The Building Podcast with Mark Wakeford

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Procurement is a common theme running through all companies involved in the construction sector.  Everyone has to win work one way or the other and whilst the procurement process will vary from client to client, the objectives are broadly similar; to find the right organisation to provide the best quality and the best price.  Done well, a procurement exercise will ad...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The global solar sector purchases around 90% of its solar panels from China.  In the UK the figure is about the same.  Thes panels are mass produced to a high quality and certain manufacturers have worked hard to remove any trace of slave labour from their supply chains and provided better traceability of materials within the products.  However, with such a concentra...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction productivity has been static within the UK market for over 20 years (so we are told) and our clients are facing rapidly changing priorities with climate change and skills shortages within their supply chains.  The solution is to innovate and to continually improve our products, our processes and our people.  This is traditionally achieved through best pr...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The construction press fulfils a crucial role informing and setting the agenda for change.  It relies on providing a service that its readers are prepared to pay for, which should be accurate, unambiguous and timely information on the key issues facing the sector.  Such a service requires a high degree of professionalism, yet all too often we dismiss journalists and...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Directors dictate the culture and the direction of their company.  This requires directors to lead their businesses through an appropriate strategy and to manage the day to day with effective processes and communications.  Directors are generally appointed after successes within the business, or through the potential that they bring to the Board.  The question can be...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The UK’s largest industry is home to a large number of people who want to make the industry a better place; improving the outcome for customers, supporting employees or making businesses more resilient in times of great change.  The Construction sector is also home to a huge number of companies, trade organisations who promote these companies, allied stakeholders and...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The UK construction industry plays only a small part global terms, yet our language, legal pedigree and financial stability mean that we can be compared to the worldwide industry.  Krystle Drover is an Associate Director of KPMG’s Major Projects Advisory Team and works with public and private organisations, big and small, around the world.  Her aim is to improve proj...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Planning Permission is the starting point for virtually all new build and many large refurbishment projects.  Unlocking a permission can be long, tortuous and expensive, but it is the only mechanism to let other stakeholders influence what is built and how it affects their communities, infrastructure and landscape.  Joe Bennett is a Principal Planning Consultant for...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The priorities that have guided construction for centuries are changing.  Not only do we have to meet our clients' needs of today, but those needs are likely to change over the life of the building, and our designs and construction need to be aware of these changes.  On top of this, the business environment is changing to reflect a carbon economy and one that va...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The retro-fit market for domestic homes in the UK is enormous.  We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe that accounts for 20% of national carbon emissions.  There are 27 million homes, the vast majority of which will require some sort of retro-fit.  The industry has a wide range of professionals who advise and deliver retro-fit, but there is still confusio...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction is the UK’s largest industry.  Football is the country’s largest sport.  There are many similarities between the two, one of which is the cultural change that has permeated both areas of our life over the last thirty years.  The recent wins by England’s Lionesses football team in the 2025 Euros was perhaps the biggest indication of change in football cul...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The construction industry needs hundreds of thousands to join its ranks over the next decade.  These recruits will come from many walks of life, but the vast majority will have to come straight from school or university.  Do we know what excites this generation?  What skills do they come with and what does the school do to facilitate the adoption of essential skills?...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction businesses are generally small and micro businesses; 98% of companies employ ten or fewer staff and 95% employ five or less.  These businesses for the backbone of the sector, providing the skills required for project delivery.  Businesses however have to provide accounts and other statutory returns and they have to meet their customers’ demands, regardle...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The United Kingdom’s largest project is HS2.  A project to link London to Birmingham with a high speed train line that can provide significant increases in rail capacity in a highly congested area.  There is 140 miles of new track, with four new stations and a myriad of structures to support the rail line, with a projected cost of £66Bn.  It is a major piece of civil...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome One of the larger challenges that the solar sector faces in trying to expand its installed generation capacity is winning the hearts and minds of the general public.  It is true that the majority of people support their deployment, but it is crucial that we maintain this edge and public acceptance of solar.  One of the areas that can support this is work within our s...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction is a complicated and often challenging occupation, both on site and back in the office.  Our smaller, regional main contractors have to deal with all the same legislation and pressures as their larger competitors, but with substantially fewer resources, if they are to remain competitive.  Andy Laflin, Joint MD of Gipping Construction, a £26M business, ba...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The Institutes of Technology (IoT) were invented in 2019 to support businesses in England, in technical industries, to find the right new recruits, who were technology aware, capable and competent to join technical businesses.  Technical businesses was drafted widely to include construction skills, so that students were aware of the changes in their sectors and retai...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The role that carbon plays in construction design and delivery is large, accounting for over 40% of UK emissions that the industry is either directly responsible for or which it influences. Reducing it requires new techniques, different ways of building and a change in culture within construction. Dr. Russ Hall is the Lead for Sustainable Manufacturing and the Circul...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Sustainability requires a culture change within construction.  Ian Heptonstall set up the Supply Chain Sustainability School with a few main contractors who were looking to break the mould of training and skills acquisition in the UK on what was then a relatively new demand on our industry.  The Supply Chain School remains free to all users at the point of use; somet...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Leaders are everywhere.  All businesses have one, all organisations have them at various levels throughout their management.  Within construction we can not lay a brick without an NVQ 2, yet there are no requirements for qualifications to run our companies and even the largest of our companies have few requirements for trained leaders. Prof. Elaine Limond, Vice-Dean...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Mental Health remains a stain on the reputation of the construction industry with a suicide rate of four times the national average.  The reasons why are varied and complex, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of stress, poor health and lost productivity within the sector. Carla Toro is an Associate Professor in Mental Health Sciences at Warwick U...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Improvements to construction productivity are the Holy Grail of many in our industry.  Without these improvements we cannot offer our customers more for less, include additional services or even pay ourselves more, without charging our customers more.  With no obvious improvement over the last quarter of a century, yet with significant changes to building methodology...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome There are two things that construction needs to learn from the retail sector.  The first is that it is all about customer service.  Fail at this and you fail at the first step in business.  The second is that you must modernise and take every marginal gain available.  Retail is a hugely competitive sector and if you fail to do either of these things then you will not...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Environmental, Social and Governance standards are increasingly a mandatory requirement for investment into any sector.  Solar is no different, indeed many would say that we are more prone to these issues with the bulk of our materials coming from the far east where similar standards are not so mainstream. Rachel Owens is the Chief Executive of the Solar Stewardship...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction prides itself on being a front-line meritocracy where every one has a crucial role to play in delivering successful projects.  In any meritocracy there are bound to be those who are more equal than others and clients fulfil this role.  Clients set the environment in which we all work, the priorities through which the supply chain is procured and the mana...