11:35 Professor Graham M Winch, Professor of Project Management - The Productivity Institute, Alliance Manchester Business School
Can MMC Improve Housing Productivity?
11:55 Jaimie Johnston MBE, Director: Head of Global Systems - Bryden Wood Tackling the Productivity Crisis Through Industrialised Construction
12:15 Sam Ward, Operations Leader, Technology & Innovation Group - Laing O’Rourke
12:35 Q&A Panel Discussion
12:50 Headline Exhibitor Audience Address
SPEAKER PROGRAMME
13:00 Lunch & Exhibitor Networking
WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE
14:00 Keynote Speaker Katy Dowding, President & CEO - Skanska
14:10 Construction Productivity Taskforce Panel Discussion
Chair - Anthony Impey, CEO – Be the Business Katy Dowding, President & CEO - Skanska Grant Findlay, Executive Managing DirectorSir Robert McAlpine
Brian Morrisroe, Owner - Morrisroe
Cliff Smith, Executive Director - GIRI
WHO HAS THE SOLUTIONS?
14:55 Birgit Biemans, Associate PartnerMckinsey & Company
Elevating Construction Productivity: A Critical Imperative for Future Growth
15:15 Mark Worrall, CEO - BBI Services Raising the Productivity Bar
15:35 Dick Clerkin, Managing DirectorClerkin Consulting
Industrialise or Die - How Real Offsite Construction is the Only Sustainable Solution to Solve Our Housing Crisis.
15:55 Trudi Sully, UK and Europe LeadIndustrialised Design & ConstructionMott MacDonald
Repositioning Challenges Into Opportunities for 2025
16:15 Q&A Panel Discussion
16:30 Closing Comments from Conference Chair James Rowbotham, Head of Workplace Development Team - Landsec and Chair of Construction Productivity Taskforce
16:35 Conference End
The Need for Speed
With rising building costs, declining margins and increasing risk profiles – attempts to improve productivity have proven difficult in a sector too often defined by low profits, aggressive procurement practices, talent shortages and uncertain work pipelines. But critical to ‘get Britain building again’ the construction sector must significantly increase productivity. The industry has acknowledged the problem and there are various initiatives designed to drive change.
Closing the Productivity Gap
The government is reliant on the private sector to reach the stretching targets to build at least 370,000 new homes a year across the lifetime of this parliament. This represents a major opportunity for the sector but is the construction industry up to the job?
More recently, the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) set the industry the challenge to close the productivity gap between construction and the rest of the UK industries by 2035. The CLC make the case that doing this will offer ‘one of the biggest and most easily deliverable opportunities to grow the UK economy’ generating an additional £45billion of added value each year for the wider economy – equivalent of 2% of GDP.
The aim of the CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY CONFERENCE is to explore how offsite manufacturing and industrialised construction backed by digital technologies can in practical terms boost effectiveness. The recent RICS Productivity Survey signals that modern construction methods are very much part of the solution.
Analysing Success
The conference will interrogate the issues affecting productivity but most importantly, will also analyse success stories. The UK is increasingly reliant on a narrow group of high-performing companies to drive its productivity growth. The most efficient 10% of companies, dubbed ‘frontier’ businesses by the ONS — produced nearly four times as much output compared with those of average productivity. Scrutinising and understanding these success stories will be right at the top of the Construction Productivity Conference agenda.
Secure Your Place
Taking place on 28 January 2025 at 30 Euston Square, London, as part of National Productivity Week, the CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY CONFERENCE pulls no punches and looks to address the ‘productivity puzzle’ head on.
Established for Local Authorities, Main Contractors, Social Housing Providers and Developers, tickets includes access to the conference, pop-up exhibition and networking area, lunch and refreshments throughout the day.
Jaimie Johnston MBE
Hitting Productivity Head On
As a Board Director and Head of Global Systems at Bryden Wood and Design Lead for the UK
Construction Innovation Hub, I’ve spent over 20 years working across the built environment to maximise value for major clients in government, the private sector and the public sector, in the UK and around the world.
