Recently I have had occasion to consider the role of the construction client. 

ICE is proposing a Good Client Guide, which should be available by the autumn.  The client’s pivotal role in the success of a project has long been recognised – John Smeaton noted this in the 1760s, and gave advice to the Board of the Forth-Clyde Canal, making clear what they should expect of him and others on that project. 

One problem is the whole range of clients in the construction sector.  In schools, for example, there are the elected politicians setting out strategy, civil servants responsible for delivery, and then local government, perhaps in different political control, and finally the ‘school’ itself – with its staff and other stakeholders.  They, the ultimate client, are very dependent on both the expertise of the other client tiers in getting policy and funding right, as well as the construction professionals involved in delivery. 

In this situation developing a client guide is a challenge – how much should we assume the client knows?  How much detail do we need to provide about procurement systems, risk, and project management.  Before long it ceases to be the couple of sheets of advice Smeaton provided, and becomes a heavyweight handbook. 

Hopefully, ICE Guide will get the balance right.

Mike Chrimes

The recent CIRIA AGM presented contrasting pictures of how the construction industry is coping with the recession.

Davis Langdon are looking to diversify and find new markets, whereas Nuttall are concentrating on core civil engineering, perhaps reflecting the way in which housing and commercial building work has fallen away more rapidly than infrastructure. 

Speakers varied in their view of when recovery may come, with late 2010 generally favoured, although concerns were raised about the impact of public spending cuts after 2011, unless recovery is rapid. 

Let us hope the optimists are correct!

 Mike Chrimes

The energy sector is also one of the more resilient sectors of the UK economy, as a recent salary survey conducted by Hays and the Energy Institute reveals, salaries and benefits remain highly competitive to attract and keep highly skilled and technical operatives.

Results from the survey suggest also suggest employers are focusing on all aspects of reward to attract the most technically skilled and qualified engineers – with pensions top of the list.  The larger utilities for example, are now offering generous contributions to retirement funds as well as good holiday allowances and flexible working conditions.

As previously stated, the renewable and nuclear job markets continue to expand; more opportunities are coming online compared to the current civil and structural jobs markets, which appear to be standing still.

The Energy Salary & Benefits survey is a joint collaboration between the Energy Institute and Hays Energy.

For a copy of the survey, or to view current opportunities in the energy sector, please visit www.yourenergyjobs.com – a joint initiative job site between Thomas Telford and the Energy Institute.

Far be it for us to proclaim, but could the worst of the current recession be over?

There is speculative evidence to suggest the rate of decline in the jobs market was at its slowest last month, according to a survey of 400 recruiters carried out by REC and KPMG.  Job appointments for staff declined at their slowest pace for the past seven months.

The rate of decline is still sharp and the rate of vacancies for permanent and temporary staff continued to fall but again at the slowest pace for five months.

The survey showed an increase in the number of people seeking work, driven by high levels of redundancies and fewer job opportunities – the job market has become candidate rich and job poor but not across all sectors.  Civil engineering, whilst undoubtedly hit by cuts in long term capital investment in infrastructure and overcapacity does appear to be holding its own – particularly in the renewable and nuclear energy sectors

For further information on the REC/KPMG report, please email Andrea.Hodson@thomastelford.com who will be happy to forward a copy of the full report to you.

For the last month the Lee navigation between Tottenham and Clapton in North East London has been a hive of activity. 

The riverscape normally dominated by swans, Canada geese, coots and mallards is being disturbed by dredging.  A fleet of tugs, barges and dredgers is giving a different kind of vitality to the river which must be reminiscent of what it was like down to the 1960s when that stretch was dominated by timber wharves served by barges from the docks. 

For at least two centuries river navigation provided a significant source of employment for civil engineers.  Nathaniel Beardmore, who wrote the first textbook on hydrology, worked on the Lee.  In the post-war period canals became the prerogative of the volunteer, but the growth in leisure traffic, and the role inland navigation can play in revitalising inner urban areas have made a career in canal engineering an exciting place for young engineers once more. 

The immediate future of the Lee is very much involved with the Olympics.  I anticipate seeing more improvement works on my journey to work over the next two years.

Mike Chrimes

For those of you graduating recently, you might like to consider what kind of higher engineering education was available 150 years ago. 

In the 1860s there were only a dozen institutions offering engineering education, from specialist places like the Royal School of Mines to private bodies like Putney College of Civil Engineering.  The longest established was the Royal Engineers School (1812).  King’s College London’s syllabus was typical for 3 years and covered mathematics, natural philosophy, embracing physics, arts of construction, manufacturing arts, land surveying, drawing, including free drawing, chemistry, geology and mineralogy, and photography.  Some institutions like Edinburgh University were only 2 year courses, but there was nothing about geology taught there – geotechnics had not been ‘invented’.

