Construction should not work - so why does it?

Take a step back from construction for a moment and look at the industry through the eyes of an outsider and imagine trying to explain how a typical project is delivered. A client appoints a team of consultants and designs evolve while budgets are being reviewed. Planning conditions are discharged. Contractors are appointed. Hundreds of subcontractors become involved. Materials arrive from around the world before specifications change and programmes move. People also come and go while problems emerge daily, but despite all of this, buildings somehow get completed, writes John Ridgeway.

All this raises an interesting question - construction should not work - so why does it? If you think about it, every project is really a prototype. Most other industries benefit from repetition. A car manufacturer builds the same vehicle thousands of times. An aircraft manufacturer follows highly controlled production processes. A technology company can replicate a product endlessly.

Construction does none of these things because almost every project is unique. Every contract is a different site, different design, different ground conditions, different client different team and different risks.

Even projects that appear similar on the surface are rarely identical once planning requirements, local conditions, procurement routes, regulations and stakeholder expectations are taken into account. In effect, the industry is building prototypes every day, yet clients often expect the certainty associated with manufacturing.That alone should make successful project delivery significantly more difficult than it already is.

Construction Creates Temporary Companies

One of the most remarkable aspects of construction is that every project creates a temporary organisation. Architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, project managers, consultants, manufacturers and clients are brought together to deliver a single objective.

Many of these individuals have never worked together before and some may never work together again, but they are expected to operate as a coordinated team capable of delivering projects worth millions, and sometimes billions, of pounds.

In most industries, organisations spend years building teams and refining processes. Construction often does it in weeks. When viewed objectively, this should create chaos. Instead, projects generally move forward, not always perfectly and not without challenges, but they move forward nevertheless.

The irony is that construction is often criticised for its productivity performance. Research published by McKinsey found that global construction productivity improved by only around 10% between 2000 and 2022, significantly lagging behind many other sectors of the economy. McKinsey has repeatedly highlighted that construction remains one of the least digitised major industries and has struggled to achieve the productivity gains seen elsewhere, but perhaps that criticism misses part of the picture.

Unlike manufacturing, construction is not producing identical products within controlled factory environments. It is delivering complex assets in constantly changing environments whilst coordinating hundreds of stakeholders, suppliers, specialists, and trades. Perhaps then, the more surprising statistic is not that productivity growth has been slow, it is the fgact that projects are delivered at all.

The Industry Runs on Trust

Contracts, programmes and specifications matter, but anyone who has spent time in construction knows that projects often depend upon something far less tangible - trust. A project team may be supported by thousands of pages of documentation, but much of the day-to-day progress relies on relationships.

The construction industry has built some of the world's most complex structures through a combination of expertise, collaboration and professional trust. This does not appear on a programme and it is rarely measured, but it is often the difference between success and failure.

Another unusual feature of construction is that decisions are frequently made using information that continues to evolve. Designs develop, specifications change, client requirements evolve, supply chains alter and new risks emerge.

This is not a criticism, it is simply reality, because projects rarely begin with perfect information. Instead, teams make decisions using the best information available at the time, adapting as the project progresses.

The remarkable outcome is that these constantly changing inputs ultimately create permanent assets that may stand for decades or even centuries. There are few industries where such a process would be considered acceptable. In construction, it is simply part of the challenge.

Human Problem Solving Remains Construction's Greatest Asset

Technology, of course is another factor and it continues to transform the industry. Digital design, BIM, artificial intelligence, offsite manufacturing and automation, all have an important role to play.

McKinsey and other industry commentators have consistently argued that greater adoption of technology will be essential if construction is to improve productivity and meet future demand, but technology alone is not what makes projects successful.

Construction remains fundamentally a people business. Every day, project teams solve problems that did not exist the day before, such as unexpected ground conditions, material shortages, design clashes, programme pressures, client changes and logistical challenges.

Many of these issues cannot simply be automated away. They require experience, judgement, communication and collaboration. However, this ability to adapt may be one of the industry's greatest strengths.

Take all this into account and perhaps the best description of construction is that it operates within a state of controlled chaos. There is structure, there are systems, there are contracts and procedures, but there is also an extraordinary ability to respond to uncertainty.

The industry has become remarkably good at dealing with complexity because complexity is part of everyday life. A project that appears to be in difficulty on Monday can be back on programme by Friday.

So Why Does Construction Work?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Construction works because of people. The industry's greatest achievement is not the buildings it creates. It is its ability to bring together hundreds of organisations, thousands of decisions and countless moving parts to deliver something tangible and lasting.

Yes, construction can be fragmented. Yes, productivity can improve. Yes, there are lessons still to be learned, but perhaps we should occasionally acknowledge something else. Given its complexity, uncertainty and reliance on temporary teams delivering unique projects, construction really shouldn't work - and yet, every day, it does.