Clearly the automotive industry is the ‘poster child’ of productivity but let’s get this clear right from the get-go, through the big four – lean principles, standardisation + repeatability, platform superstructure and continuous improvement – dramatic advances in outcomes are now a reality. This combination is already demonstrating how schedules can be halved using far fewer operatives, achieving higher quality and safety standards together with reducing carbon emissions.
Making a seismic shift, new delivery strategies are coming to the fore. A platform approach using pre-engineered components does not necessarily shout groundbreaking but through our research and testing, we have been able to demonstrate some massive productivity gains.
Jaimie Johnston MBE
Board Director and Head of Global Systems
BRYDEN WOOD
Trudi Sully
Advancing Productivity: Fundamentally Doing More With Less
As Region Lead for Industrialised Design & Construction at Mott MacDonald – I have a track record of tackling challenges and supporting the transformation agenda. But we aren’t moving forward fast enough in addressing the challenges that we have and looking at ways to do things better.
An issue collectively is the stagnant nature of productivity over such an extended period, when we have seen so many other industries taking significant leaps forward. Productivity is fundamentally about doing more with less. Now unfortunately, we know we have less in terms of the decline in skilled labour, we have challenges around the cost and supply of material and so on, but we’re not addressing many of these well documented challenges with enough effort to change the way that we work.
There is such huge opportunity to change this course right now. And as we see showcased in the Offsite Awards, there are a growing number of successful pioneers delivering great projects. What we need now is a united effort to mainstream these transformative approaches.
Trudi Sully
Region Lead for Industrialised Design & Construction
MOTT MACDONALD
Hannah Vickers
Productivity: No One-Size-Fits-All Solution
As Global Head of Advisory for Mace & Productivity & Net Zero Lead for Construction Leadership Council – I have come to the conclusion that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Productivity can vary massively depending on the client, the maturity of the market and the product itself.
The piece that we’ve not yet developed as an industry is actually being able to take a step back and judge on a case-by-case basis. With Construction Leadership Council research, we can now model what the best solution is depending on a particular project or sector. The answer is fundamentally different whether it’s housing, commercial buildings or infrastructure.
Another thing to consider is that productivity has two sides of the equation – it has the inputs versus the outputs. Lastly understanding your own data is crucial.
If we look ahead to what might happen with global tariffs and other economic hurdles, the world is only becoming more volatile, so anything we can do to reduce demand-side risk is going to be really valuable this year.
Hannah Vickers
Sam Ward
The Digital Gamechanger for Productivity
As Technology for Innovation Operations Leader for Laing O’Rourke – the thing I find exciting about digital construction is that it is moving so fast and evolving quickly. The challenge is how to adopt all this great work and turn it into real, practical experiences for people on construction sites.
One of the issues we face is that most digital technologies are hugely disparate and do not connect up properly, so we have massive productivity issues because we’re effectively having to redo or go over work.
Robotic automation, certainly from a manufacturing standpoint, is a really stimulating place. We talk about moving people from construction sites into a safer manufacturing environment but robotics can actually help people with a relatively mundane and repeatable set of activities. We don’t want people to move to a factory to do jobs that robots can do – you want the robots to help highly skilled people.
There is clearly no ‘silver bullet’ but improving speed and quality of output through repeatability and standardisation, backed by robotics and digital innovations will be a gamechanger in raising productivity.
Leader, Technology & Innovation Group
Sam Ward
Operations
LAING O’ROURKE
28 JANUARY 2025
30 EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON
CONFERENCE CHAIR
James Rowbotham, Head of Workplace Development – Landsec
James Rowbotham leads the Workplace Development team at Landsec and is Chair of the Construction Productivity Taskforce. At Landsec he is responsible for the delivery of a £3bn central London office development pipeline that includes Thirty High, Victoria – the refurbishment of a 1960’s tower and Timber Square, Bankside – the largest commercial development in the UK using timber.
