Tuesday 11 April 2023 – I didn’t know men could build such things
There is a scene in Gladiator where Russell Crowe and his team first see the Colosseum in Rome and they look up in awe as one pronounces that “I didn’t know men could build such things”. That was nearly 2,000 years ago but I still feel the same way about the major developments I have worked on. Not that it is useful to doing my job (see And what do you do?), but I have witnessed the erection of Microsoft’s new hi-tec office in Enfield Town, the Capitol House block of flats shoehorned into a space between the New River and the main road in Winchmore Hill, Fulham FC’s Waterside Stadium built alongside the Thames (see Football Focus on Jobs) and the completely-alien-to-Tottenham-High-Road Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and, every time I have thought, how do they do that?! To me it is a miracle in project planning, recruitment, manual skills, geology, engineering and absolute trust in the science and their own expertise. And, yet, when it comes to training and recruiting local residents, all of a sudden they don’t even know what a plan is.
There
is something very impressive about seeing a new major development and the
thought, ingenuity and planning that must have gone into it.
A plan is, first you do one thing, and then you do another and then another. The idea is, if you map out these steps to the end goal, the steps will take you there. Plans can get even more sophisticated than this. There may be a step where there is a risk the outcome is one of two things. In these cases, you can produce a “Plan B”. If this happens, then we do that. If the other thing happens, we do this instead. Having a start date in the plan helps you know when you are going to start step 1. If you want to go all fancy-pants, you might even work out how long each step takes, and plan when all of the steps start. That way you have a timeline for the project. Then the real pros add in lots of bells and whistles such as who is going to do each step, what budget and resources they are going to need, constraints on the project. The real nerds add in a risk register to try and predict and mitigate missteps in the plan learned from experience and keep it on course.
None of this happens when the project directors and quantity surveyors send me their Employment and Skills Plan (ESP) to deliver their S106 targets. All of them look at me wide-eyed for guidance for, seemingly, not only have they never trained and recruited construction labour on a development before, they have never encountered being asked to write a plan. Mount Anvil has been commissioned by Peabody Housing to build a new residential development in Fulham, given the jarringly bucolic name for an inner-city housing estate, Watermeadow Court. They submitted their first ESP to me for approval in August. It was mostly cutting and pasting the obligations from the S106 agreement. My polite feedback was:
“…[the council] would consider this more of a review of obligations in the S106 agreement rather than a plan of how they will be delivered.”
In February, an amended plan was attached to a circular email on another subject to a large number of people in which I had been cc’d, but I addressed somewhere near the bottom, to which I didn’t scroll down. So I didn’t see it. However, on 22 March, Mount Anvil’s Senior Quantity Surveyor chased me up saying they have a deadline of the end of March to demonstrate they have satisfied all the council’s other planning obligations so that they can draw down the Greater London Authority’s affordable housing grant to make the development financially viable to build the minimum number of affordable homes to enable this planning permission to proceed. So, with eight days to go, one would think this is urgent. You wouldn’t tell from the lack of urgency from Peabody or their developer since August. This version was much the same as the last except longer. I replied telling the QS what my feedback was last time and added,
“Similarly, a lot of this draft is a review of the obligations and little detail on how the Employment & Skills targets will be delivered in the borough. I’ve added specific comments to be addressed which may help structure the plan… Happy to discuss.”
He wasn’t and, three weeks later, today, he sent me another draft. I don’t know what this is. It is ten pages long. It is a true skill to write ten pages without saying anything and one I have taken a keen academic interest in like an anthropological study. Page 1 is always a picture of the architect’s rendition of the finished development, always with people and trees depicted but never traffic (despite this one being on a busy junction in the middle of London). These artistic depictions cost a lot of money and are used whenever possible, so this is an understandable flourish. Page 2 is the contents page. Eight to go. Page 3 is entitled Introduction and starts off with two sentences on what they are building and a third to say they are “committed to providing opportunities for local residents”, standard fayre in any intro for a business dependent on government approval, no doubt dating back to seeking approval from the Flavian empire to build the Colosseum.
