As I sit to write this article, three thoughts immediately sprung to mind:

1. I have lost count of the businesses that have gone this year alone and I know from talking with pan-industry experts, there remain many hanging on by the barest of threads. And here we are again, as we start a New Year, with people facing the most difficult personal circumstances.

2. Strangely, my thoughts then went back some 30 years to when I was doing my plumbing apprenticeship. Fresh out of school I soon learnt there was a very big world out there. But I also saw first hand what it takes to deliver a project – the people, coordination, the skills, the teamwork.

3. This then made me contemplate on how we really do seem to have lost our compass as an industry. What we do is complex, yet we allow ourselves and allow others to sometimes dumb it down. We resort to price-cutting because much of the industry and many clients continue to believe that lowest cost is best.

Part of this problem is a pervading under-current that there remain contractors who will “try it on” compounded by an unregulated entry to the industry – just about anybody can profess to be a builder. But, when you listen to the news, every industry, every profession has “rogues”. What makes construction different?

Whilst there will always be many parts to this equation, my thoughts went immediately to a simple fact – we have lost our pride as an industry. We have allowed the attitude of “that’s what is always done” to override the quality of what we do every day. We allow H&S to become an approach of “what can I get away with” rather than “how do I keep myself and my co-workers safe today”.

It’s easy therefore, to see why procurement and delivery strategies are changing, you simply need to step outside of the construction world and put yourselves in your client’s shoes. The client’s customer journey, from inception and feasibility through to design, procurement, delivery and close-out, and the complexity of options, processes, and demands of stakeholders would make anyone’s nose bleed. More clients than ever are also not from a construction background, making the need to change even more pertinent.

How should we respond to this? Through being curious. We need to look, listen, understand and build on the core skills our industry has prided itself on for generations. In order to drive “best cost” and “value-added solutions”, we need to put aside the wrong behaviours and look back at the respective Construction Reviews (they have all said and recommended the same needs, yet we continually ignore / disregard the facts).

Morris & Spottiswood have spent a lot of time in recent months trying to decipher the variables relating to excellent delivery and value-add. The answer is complex, but, when we were involved at the very early stages of the project, or part of a Supplier Led Delivery team - the client was delighted.

This fact aligns with the changing environment of procurement. Each client’s procurement strategy will be dependent on the peculiarities of the project in hand, but in recent months, we have seen a shift in client sentiment. Clients are currently less likely than ever to want to deal with a cast of thousands, complex tender processes and stakeholders everywhere – they want us to take more ownership and responsibility meaning that they have to deal with less people, have a simpler and quicker process to manage, have more cost certainty and less risk.

Perhaps this mirrors market uncertainties? Perhaps clients have realised that it is a bit of an urban myth that a one-stage tender provides cost certainty? Whatever the reason, we are experiencing that where our clients involve us from the beginning, through framework allocations, two-stage tenders, direct negotiated works where we have early involvement or D&B projects, it works. It works for our clients, it works for consultants and it works for us.

Supplier Led Delivery embraces all of these points. It allows clients to use their framework specialists (contractor and consultant teams) to act as a unified project delivery team - a team all working to deliver in the best and most efficient way, driving continuous improvement, standing and falling together to create the best outcome for the client.

Supplier Led Delivery puts aside traditional mindsets of “consultant” and “contractor”, it puts aside ego and individuals, it puts trust and collaboration at the very fore of every decision, action and interaction. It demands the baton to be passed to the most suitable construction professional, irrespective of role, employer, job title and with no agenda attached.

It works because our industry has vast experience that, when put together, becomes an unstoppable force. We live and breathe project cost and design management, every second of every day. We all deal with the reality of bad design at the coal face and pay the consequences for poor cost and programme management.

We know that Supplier Led Delivery works. It is a model that works successfully in many other countries around the globe; it drives out conflict and inefficiencies; it drives the right culture and behaviour; it seeks to deliver for our clients.

This not only serves the customer and improves efficiencies for us; it contributes to the construction industry as a whole. Working together for the client, SLD solutions create new best practice, process and techniques that will lower costs and improve safety, quality and sustainability across the industry.

At Morris & Spottiswood our clients come first. We seek to add value every step of the way. We are delighted with the changes we are seeing, allowing us to use our experience to provide the best outcomes for each project we deliver.