Katy Dowding, President & CEO – Skanska
Throughout her 35-year career, Katy Dowding has been a force for change in the construction industry. Her impact has been felt across commercial, operational and strategic roles, leading to accolades such as 2013 Women in the City Woman of Achievement and 2016 British Institute of Facilities Management Leader of the Year. She’s also a Trustee of the Construction Youth Trust and a member of the Construction Productivity Taskforce.
Anthony Impey MBE, Chief Executive – Be the Business
Be the Business, is a not-for-profit organisation established to improve productivity. After starting his first enterprise at school, Anthony went on to build several businesses. As founder and Chief Executive of Optimity, he built one of the UK’s leading providers of fixed-wireless internet services and a multi award-winning apprenticeship programme. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honours for Services to Apprenticeships and Small Business.
Jaimie Johnston MBE, Head of Global Systems – Bryden Wood
Jaimie has pioneered the advancement and adoption of a manufacturing-led approach to design and construction on major global projects for clients including the NHS, Circle Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, Heathrow Airport, the Department of Health and Ministry of Justice. Reaching far beyond the traditional role of an architect, Jaimie has been instrumental in Platforms being identified by the government as essential to the transformation of construction.
SPEAKERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Sam Ward, Technology & Innovation Operations Leader – Laing O’Rourke
A civil engineer, chartered with the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Sam is passionate about innovation. He is focused on growing an industry leading capability across the group, providing innovative digital solutions for pre-construction and delivery teams, eventually leading the UK pre-construction Digital Engineering team. Since 2019 he has been working as Operations/ Programme Leader for the Technology & Innovation function.
Hannah Vickers, Global Head of Advisory – Mace and Productivity & Net Zero LeadConstruction Leadership Council
Hannah joined Mace in 2021 from the Association for Consultancy and Engineering where she served as Chief Executive and prior to that she was an advisor to Ministers at HM Treasury in the UK. In her new role Hannah will lead the Advisory consultancy, responsible for the creation of strategies, business cases and delivering transformation for clients, investors and sponsors across the world. Hannah will retain membership of the Construction Leadership Council where she leads on productivity and net zero.
Dick Clerkin, Managing Director – Clerkin Consulting & Lean Construction Institute Ireland
With vast experience in strategy deployment, operational excellence, new product development, project management and organisational change, Dick is chairperson of MMC Ireland’s Education and Awareness working group, along with endorsements and partnerships with organisations such as Lean Construction Ireland and CP Skillnet. He is very well respected in the wider built environment community and Allied to his professional credentials, Dick is one of Irelands best known GAA pundits, following a career playing senior intercounty football with Monaghan.
Trudi Sully, UK and Europe Lead, Industrialised Design & Construction –Mott MacDonald
Leading a rapidly growing team, Trudi is delivering integrated utilisation of DfMA, MMC, and platform approaches to unlock greater social, economic, and environmental outcomes. She has had an eclectic career with a common theme of engaging with leaders to tackle challenges and support transformation. Prior to joining Mott MacDonald, Trudi spent four years as a director of the Construction Innovation Hub, working with government and industry to develop tools and approaches that enable improved productivity, performance and resilience.
28 JANUARY 2025
30 EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON
Grant Findlay, Executive Managing Director – Sir Robert McAlpine
First joining Sir Robert McAlpine in 2012, Grant has over a decade of history with the company, having formerly run the London business then, latterly, as Director of Strategy where he was responsible for innovation and improvement, and leading strategic sector activity. Grant is also a co-founder and Director of the Construction Data Trust, a not-for-profit entity using data to accelerate the transformation of the construction industry.
Graham Winch, Professor of Project Management – The Productivity Institute, Alliance Manchester Business School
Until recently Graham was Academic Director for Executive Education at AMBS, including accountability for project leadership programmes such as managing projects for BP, and leading complex project programmes for BAE Systems. He has authored Managing Construction Projects, co-authored Strategic Project Organising, and co-edited the Research Handbook on Complex Project Organising. Graham will present findings from research at The Productivity Institute, Alliance Manchester Business School from over the last two years to provide an answer to the future of our industry.
