 Good morning, and welcome to the 9th meeting of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee for 2019. First of all, I would ask everyone present to turn off any electrical devices that may interfere with the sound system. The actual sound system will be operated from the soundness, so no need for our witnesses when we come to that to press any buttons. We've received apologies from committee members Andy Wightman and Gordon Macdonalds and we'd welcome Willie Coffey, who is here in Gordon Macdonalds stead. The first item on the agenda is a decision by the committee to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we agreed on that? Thank you. We now turn to our enquire into construction and Scotland's economy. We have witnesses today, first of all Stephen Good, who is the chief executive from the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, and then Professor Robert Hairstands, who is the head of the centre of the off-site construction and innovative structures from Napier University, and also with us is Alan Caldwell, strategic director of research and innovation from the Robertson Group. I'll welcome those three. I think that we have a further witness that has perhaps been delayed en route, but we'll start off. Perhaps Stephen Good and Professor Hairstands may be interested in this question. It's to do with the question of innovation. Mark Farmer, who is the author of the Farmer review, highlighted that the UK construction industry faced, and I quote, inexorable decline unless long-standing problems were tackled. What are your views on that statement, and in particular, the impression seems to be that the sector is slow to embrace innovation or to modernise, to automate, to adopt new techniques that are used quite commonly in other countries, similar countries. What would be your views on that? Yes, sure. I think that the Farmer report has obviously got a lot of resonance at the moment, but it's one in a sequence of reports, as such. We've obviously had the Leithan and Egan reports, the Barker reports, except for the construction strategy. There's a whole back catalogue of work and research, which has consistently said that the construction sector doesn't perform, and there's a necessity for it to think more innovatively in terms of its approach. Obviously, the parallels are often drawn with other sectors such as the automotive sector and how they've actually embraced change in terms of what they've done with a large emphasis on productivity and production improvements and lean and customer-orientated products. The construction sector essentially is fragmented. Innovation is hard to come by because of the risks associated with it and the culture by which it operates. Correspondingly, the uptake of new methods of construction are, in any respects, a correspondence to the intersection of drivers, and there's a number of drivers that influence that. Those drivers have become more complex in the modern setting with the onset of things such as digitisation. If we take culture, productivity, human capital, sustainability and productivity, it is necessary to try to respond to all of those challenges within the social, economic and political landscape and the context of the sector. Then there's a lot of challenges at place to resolve innovative approaches, and for innovation to be ideally client or customer or led, it hasn't taken place and isn't assisted for it to happen, given what we need to do and what we need to change. I would maybe add that we were fortunate enough to have Mark Farmer join our board last year because I think that he recognised and he's a huge supporter of the industry, a huge supporter of driving change, positive change, growth within the industry. However, as Robert touched on, going back, the furthest back one that I've ever seen as the Simon report in 1944, which outlined a lot of the challenges that the industry has and suggested a lot of the ways that the industry could change. One of the key observations that the farmer review focused on was that relationship, and it's really important in the context of probably everything to do with innovation, that relationship between the industry and how clients buy from the industry. Mark and others have made the point that the industry is perfectly well set up to deliver solutions for the way clients want to buy from it. If the perception is that we want lowest cost, we want quick delivery, we want to transfer a risk, then the industry is perfectly well set up to do that. The challenge is that we may not want that, we may want a different industry, we may want that industry to change. The farmer reviews, who modernise or die message or the vision, I suppose, was that if, and again Robert touched on, Egan and Latham reports from the 90s, both identified again the real important role that clients—often public sector clients—been one of the biggest procurers of goods and services from the construction industry. If they could use some of those levers to drive innovation, to drive investment in skills, to drive investment in technology, equipment and new facilities, that would give the industry a lot of confidence. Organisations like Robertson group, I suppose, would see that line of sight and see that potential to invest because there is a longer term strategy perhaps in place around how clients want to buy those products. I suppose that the die part of the modernise or die agenda was that if industry and clients choose not to do that, the potential future might look quite bleak. Is the problem in this country that we talk a lot about it but don't actually do it whereas in other countries they get on with it and do it? I think that perhaps it's an interesting area in terms of policy and procurement, but one of the opportunities, I guess, is to look at how others are delivering that benefit. Some of the committee members