The public only remember the bad things about building sites. A mouthful of grit on a windy day. A muddy pavement en route to a meeting. The clang-clang of a piling machine during a phone call.

They’re all little things. If you work in a site environment, you won’t even notice them. But for members of the public who encounter them, it’s a cue to roll their eyes and say ‘bloomin’ builders’ (or words to that effect), grouping your project in with the ‘cowboy builders’ of TV fame or the lewd scaffolders working on the house next door.

That’s why I salute the Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS).

It gets my seal of approval just for the idea of having a complaint number for disgruntled passers-by to call up and moan on. Although there’s much more to it than that, as CM deputy editor Rory Olcayto found when he spent a day with CCS monitor Mike Mitchell.

The scheme is 10 years old this year. And as CIOB members you can be proud, because it was the institute which set it up at the behest of one of the Latham working groups. Fellow Doug Goodsir set up a pilot and proved it could work before the CIOB gave it to the Construction Confederation and a general manager to run.

What was a little operation has grown. CCS reckons it’s covering 30% of the UK’s construction activity by value. Big companies are using it for Corporate Social Responsibility reporting and it will even score you points in the new Code for Sustainable Homes.

Now the scheme is turning its attention to smaller contractors. And it’s here that it could really make a difference – not just for individual projects and firms, but for the image of the whole industry.

Because if every site paid attention to those little things, Joe Public might be able to distinguish between the professional builders and the others.

Source

Construction Manager