With the summer of athletics upon us, it’s worth remembering that the London Games were a shining example of British planning and development teams pulling together on a huge scale. It’s a spirit that needs to be rekindled on future projects.
In the UK, getting planning consent can often take too long and involve too much uncertainty and cost. Half of planning authorities recently surveyed said they believed the current environment was not operating as well as it was five years ago. A number of cities across England are now taking well over six months to assess major new applications and the effects of this uncertainty for the industry are obvious.
We need to recapture that Olympics mentality. London 2012 was a huge feat of delivery across the planning and construction stages. Faced with either getting the job done or causing a major international embarrassment, it’s motivating to see what can be achieved. The Games instilled a sense of ownership and leadership for everyone responsible at every stage.
Clearly setting a hard-and-fast deadline for all development isn’t always going to be practicable or sensible. Furthermore, not every scheme will offer the same reputational risk as, say, building an Olympic stadium or designing a new velodrome while the world is watching. However, there are clear lessons and best practice from the 2012 Games.
- Engage all parties early. This will not only bring stability and confidence in the process, but it will free up development and create more capacity to get planning moving. We are already seeing it with Crossrail and the signs are HS2 will be the same.
- Help create the right incentives and conditions for clients to adopt pre-manufactured solutions. There is now an imperative to start developing an industry less reliant on labour-intensive methods. This will have the benefit of improving productivity and also, through embracing digital technology, will hopefully improve the industry’s image making it more attractive to the younger generation.
- While the UK may know it is leaving the EU, nobody can predict the nature of its future relationship with the bloc that accounts for two-thirds of its trade. Proactive determined development with momentum will attract the overseas investment that we want and faced with political uncertainty, it feels like the construction sector is going to have to step to the fore and show government how to get on with things.
We all know that we can do better. The self-inflicted political crisis we find ourselves in does not and cannot mean that the planning world comes to a stop, that energy is not demanded, that the need to travel is cancelled, and the wish to buy or rent is given up on. Just think how much can be achieved over the next seven years if we work together in the same manner that we did between winning the Games in 2005 and delivering them in the summer of 2012. It is time for Team GB to take the lead.
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My name is Caroline Hairsine. I'm a Senior Construction Underwriter at CNA Hardy and have specialised in the construction industry for over ten years. Follow CNA Hardy’s blog series on LinkedIn.