made it along to visit a Glasgow-based construction company, off-site manufacturing company, who have invested quite heavily in new technology and new skills and training techniques and delivering different models. In some respects, I suppose, as someone who supports a wider adoption of innovation right across the industry, you look at those models and say why can't more be done, but you have to pick right into the detail of it to understand how their model works, how their structure works and how in the relationship they have with their clients it was probably more advantageous for companies like that to do it, whereas for others it may not be. There is eminent sense in looking at how other countries and other organisations have embraced change and drive innovation. I think that, from our point of view, at the innovation centre, it is apparent that there is a massive will to do things differently within industry, but it requires that relationship between industry and its clients to work and have shared objectives, outcome-based objectives. I'll turn to Alan Caldwell, who equally will have comments on this. Is there a massive will, but not necessarily put into action as it is in other countries, whereas there's a will and then it happened? Where there's a will, there's a way, surely? I think so. I would pretty much agree with everything Stephen said from our perspective. I should correct first that I'm not our research and innovation director. Claire was supposed to be here and I got a phone call yesterday afternoon to see if she wasn't well and could possibly step in. I'm a strategic bid director, so heavily involved in the bidding side for Robertson. It's very much in our interest to be at the forefront, to be looking for new ideas, to develop those ideas, but at the same time we have to be a sustainable business that can afford to do it. As Stephen said, the industry is largely set up to respond to the way things are procured. It's not only cost-driven, it's very cost-driven, and it's very solution-driven that often is already decided. To bring innovation into those things, we tend to prefer to take a traditional two-stage approach, where you might get involved, the contract is involved much earlier in the process and is allowed to bring ideas to the table at an early stage, bringing our supply chain as well. At the end of the day, the specialist supply chains often are the sources of a lot of the innovative ideas, so earlier we can bring them and ourselves to the table to get involved in projects. We tend to find that they tend to be more collaborative as well, which, going back to Letham and Aegon, was probably the largest criticism of our industry as it was very confrontational. If you are being fair across the board, the industry has changed. It's not been a sea change, but, in my experience and sadly, I have been here long enough, the confrontational side still exists to a degree, but it's nowhere as near as bad as it was, and far more things have been set up over the years. Precure 21 in England was an early NHS drive to create a framework where there was incentivisation for everyone to collaborate together, not just client and contractor, but clients together, contractors together to bring ideas, and it worked to a degree. NHS frameworks in Scotland have tried to copy that a few years back, and they are still pushing that agenda. There are many other frameworks that have been developed with collaboration at their centre, but I still very much agree with your comment that the will is there, the actions still need to come, and they need to come better. It's trying to get over an idea that, by collaborating, you're not necessarily giving away your crown jewels that give you a competitive advantage, because it's a very competitive industry that we're in. Innovation comes at a cost, and typically the cost is up front and you recover the benefits of that over a period of years. To what extent do you think that profit margins are a barrier to innovation? Yes, they can't. As I said, we're a strange industry, we take a lot of risk depending on the structure of the contract, and we don't take the wider industrial terms a very high margin from the work that's just our industry. There is a barrier in that your margins are tight, and you have to be very efficient. You tend to lean towards what you've done before, because it's safe, secure and particularly in light of recent events and construction, you want to make sure that you're delivering the quality that you need to deliver with a tried and tested solution. The margins, I think, are certainly a factor in stifling innovation, because at the end of the day, if you innovate, you potentially can create better margins because you're doing things better and faster, so it's trying to get that balance between the two things. Is that balance being achieved? I don't know. To be honest, it's probably not my particular field to say that, but there's certainly a desire to push innovation as far as we can, but it's got to be within affordable limits, if you like, because we've got 3,500 employees in the group and we're also trying to make sure that they'll have a job next year and a year after, etc. There is an element of risk in any innovation, but I think that the experience shows it if you can manage it and grow it. It's not a reluctance to do it, it's just a caiginess, I suppose, to make sure that we're doing the right type of innovation that's not going to be too risky to threaten the underlying business. Diolch yn fawr i'r panoamol? Profit margins have an impact on a business's ability to look at any additional work that might undertake or activities that might get involved in an innovation investment in skills and training are no different. It's important that there's a paradox in some respects that a lot of companies that hold up international companies have been