Ecobuild latest: Former construction adviser Paul Morrell says hierarchical industry is a barrier to delivering green buildings

Former chief construction adviser Paul Morrell has said the failure of the construction industry to successfully integrate and collaborate has its roots in the British class system.

In a speech to the Ecobuild conference in London, Morrell (pictured) said the biggest barrier to the construction industry getting better at delivering greener buildings that perform as designed was the structure of the industry.

He said the structure, with consultants at the top and successive layers of contractors at the bottom was in part a perpetuation of a traditional hierarchy in the UK. He said: “We have this hideous hierarchy. I call it the guano problem.

“We appoint an architect or some consultant as a kind of God, and everyone has to defer and sit under them. It builds oppression and argument into the system. It has its roots in the British class system, in status. It’s something we still haven’t quite grown out of.”

Morrell said that when presented with this failure to collaborate and integrate, the industry worried about whether changing might damage its business model, rather than whether it might improve services for customers.

“The ultimate indignity,” he said, “is the customer doesn’t get the much heralded soft landing they are supposed to get, instead they get a huge gap between the performance they’ve been promised and the reality of their building.”

Responding to Morrell’s comments, Wates Group chairman James Wates said the industry had started to make efforts to behave in a more integrated way, but had to improve further: “The industry was hugely confrontational 30 years ago and it has got better. Our challenge is to step up further. The key thing is this integration with the supply chain. The challenge is getting the customer to trust us.”

Wates, who is also chair of the UK Contractors’ Group, said addressing the problem was part of the reason the organisation is planning to merge with the National Specialist Contractors’ Group, which represents tier one suppliers.

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