Those were the days… Building editors look back at how construction has changed

For this last edition of the magazine in the year of its 180th anniversary, I invited four previous editors to look back collectively at their work on thwe title over a period spanning four decades, from the 1980s up to very recent history. A remarkable amount has changed in that time, for construction as well as for publishing.

In a podcast episode out this month, our former Building editors – Peter Bill, Adrian Barrick, Denise Chevin and Sarah Richardson – have shared their personal memories of the biggest projects of their day, the larger-than-life characters as well as the scandals and sagas that became front-page stories for our readers.

If you listen to our conversation (available on our website and wherever you get your podcasts) you will hear the fondness with which they remember their respective times at the helm. But there are also moments of great drama and sadness – such as when Peter recalls the IRA bomb in London’s South Quay in 1996 which exploded right outside Building’s offices.

The anecdotes come thick and fast as each editor explains the context of their time in charge. The listener hears from them in chronological order to get a sense of the passage of time – but what also emerges from their lively exchange is just how much has stayed the same.

Fierce construction debates about modular buildings, skills shortages, landbanking, low margins and sustainability are nothing new, and it is fascinating to hear just how far these issues go back.

So much happened under their editorships that, before the recording, I thought it would be hard to pull out a clear narrative arc spanning the decades. But actually the journey they describe starts in place of relative economic and political stability – where the country’s success was largely driven by high investment in construction. The place we find ourselves now on that journey feels very different indeed. 

Construction always has its ups and downs, being – as we are all too well aware – so dependent on economic cycles. Still, when you hear Adrian talk about his era under the Tony Blair government you realise what a high point that was for the industry.

>> Also read: Selected articles republished from our 180 year archive

His team knew that public sector spending was lavish – reflected in the fact they dubbed a Building event at the time “Blair’s Billions”. But what they did not know was that this sort of largesse was a one-off not to be repeated, and today there is no realistic prospect of it returning even if a Labour government wins next year’s election.

But this podcast was not a rose-tinted trip down memory lane. All the editors felt construction and publishing have made positive steps forward since their day. Denise was the first woman editor and recalls how at one of her project visits it was assumed she must have been the cleaner because there was an expectation that no women would be involved in construction.

Peter admitted that talk of mental health in his time was taboo – it just did not happen, and for that reason it was not covered by the magazine. And Sarah pointed to the very welcome, though much overdue focus on safety culture in the wake of the Grenfell disaster.

Advances in technology have also transformed our working lives and Adrian’s launch of Building’s first website in 1996 – plans for which he sketched out on a piece of paper – says a lot about how far we have all come.

I greatly enjoyed recording this podcast with some talented journalists who shaped Building over the years, and helped to make it what it is today. As editors – past and present – we have all felt the need to hold the industry to account while also defending its interests. We have all believed in the importance of Building being construction’s critical friend.

Below are some extracts from the recording that give a flavour of their recollections, which are at times poignant and thought-provoking, but also light-hearted and funny. I cannot think of a better way to round off Building’s 180th year:

Adrian Barrick (editor 1996-2004)

I took over about six months after Peter left – and I think my era was slightly less eventful. Although it was a period of great transition actually, both from a publishing perspective but also from what was going on in the industry as well.

One of the first things that I did was to launch Building’s first website, which I designed myself. I mean, this is how sort of inept and amateurish it all was. I literally drew it out on a piece of paper, because I am a complete technophobe, and then got this agency to mock it up. And I had £1,000 from the publisher, and the reason I only got that [little] amount was that he was absolutely convinced that the internet was a passing fad.

We thought it was an important thing to do, that magazine a brand as prestigious as Building should have a website. But we had no idea what it was going to become.

We wanted to get at the heart of a lot of the challenges that the industry faced, so we campaigned for the development of the private finance initiative, because although it was a controversial policy brought in by the Blair government, it seemed to be the only chance to build schools and hospitals and transport. So we got behind that – we ran a campaign called “Untie the PFI”, which ran for six months and I think we were able to claim it had some success.

We also shone a spotlight on some of the darker corners of the industry – on some of the racism, the misogyny, and tackling skill shortages.

For our first issue of 2001, which was technically the start of the new century, the cover line was “The green century” and we did a whole special issue on that. There was a lot of scepticism about the calibre of green buildings. I think there was a feeling that the green stuff was a bit experimental. And, you know, I’m not sure that everyone quite believed that it was going to be the mainstream.

Sarah Richardson (editor 2012-2017)

So, when I took over in 2012, I do remember a cover with a picture of the Olympic Stadium against this kind of very atmospheric sky. For that we did – what some might say was slightly cheesy, but it felt right – a “You did it!” headline.

But it really did feel like a celebration of what the industry had achieved and also the transformation of that area of east London and Stratford. I remember, right in the early days, going around the site and you were just being driven around what looked like wasteland with David Higgins. Seeing that transformation from that to when the games were staged… it was absolutely fantastic.

[Aside from the Olympics] I think people were becoming much more aware there were a lot of constraints on the industry. There was a lot more focus on maximising the efficiency of everything, including in construction.

We had the Mark Farmer Modernise or Die report. And, of course, Brexit. I think by the time I left people were obviously very concerned about the impact on the labour market in particular and materials as well.

At the end of my tenure, obviously, there was the tragedy at Grenfell, which then refocused the industry, quite rightly, on safety.

I do remember the day Grenfell happened. We started to hear what was unfolding early in the morning. We came into the office and the phone calls we were getting were from companies wanting us to know that it was nothing to do with them.

And that kind of “it’s not us” – there were obviously firms expressing condolences as well – but it did strike me that that “don’t try and point the finger at us” was the overriding kind of contact that we were getting from firms. When you look back, that was symptomatic of some of how the culture of the industry was. I hope that it is changing.

Generally, I look back on it with great fondness – for the people in the industry and the people, the journalists I worked with too.