Paddy Conaghan on accountability in the professional industries

The advantage of being a pessimist is that sooner or later, I’m proved right. Then my counsel is sought-after and can even be misconstrued as wisdom.

When I predicted years ago that the UK design market would dry up in 2009/10 as new building supply exceeded demand, none of my colleagues was surprised (or, indeed, dismayed, since I’ve been wrong many times). But even a professional pessimist like me could not have anticipated that things would go badly awry as early as the first quarter of 2008.

In the past four months the credit crunch has changed the world, and there is still a way to go before we comprehend its full effects. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that losses could reach $1000 billion at the final reckoning. This is not good news for anyone, least of all those of us in construction.

We owe this situation to the creativity of the sharpshooters and fine minds of the financial services sector and their efforts to find new ways to recycle other people’s money – and, presumably, also enhance their monster bonuses. A leaked memo from one bank, aimed at putting a lid on cost wastage, included the clarification that expenses claimed for brothel visits would not be reimbursed!

Who are these people who “work” our money? Plainly some of them have to buy their love – but I doubt that surprises anyone. In any other profession, involvement at any significant level in something as risky as the sub-prime market would surely verge on negligence, or at least wanton incompetence. But the fortunes of financial services and the state are now so entwined that a systemic failure of the former passes almost without comment, let alone judgment.

Instead, all hands are turned to restoring “confidence”. Hello? Could any other profession in the same circumstances arbitrarily cap its liabilities (at £35,000 per investor per composite institution) and seemingly then expect government (ie, taxpayers) to pick up the bill for the rest? The Financial Services Compensation Scheme apparently does not cover any of the top 26 banks in the event of them going under – so even this £35,000 is not assured.

Unlike bankers, we are not allowed to include even reasonable limits of liability for our companies.

Contrast this with a brief encounter with an old acquaintance, Steve Hodkinson, a top man at Faber Maunsell, whom i met at a construction exhibition-cum-conference. Without any formalities, he asked: “Why do we bother?” Seeing the fear of an existential moment crossing my brow, he explained himself quickly.

He was referring to the stands from places with names redolent of Bram Stoker or the Arabian Nights, showing off mega-greenhouses with air-conditioning and elite luxuries – which proved, on closer scrutiny, simply to be offices and apartment blocks.

Steve’s point was, why do we work like dogs to try to deliver greater and greater increments of sustainable design and expect our clients to fund them, when what western Europe is doing already far surpasses what’s going on elsewhere?

I had no comfort to give him. We parted amicably, with his injunction that I should wear a tie and my observation that his, although natty, had gravy stains on it.

But, Steve, we both know why we still bother. It’s because we have to. As engineers, we’re only as good as our last job. As engineers, we need to take the lead in pushing back the barriers of the possible and to work hard to protect our clients’ investments.

But unlike the bankers behind the client, we are not allowed to include even reasonable limits of liability to protect our companies, let alone arbitrarily to cap them. Without the professional engineer, who will take sustainability forward? Bankers?