Professions must reform to break down silos and boost public confidence

New report by Edge Commission recommends new shared vision to tackle 21st century challenges and “TripAdvisor” style performance feedback to boost confidence in professional competence.

Antony Oliver
19 May 2015

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Built environment professions must step outside their historic silos, think big and collaborate to tackle critical issues facing the 21st society, according to a new report into the future of professionalism in the built environment.

In particular, the professions should develop a shared vision of how the built environment industry must respond to the climate change – both to mitigate and to adapt to the threat - and establish cross-institutional policy and recommended behaviours for members to lead on the major issue facing society.

“Few in the industry believe that it is organised in a way that works well for clients and the full depth of the supply chain. There is little or no integration between design, product manufacture, construction, operation and asset management" Edge Commission

A joint approach to bolster ethical behaviour across the professions is also critical, says the report, "Collaborate for Change", produced by the Edge Commission under the chairmanship of former government chief construction advisor Paul Morrell, highlighting the need of sanctions against those falling  short of established expectations of ethical conduct.

“Institutions in the future will, be judged not by what they claim for themselves, but by what they contribute to others; not by what they have come to expect, but by what they commit to,” explained Morrell in the report. “If there is a single message, it is that their future will be more successful if addressed collectively.”

Morrell suggests use of a public feedback system similar to that offer by TripAdvisor to travellers to help boost public and client confidence in the professions and to better “guarantee” the quality of individual professionals.  

The need to review “the siloed nature of the built environment’s education system … to promote construction as a career of choice in a way that engages current and future generations” is also recommended.

The Commission has spent the last six months examining the professions’ “fitness for purpose” in the modern world of the built environment design construction and management – “very different from those prevailing when the first built environment professions were formally constituted in the mid-19th century”, says the report.

“Institutions in the future will, be judged not by what they claim for themselves, but by what they contribute to others; not by what they have come to expect, but by what they commit to,” Paul Morrell

The work drew on a series of evening debate organised around four themes:

• The environment: should it be a professional requirement to address environmental issues, including responsibility for long term performance and reporting?

• The economy: how can professionals continue to do what they regard as the right thing, when this is not a priority for their client?

• Society: how can professionals working across the built environment and their institutions maintain relevance and deliver value to society?

• Future value: how can institutions share and co-operate to improve the quality, standing and value of professionals?

“There is an opportunity for the professions to find a new position for themselves that captures the best of the values of their past, while being relevant to 21st century circumstances and the challenges we face, and valuable to both their members and society,” says the report.

“Few in the industry believe that it is organised in a way that works well for clients and the full depth of the supply chain,” it adds. “There is little or no integration between design, product manufacture, construction, operation and asset management; no feedback loop that increases the chances of a completed asset performing as it should, and of future projects learning from the past; and no alignment of interests both within the supply chain and between the supply chain and the client.  This fragmentation of interests destroys value.”

Morrell’s report points out that while institutions clearly continue to perform a valuable role, chiefly in setting standards of competence and conduct for members, setting standards and frameworks for education, regulating members, improving the standing of members in the market (particularly internationally), providing industry leadership and aspiring to serve the public interest, there is a risk that they no longer match the needs of a modern society.

“The standing and perceived value of the professions is being challenged, with detractors seeing in their conduct and practice a tendency towards protectionism, resistance to change, the reinforcement of silos and the preservation of hierarchies,” it says.

“There is also a risk that the institutions lose control of the very things that are claimed to differentiate their members from those lacking a professional designation,” it warns highlighting th valuable role provide “leadership on some of the great issues that reach across the whole of the built environment”.

A shared view on matters of public interest, adds the report, would boost the professions’ standing in the public eye  and help serve clients better and close the gap between predicted and actual performance of built assets “a gap that would be a scandal in any other industry”.

“There is no need to re-invent the means through which the collaboration implicit in so many of the recommendations can be managed,” concludes the report.  “The Construction Industry Council can and should be developed and empowered as a shared vehicle for joint initiatives, and encouraged to initiate the consideration of issues beyond those passed down from individual institutions.”

Visit www.edgedebate.com for details and click here to view the report.