Damian joined the CICES for their annual conference in Manchester earlier this year. His focus was on professionals and professionalism in construction. From the Grenfell disaster to expert witnesses, the spotlight has been very much on competence and professionalism in recent years.
In this paper, available to download as a PDF, Damian examines different organisational approaches to professionalism, responses to change and the importance of professionalism as a concept in the field of expert evidence.
An extract from the talk follows:
Professionals and Professionalism in Construction
When the author started work in the construction industry, times were substantially different from 2025. There were people able to quote the rules around measurement from memory, who knew by heart SMM7 and the associated methods of measurement. Experts in construction now appear much younger and much smarter, but are they better? Is the industry producing the quality of young surveyors needed to ensure our expertise brings benefit and quality to the industry in years to come? Or do we need to look at who we hold out as experts and review the quality of those individuals?
The shocking events at Grenfell in 2016 shone a spotlight on the incredible lack of industry control. It highlighted failures by successive governments, suppliers, contractors, and a raft of other agencies. Some seven years after the event, the public inquiry into the disaster referred to a “culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry”. Successive reports and statements have pointed to reliance by construction professionals on data which “are now known to not accurately reflect the risks posed by some of those products”.
A cursory glance across the media coverage over recent years brings back various phrases. These include, “wilful non-compliance” and “professionally negligent”. The litany of errors is remarkable. They range from professionals faking qualifications to building control officers with little to no experience signing off major safety features…
Download the full paper here.