News details
12/Mar/2010
Engineering clients & providers meet on Teesside to discuss Gibson Review outputs
“Collaborative arrangements said to be at the heart of UK engineering construction productivity improvement.”
“30,000 engineers need to be attracted, trained and delivered to the UK economy by 2016/17 to meet the replacement and growth demand.”
TEESSIDE was once again the centre of attention for the UK engineering industry, with a major conference on Engineering Productivity held at The Wynyard Rooms and attended by 80 senior executives from both engineering companies and their clients.
The conference, organised by the North East Process Industry Cluster, was held to discuss the recently published recommendations from the Gibson Review. The Review, conducted by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), has assessed the productivity and skills in UK engineering construction against a backdrop of concern among clients and construction contractors of under-performance in the industry.
The recommendations were reviewed by event speaker Terry Lazenby MBE, Chairman of the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), who told the audience that key to performance improvement is better client and supplier collaboration.
He explained that productivity is a complex issue and it has been concluded that it is not only about workforce performance and supervision. The management, planning, availability of construction materials and communication of the correct instructions to the technicians carrying out the actual job, are more than likely to be where failure can occur in project delivery.
Stan Higgins CEO of NEPIC, whom opened the conference, said “The importance of this issue to UK industry is demonstrated by the attendance here today. The perception of the UK’s ability to deliver high value capital projects has been dented over the last 2 or 3 years and we must improve if we are to win globally mobile projects from International Business owners.
Stan continued “Clients and suppliers must work collaboratively to make a difference if we are to change perception. The UK has got some excellent examples of project delivery and we must share best practice to improve performance across the board.”
Martin Grady of ABB, Chair of the NEPIC Process Engineering Group responsible for bringing this event to region, concluded “Today’s event has clearly been worthwhile and we hope that companies will continue to work even more collaboratively through NEPIC’s Process Engineering Group.”
The conference was organised by NEPIC, the North East Process Industry Cluster, which is a leading industrial organisation with over 550 members in the region. The cluster engages heavily with its sector supply chains, which includes a wide range of engineering companies. NEPIC reports that over 80 of its members supply engineering services to the process sector locally and worldwide.
Bob Moodie of RAMS Consultants, one of the many engineering experts attending the event, said “Having spent almost 50 years in engineering on Teesside, at last I can see that we have a collaborative forum through NEPIC that brings both Clients and Engineering Suppliers together to address important issues of productivity and winning new investment for this region. We must have overtly visible and real collaboration across the supply chain to come through the difficult economic times we have just experienced.”
The Gibson Review heralds an opportunity for stakeholders to work together to achieve an improvements in construction project productivity and to implement a vision for the future of the UK Engineering Construction industry.
