust targets for carbon in the built environment were also identified by the panel as a potential boost to jobs in the north of England, and everyone felt that the net zero agenda has to be driven by policy from the top. 

Hope said the transport system is the biggest challenge for the North-west. “We would all like to travel more greenly. The road system is rubbish. We have got a lot of motorways, and there’s one problem: because they are all connected, it creates carnage everywhere.”

Hope’s main ask from the government was to “reinstate HS2” and to improve east-west connectivity. There was broad agreement from the panel on this point, which was underlined by others highlighting how expensive the region’s transport is for such a poor service, which acts as a brake on the local economy’s productivity.

There was a genuine sense of unfairness from everyone around the table about the north-south divide when in comes to transport investment per head of the population, with the money spent in the South-east of England dwarfing the rest of the country’s funding. As Aldous put it, “It should be equitable. If there is a bigger population in one area, that’s fine; it should get more money – but not more money per head.”

He added: “The galling thing is that when big infrastructure projects get cancelled, the money doesn’t get recirculated around the area. But the big projects in the south do go ahead. It is a big powerhouse up here; it is just under-utilised.” For the North-west to take important steps forward, it needs national politicians “to do what you say you’re going to do”, said Aldous – in other words, it needs some certainty to get on and build its future.