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Formation of Chief Construction Officer – March 2009

Response to BERR/OGC Consultation

Top line

The CBI Construction Council welcomes the prospect of the creation of a Chief Construction Officer (CCO). We would like to see a powerful and appropriately resourced CCO led by an exceptional individual.

We do not though want to see the remit of the CCO including all of the areas outlined in the consultation document.

Some of the areas are undesirable – regulatory consistency, promotion of the image of the industry and innovation.

The remainder of the proposed functions – Industry/Government engagement, procurement best practice, project coordination and sustainability are welcome.

We would like to see the CCO undertake an additional role of assisting departments with their capital expenditure programmes.

Because of the initial resource and authority limitations, not all of the desirable functions can be undertaken to the full from the beginning of the role *. We therefore see room for the scope and authority of the CCO to grow over time, building on the success of the initial remit.

The CCO should be located between BERR and the Cabinet Office and be supported by a small but highly able team. There should be scope for the CCO to generate its own resources from hypothecated capital spending efficiency savings.

Members look forward to helping and informing the work of a Chief Construction Officer who has sufficient resources and authority.

  • * The CBI Construction Council is aware of the Operational Efficiency review under way that has a collaborative procurement component. This review may well make recommendationsfor a permanent office to address mutual industry/government concerns, resulting in an increase in the resources and authority granted to a CCO. We do not know the content of this review, and unfortunately access has been extremely limited.

Stuart Bean – Head of Construction Unit

DL: 0207 395 8261 E:

CBI Centre Point 103 New Oxford Street LondonWC1A 1DU

T: +44 (0)20 7379 7400 F: +44 (0)20 7240 1578 W:

Director-General: Richard Lambert President: Martin Broughton

Primary practical functions of the Chief Construction Officer

The creation of a new office requires time. The wider the remit, the greater the organisational challenge. The issues facing the construction industry have a commanding immediacy. The initial structure of the Chief Construction Officer should allow for its swift functioning and clear direction. The scope of the CCO should be narrow and deep, concentrating on the industry’s identified priorities, and taking into account the realities of its likely resource base.

  1. Acting as the main point of engagement between Government and the construction Industry

The post holder must be the recognised primary point of engagement. The CCO should absorb government concerns and relay them to industry. The CCO will cut through the consultative fog created by the many bodies representing different industry groupings. Likewise, industry should feed concerns directly to the CCO who will then pass them to government, thus cementing the relationship.

The CCO must be able to continually engage with decision makers around any issue affecting the construction industry. When a specific issue arises, the CCO should be swift and clear in relaying industry’s perspective on that issue to government.

  1. Working to promote best practice in construction procurement

The CCO must continually advocate the importance of the adoption of best practice. Best practice is outlined by the construction commitments, which provide the basis for government acting as an excellent client to industry. Best practice will positively steer culture change within industry, and provide significant cost savings to the public sector.

The Chief Construction Officer will reiterate the importance of best practice in all its dealings with Ministers, civil servants and all others who support the work of government departments.

  1. Assisting procuring departments with their spending programmes

The Chief Construction Officer’s team will have extensive programme management expertise. They will have insight into what characterises “good spending” and how benefits to both government and industry can be maximised.

The CCO should have significantcapital programme oversight to help departments develop and implement their delivery strategies. The CCO should work in partnership with decision makers to monitor their programmes in order to secure outcomes within agreed timescales and deliver excellent value. The CCO can bring a unique and positive industry perspective to assist government plansand deliver its procurement objectives. The BERR/OGC consultation alludes to this function, and we outline a headline role informing the work of the CCO in this area.

The CCO could consider programmes such as Building Schools for the Future, Proccure21 and the Learning and Skills Council FE Colleges programme. Where issues persist, the CCO could suggest measures that tackle problems within these large nationwide schemes by drawing on its depth of industry/governmental expertise and its non political constitution.

This advisory capacity could eventually form the basis of a wider programme monitoring function, whereby the CCO would help to plan the release to the market of all large capital projects, thereby overseeing supply and demand at a strategic level.

  1. Helping to oversee the Strategy for Sustainable Construction

The CCO will supplement the work of BERR in promoting the uptake of the strategy by both government and industry.

Expansion of the role of the Chief Construction Officer

In order to encourage an immediate effective functioning of the Chief Construction Officer, we outline a structure that limits the role of the CCO to a small number of priorities.

Over time, we would encourage the expansion of the work of the CCO, as funding and organisational relationships would be in place.

  1. Monitoring capacity

Ultimately, a Chief Construction Officer would have greater powers to monitor the adoption of best practice across central and local government. A rigorous reporting body working within a mechanism to ensure that the principles of best practice are adhered to by all procuring departments. The CCO would effectively have the power to trigger sanctions against a department that strays from the key principles.

A Chief Construction Officer would continually outline the benefits of long term commitment to best practice, and be adequately resourced to monitor cross government procurement policy. They should ensure that Government both makes the adoption of the principles of best practice mandatory, and acts when the principles are not followed.