Then it starts to lose the plot. Most of page 3, all of page 4 and the start of page 5 is simply the obligations cut and pasted from the S106 agreement changed to italic text. Under that are the names of the lead people for the development, none of them indicated as taking responsibility for this plan despite that being a requirement in the S106 agreement in the bit they just pasted. We then move on to section 2, Outline of Development. This is the same as the Introduction on page 3 except with a few more numbers, inexplicably including the planning reference. Page 6 then lists some biblical trades that you would find on any development, from groundworkers to engineering technicians and all the trades in-between such as carpenters, tilers, waterproofers, bricklayers, masons, plumbers, surveyors, scaffolders, electricians, plant drivers and site managers, possibly taken from The Big Book of Construction Jobs[1]. It doesn’t say what they will do with these “opportunities”, how local residents will be trained and employed in them or when they will be required, but they do repeat their commitment that these are opportunities for local residents, much like Everest or the moon is. Page 7 then starts with end-use job opportunities. There are none of them, it tells me. They were never asked for jobs in the end-use of the development in the S106 agreement because it is a residential block, not a commercial building. That took up two paragraphs. Then we come to section 3: Challenges and Opportunities. We already know the opportunities because we already have a list of construction trades. Challenges documented for the edification of the council’s Employment & Skills Officer are that demolition and construction can affect air quality, particularly with dust, while it’s going on. I’m not sure they understood the context of this plan when they got to this section and this bit of filler is particularly gratuitous. On page 8, then, is section 4: Deliverables Summary. This is a summary of the targets in the S106 agreement that they copied and pasted from the S106 agreement in section 1. Two pages to go and we haven’t heard anything yet about a plan on how they’re going to deliver these “opportunities” and “targets”. Page 9 has section 5: Jobs & Employment. Employers use these two words together often and I’ve never been able to discern the difference between them in the descriptions and “plans” that follow. Immediately under this section heading is a sub-heading: Jobs, Employment & Business Strategy. It then dives into a commitment to procure from local businesses. This is the subject of a different S106 obligation and delivery plan, but let’s skip past this for now.
The next sub-heading is Recruitment of Local Residents and Apprentices. This is basically what all of this plan is supposed to be about, but we finally get to the crux halfway down page 9 of 10. After an introductory sentence reiterating they are contributing “opportunities”, the plan states,
“We will look to engage with LBHF, HFBrill4Biz and recognised LBHF companies such as The Skills Centre (and other companies within their supply chain) to target apprenticeships to meet the target of the S106… We will endeavour to have 14 apprenticeships placed within the frame, MEP and building envelope works prior to the fitout trades commencing.”
So this is the meat of the plan into which I
can sink my teeth. A construction phase Gantt
chart was also attached (inexplicably referred to as a labour histogram in the
email) which indicates that the superstructure will be started next month,
mechanical and engineering (“MEP”) in September next year and building works
the following November. I can’t tell if
this plan is saying that apprenticeships will be created in the fit-out stage
as well; it’s all a bit vague but, if it is relevant to the ESP, it starts
January 2025.
With the first apprenticeships starting next month, there is no plan here for who the apprenticeship training provider will be or how apprentices will be recruited (especially in such a short time). They refer to “LBHF” which is us, the council. That doesn’t make much sense. HFBrill4Biz is a defunct organisation that supported Small to Medium Enterprises in the borough and nothing to do with employment or apprenticeships. And The Skills Centre is a construction skills trainer but not for apprenticeships. I don’t know what the reference to its supply chain might be about.
With regards to jobs and training other than apprenticeships, there is a commitment to attend jobs fairs if the council organises them. The rest of the Jobs & Employment section is to build relationships with local schools, to what end it doesn’t say. Page 10 then reverts to a plan to use local businesses in its supply chain; nothing to do with this plan. They’ve muddled their plans (if we can call them that) up. And this is the same senior leadership team that will build this housing estate? I don’t think Maximus Decimus Meridius would be quite as impressed with this plan for shared economic development as he will be with the final building.
I’m not sure how I can give feedback that would be any different to that in August. I sense sharing economic gain is anathema. But I should ask myself, should I be explaining to them, builders of our physical world, like they are children, what a “plan” is? Obviously not. So what can my feedback be for the third time?
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