Recent Innovation News
All we hear lately is that we have to be bigger to survive. But is it true?It seems that not a week goes by without a headline proclaiming that one of our established independent companies has been taken over, primarily by the big American engineers. How are those that remain going to get a piece of the action, what with their competitors becoming part of 50,000 strong world conquerors?In a conversation last week, I was given the example by one British CEO of the case where a major world client asked for 2000 people on the ground the following week in order to win a major project. He cited this as the reason we all needed to get bigger. Whilst his example might have some truth in it, it is a bit like the analogy that because one dog bites, all dogs bite. Not true.It takes all sorts to make a world, especially in construction, and I believe that SME’s sit nicely into the mix. We are big enough to do the biggish jobs of say up to £200m, which any of the big boys would be happy to win, and small enough to give the personal touch. With privately owned SME’s clients have the reassurance that someone who owns and runs the company is personally responsible for it. I know our clients like this. I know I would if I was a client, especially on a frameworks and where I was trying to build up relationships. I know SME’s are competitive too. There is not a great big lumbering machine to feed with all the overheads needed to run properly. SME’s are typically flexible and efficient and can be innovative and creative. I know we are.So is bigger better, maybe in some instances on a world scale but when you get down to the human level, I don’t think so. Time will tell. As we all know , it’s not how big it is but what you do with it that counts!
At first glance it looks great – huge amounts of money going to be spent on capital projects . £6.5 Billion to be spent over the next three years. That should see us through the hard times! However as always “the devil is in the detail”. How much is likely to find its way to the poor struggling architectural and consulting engineering practices whose traditional hunting grounds are Education, Health and Housing?There are some nice tidy sums set aside for Education - £600 million for 100 new Free Schools and a further £600 million to provide 40,000 new places generally. This should start the stampede. Noticeably there didn’t appear to be any Health funding mentioned. The Housing sector seemed catered for with the £400 million “Get Britain Building” investment fund. But read the small print – this is to go to stalled projects which already have planning permission and are ready to start on site. The Designers have probably already done their work on these schemes – so they won’t generate much in way of new fees.Apart from those the Architects and Consulting Engineers are not going to see a great deal. Have another look at where the bulk of the £6.5 Billion is being spent and ask yourself are we , as a country, getting the best we can for the amount spent? As a northerner I look at two schemes in the North West amounting to £455M – more than the Housing fund - and despair. Do I really think spending £290M to upgrade the rail connection between Manchester and Leeds is a high priority – the current trains take less than an hour already. What about spending £165M on a dual carriageway to connect Stockport to Manchester Airport? Even at peak times it really doesn’t take that long , it’s only a couple of miles for crying out loud. Read the rest of the Statement and you will find more examples of huge spends – obviously head line grabbing – throughout the country. How about £250M to upgrade the mobile phone network and superfast broadband network to “create” ten “super connected cities”. Great Headlines – Little Impact.
Showing results 1-6