Mark Worrall, CEO – BBI Services
Mark utilises his years of business improvement experience to support clients in realising their strategic goals through practical improvement strategies and programmes. Mark has built a wealth of experience having worked across a variety of construction environments and other sectors including automotive, aerospace and manufacturing. His work with clients includes translating their organisation’s strategic goals into strategy deployment driving business performance, the engagement of teams and long-term sustained success.
Campbell Middleton, Laing O’Rourke Professor of Construction Engineering –University of Cambridge
Over the last five years the University of Cambridge has undertaken a detailed study of construction productivity which has resulted in a new framework for measuring productivity on construction projects. This research has demonstrated the value of adopting a standardised set of metrics and collecting more granular data on, for example, cost, programme and manhours, which allows projects to be compared and benchmarks of performance established. An alternative method for visualising progress and performance will also be shared.
SPEAKERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Birgit Biemans, Associate Partner – McKinsey & Company
As the construction industry faces a pivotal growth phase, with global spending expected to soar from $13 trillion in 2023 to $22 trillion by 2040, the imperative to enhance productivity has never been more critical. Birgit will explore why improving construction productivity is essential in meeting the economic and societal demands of the future, including infrastructure development, and achieving net-zero environmental targets. She will delve into the challenges that stagnate productivity and discuss strategic approaches to overcome these obstacles.
Simon Rawlinson, Head of Strategic Research and Insight – Arcadis
Leading a multi-disciplinary team at Arcadis, Simon is also a member of the Construction Leadership Council responsible for strategy, communication and thought leadership and is also a member of the CIC Executive. He has 20 years’ experience in construction research and innovation including market forecasting, construction productivity and procurement. With a long track record of working on industry change initiatives, he has been a member of the UK Government BIM Task Group since 2010, has been involved in the UK National BIM strategy and the development of the Digital Built Britain Strategy.
Cliff Smith, Executive Director – GIRI (Get it Right Initiative)
A Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Cliff has more than 40 years’ experience in the construction industry, 38 working with contractor Sir Robert McAlpine and subsequently as a consultant offering specialist engineering and technical support, project and design management and strategic quality leadership. He has been a director of the Get it Right Initiative since formation and was involved in the Guide to Improving Value by Reducing Design Error and a number of research reports on the use of technology in the construction industry.
Brian Morrisroe, CEO – Morrisroe Group
Chief Executive Officer of the Morrisroe Group, Brian is responsible for overseeing the long-term success of the business providing entrepreneurial leadership and setting strategic aims. He is supported by a team of Managing Directors appointed to handle day to day matters and ensure that the necessary financial, technical and human resources are in place to meet the company objectives.
ADDRESSING CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY CHALLENGES HEAD ON
SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
28 JANUARY 2025
30 EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON
The Construction Productivity Conference will get to the core of an issue which has plagued the construction industry for decades. Taking place on 28 January 2025 at 30 Euston Square, London, the hard-hitting conference programme looks to address the UK construction ‘productivity puzzle’ head on.
With rising building costs, reducing margins and increasing risk profiles – attempts to improve productivity have proven difficult in a sector too often defined by low profits, aggressive procurement practices, talent shortages and uncertain work pipelines.
Demonstrate your authority and reputation as a business on the cutting edge of the construction sector, by joining a wealth of industry leaders at Construction Productivity Conference 2025.
Positioning your business alongside those at the forefront of innovations in products, processes and people management, the conference is currently offering a variety of exhibitor opportunities.
For more information on the Exhibition & Sponsorship Opportunities still available, contact: ellie.guest@radar-communications.co.uk
Anthony Impey - Be the Business, Jaimie Johnston MBE - Bryden Wood, Graham M Winch - The Productivity Institute, Trudi Sully – Mott MacDonald, James Rowbotham - Landsec, Campbell Middleton - University of Cambridge, Dick Clerkin - Clerkin Consulting & Lean Construction Institute Ireland, Sam Ward - Laing O’Rourke, Simon Rawlinson - Arcadis, Hannah Vickers – Mace, Birgit Biemans - McKinsey and Company, Mark Worrall - BBI Services