If you then wanted a career in India you would be examined in subjects such as arithmetic, Euclid, dynamics, free-hand drawing, framing of estimates from given plans and data, and plotting from a field book.  But, and it is a big but, throughout the nineteenth century the chief route to qualification was a 5 year pupillage and 5 years practical experience in charge of work(s). 

The result was many students opted for short courses or dropped out.  It seems at Queen’s Belfast none completed the Diploma offered there in the first 10 years, and drop out rates seem to have been over 60% for most of the nineteenth century. 

Overall the impression one gets is that most students were seeking enough education to enable them to advance quickly in the profession, but that the modern idea of 4 years study as a necessary foundation was inconceivable.

Mike Chrimes

The issue of overseas workers in UK construction and engineering has been in the headlines of the national media recently.  Anybody with any kind of historical perspective will see beyond the tabloid headlines: skills transfer to and from Britain and the rest of the world has been going on since the nineteenth century.. 

As long ago as the 1820s there were Parliamentary inquiries into the exodus of skilled UK artisans to continental Europe, boosting their competitive industry.  In the 1840s the arrival of ‘les rosbifs’ to build French railways was greeted with alarm.  More recent examples are the Peronist and Nasserite revolutions after the Second World War which saw the effective expulsion of British engineers from Argentina and Egypt to sate nationalist demands for their own experts in positions of authority.  Historically the advent of groups like the Huguenots, and more recently, refugees from Central Europe has been seen as a great stimulus for the British economy.  Engineers like Samuely and Mautner made important creative contributions to British civil engineering in the 20th century. 

It will be interesting to see history’s verdict on the current situation.

Mike Chrimes

2009 begins with more depressing news and mistakes about the global economy. 

In the UK construction has been hard hit by the collapse in private housing.  While in Spain billions of Euros continue to be invested in the High Speed Rail network, and in Germany infrastructure investment is regarded as the key to recovery, the UK infrastructure debate is centred on the controversy around a third runway at Heathrow.  This has impacted on, some would argue perverted, the discussion on High Speed Rail in the UK. 

Until recently talk had been of skills shortages in a buoyant economy.  It will be interesting to see whether recession will solve these shortages.  Certainly my experience of other downturns has been an increased demand for information services from engineers seeking work in new fields, or fields they consider to have a long term future.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was tremendous interest in “alternative energy” which receded as oil prices stabilised.  Although wind power has attracted some attention recently, the demand for information on other sources has been nothing like it was then. 

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 12 months, and which areas are seen as the best for future work prospects.

Mike Chrimes

The first week in December is the occasion of the Online Conference and Exhibition at Olympia.  Over the years innovation has come in waves, and this year seems to be the year that publishers are finally getting their e-books acts together. 

ICE has been offering the McGraw-Hill Digital Library to members for some time, but now most publishers have got their acts together.  Most universities, and progressive library authorities like Essex offer e-books to their readers.  Pricing models based on paper products have become widespread, and single copy licenses should suffice.  Although 2009 looks to be financially tight at ICE I hope to be able to offer e-books as a supplement to the Loan Service early in the New Year, giving us an opportunity to gauge future demand.

Read MyICE for further details.

Mike Chrimes

India booms proclaimed NCE of 9th October. With most of the globe staring economic meltdown in the face some may contemplate investigating a career there. 

In the 1970s, when the UK economy faced severe problems many engineers were able to find employment in the Middle East.  It will be interesting to observe what effect the current crisis has on today’s engineers.  One can imagine that the prospect of employment in the financial sector which allegedly tempted top civil engineering graduates into the City, is a little tarnished today.  Generally the bonus-led City culture is now regarded as one where greed replaced common sense bringing the financial system to its current nadir.  The impact on global construction has yet to be fully felt.  Such crisis of the past have led engineers to change their career paths or develop other skills.

Guildford Molesworth, a past-ICE President, and Chief Engineer for India State Railways in the later nineteenth century had to spend more time with his young family.  His interests in the insect world and his use of the microscope led to him writing stories for his children, subsequently published as Spiders’ Spinning, or Adventures in Insect Land.  He also found a publisher for his miscellany of engineering notes and formulae.  His Pocket Book of useful formulae was in print from 1862 until the 1950s.  Both Molesworth’s family and the engineering profession generally benefited from his enforced unemployment due to economic circumstances of the Victorian era.

Mike Chrimes