  1. Assisting government in coordinating future programs

The CCO can assist the management of procurement programmes by highlighting to government the capacity of industry to deliver projects within a given timeframe, and where necessary the CCO should inform departments of market pressures that need to be factored into departmental spending timetables.

This input should help both government and industry maximise the efficiency savings that result from the avoidance of bottle necks in capacity and skills, thus fostering a long term partnership management of the flow of projects to the market.

Whilst recognised as important areas, members were clear that the following were NOT included in the Chief Constriction Officer’s remit in order to allow the CCO to focus on core priorities;

  1. Promoting regulatory consistency across departments;
  1. Promoting Innovation and quality within the construction industry; and
  1. Promoting the general image of the industry

Industry members are clear that driving innovation and improving the industry’s image is very much the responsibility of industry and relevant Government departments. The CCO should not become involved in putting together initiatives that make recommendations to industry. It should not monitor and assess those who it is ultimately intended to represent.

Importance of the Individual

  1. The CCO’s remit and authority is vital to attract the right individual. If the CCO is perceived as influential, well placed and adequately resourced then the office will attract the outstanding candidates necessary to perform the role.
  1. Individual must have a deep and wide industry background
  1. Individual should have extensive knowledge of Government/Civil Service
  1. Individual must be decisive, clear, robust and unrelenting in pursuit of objectives

The Chief Construction Officer will be an individual of extremely high calibre. Industry is clear that for the new office to work effectively, the right man/woman must occupy the role. The CCO must have wide and deep industry knowledge. In addition, they must have an excellent working knowledge of the structure and culture of government and the civil service. The CCO must be both an ardent industry champion and considered diplomat, comfortable working alongside the highest placed figures in the public sector.

Positioning of the Chief Construction Officer within Government

  1. The BEER/OGC consultation outlines a positioning for the CCO similar to that of the UKTI with the CCO sitting between and reporting to ministers in both BERR and the OGC.The CBI Construction Council preference is instead for theChief Construction Officer to function in a manner similar to that of the Chief Scientific Advisor, with day to day functions placed inside BERR, but with reporting lines feeding directly to the Cabinet Office.
  1. It is import to have an organisational distance between the Chief Construction Officer and the OGC. Responsibility for promotion of best practice should remain with OGC. In order to provide commentary and influence on the work of the OGC, the CCO cannot report to that department.

The location of the Chief Construction Officer is vital. Given the existing resources and expertise of the Office of Government Commerce, we suggest overall responsibility for promotion of best practice remains with the OGC.

The CCO will be best placed working in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform whilst also reporting to the Cabinet Office. This will enable the CCO to benefit from high level access, and from not being tied to one department.

The Cabinet Office sits at the centre of Government and has overarching responsibility for improving how government functions. It is responsible also for supporting the Prime Minster in defining and delivering government objectives. Positioning the CCO as reporting to the Cabinet Office will enable it to reach out across all relevant sections of government, and provide the power for its recommendations to be enacted. The aims of the two bodies are mutually reinforcing.

The CCO will need to be work alongside the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. BERR officials contribute to construction policy and the pursuit of best practice. The CCO will require access to those who have the industry as part of their remit.

The Chief Scientific Advisor successfully operates on a joint departmental basis – the CCO could adopt this positioning/reporting structure.

The Chief Construction Officer should work with the Public Sector Construction Clients Forum, but the structure of the PSCCF should be changed to reflect the creation and authority of the CCO. The Chief Construction Officer will be charged with making recommendations to departments that sit on the PSCCF and as such, although the PSCCF remains a useful grouping, the relationship between the PSCCF and CCO must facilitate and not hinder the mandate of the CCO.

Support and Resourcing Structure

  1. Supported by a new staff – a small team of high quality staff, some with private sector expertise.

The CCO will initially require a small team of high quality individuals to support them in their work. It is important that some team members are new recruits and are not all transferred from an existing department. It would be helpful if staff had backgrounds that displayed a mix of public and private sector experience.

  1. The office of the Chief Construction Officer must be adequately resourced to carry out all of its outlined functions
  1. Demonstrating the value of the Chief Construction Officer

Government should measure the performance of the CCO. Through assessment, the

Chief Construction Officer should be able to demonstrate the tangible value of its work, reflected in the money saved by procuring departments. This will help the CCO to further instil understanding of the merits of best practice, and justify its existence in the long term.

Where savings have been demonstrated, a scheme could be explored whereby a percentage of those savings could be fed into the CCO as part of a hypothecated funding arrangement. The CCO will effectively be part self financed from the realised efficiency savings generated by adherence to best practice.

This funding structure could allow the role of the Chief Construction Officer to expand significantly over time.

Length of Post Holder term

  1. The post holder should be in place for three to four years to provide much needed continuity, without becoming stale.

Industry has long been frustrated with the frequency at which Ministers responsible for construction change roles. The CCO should provide the long awaited continuity of post holder. As such, it is important that the post holder be in place for a minimum of a three to four year term.