Mace on improving UK construction and infrastructure
Our next forum 'The Making of the Modern City' being held at City Hall, London on 8th May 2018, will look at what can be done to improve construction and infrastructure in the UK.
So we were interested to learn that Mace has released a research report 'The Size of the Prize', highlighting that the UK is missing out on more than £100 billion of annual economic activity. The figures in the report show that if construction had kept pace with manufacturing, there would have been an approximate 3% increase in the UK's overall GDP and the capacity to deliver the £600 billion national infrastructure pipeline in four years rather than six.
Mace points to the fact that UK manufacturing has seen steady productivity growth over the last twenty years while the UK construction sector has flat lined in the same period. The report follows the Government's published 'Government Sector Deal' which includes more than £170 million of funding for the Transforming Construction programme, an initiative to improve productivity in the sector through research and development.
Mark Reynolds, Mace's Chief Executive said: 'The collapse of Carillion makes clear the stark challenges facing the construction sector. Improved productivity is the key to more sustainable growth and stability across the industry...This report demonstrates the importance of the work being done across industry and Government to improve productivity in the sector. It's clear the UK is missing out on a huge amount of potential growth and infrastructure delivery every year.'
Last year, Mace published a report calling for 'social value' targets to be formally embedded in all major construction and infrastructure programmes in the UK.
The report ' Social Value in Construction, underpinning our future legacy' drawing on Mace's experience delivering large scale programmes globally and across the UK, suggested that three of the major challenges faced by the construction sector - productivity, diversity and access to skills - could be mitigated by prioritising the delivery of social value on major programmes.
The report called for a specific definition of what social value means for the construction sector and a need to link key outcome measures against the objectives of the Government's Industrial Strategy.