really innovative. Companies are the ones that appear to take quite a lot of big risks that they successfully pay off. In the construction industry, again, back to the way it's structured, if there isn't the profit margins there, companies won't see the opportunity to invest in innovation trying new techniques. In some respects, that's what the innovation centre was established to help businesses with. I'll have a conversation with you whether that's successful or not later on, but that was certainly one of the ambitions that was to help to de-risk innovation for businesses that don't operate on hugely high profit margins and, back to the collaboration point that Alan touched on, there are some notable successes where businesses that typically compete in Robertson Group are one of a cluster that will be discussed in the context of off-site manufacturing later. That's an example of a group of businesses that are typically competitors who saw the benefit in coming together because the sum of the whole was better than the parts, in some respects, and from an innovation centre point of view, the opportunity for us to support those businesses collectively was much more valuable than the opportunity to support them individually. I think that they've got a lot out of that process. It's an ongoing journey, but they've successfully embraced collaboration because, perhaps, individually, their profit margins wouldn't allow them to do as much as they have done together. What are the other significant barriers to innovation? In many respects, what's being said also in terms of that low-cost procurement strategy, low-profit margin is difficult to invest in research and innovation. Often, research and innovation pieces are about how you can add value to the value proposition of what you're doing on the wider scale, so that social, economic and environmental benefits correspond to how product and process innovation can resolve to that larger value proposition piece. If that's more apparent and transparent to the client, sector or end-user, that can help to pull research and innovation through the system. If you have a more integrated supply chain and there's an enhanced level of digitisation, that can help to pull innovation and research through the process. From our standpoint, engaging with academia and encouraging the new skills that are necessary to drive that innovation is fundamentally important. To what extent is innovation reserved to the bigger construction companies? In other words, can the small construction companies innovate in their own way or do they have to plug into what the big boys are doing? You could talk to that as well, Stephen. A lot of our engagement is indeed with SMEs because they're often those who come into us with research and innovation ideas. That's not to say that the larger groups I'm doing it, but they tend to keep that more in-house, I would suspect, if they are doing it. Whereas the SMEs often don't have the internal resource, so they may or may not have the ideas, but they're certainly the earth client-based, so to speak, that's historically been largely SMEs. The majority of the industry in Scotland is SME-based. The majority of the projects that the innovation center has supported have been led by or in collaboration partnerships with SMEs. That is often where the innovation comes from, particularly as you go down the supply chain. I'll be touched on that from a main contracting point of view, but often the tier one main contractors are assemblers of specialist teams that deliver solutions for clients, and those specialist teams have to innovate to develop their competitive edge. That's not to say that the tier ones don't have a hugely important role in bringing together those teams to drive innovation, particularly when they start to collaborate across different groups. That's where, in some respects, the really exciting innovation potentially comes, and the transformational innovation comes. SMEs, albeit that the perception is often that they are busy trying to figure out how to get paid tomorrow, are a really rich base for innovation within the industry, because, in some respects, they have to look at a whole bunch of different ways of doing things. One last quick question. The new construction of Scotland's strategy includes productivity and innovation as a priority. Is that proposed vision and the actions related to that likely to achieve change? When looking at the strategy, there's an emphasis on digitisation, off-site construction, and the farmer regards that as pre-manufacturing, because it's essentially about ways of not generating waste on-site, whether that's a full volumetric, fully enhanced unit, or whether it's a sub-assembly that is pre-manufacturing to eradicate waste on-site. Digitisation is here, and it's the fourth industrial revolution, and there's an emphasis to embrace it. There's an opportunity to create digital twins of what's been constructed to interrogate it and do scenario planning, etc. In that sense, digitisation should facilitate improvements. If you can create a feedback look from what's happened through the manufacturer construction phase, the in-situ erection, the life-cycle analysis, the consumer engagement with it, etc, and feed that back into the digital model, then you can start to enrich it and understand fully what's actually taking place relative to what was predicted and, correspondingly, identify product and process innovation. Productivity, as part of that process, can identify areas for productivity and improvement. Ideally, I would advocate a more industrialised approach to that, a more manufactured-based approach. That doesn't necessarily mean full volumetric module or units produced off-site—there's definitely a place for that—but it can be sub-assemblies that are pre-manufactured such that those component parts can be bought together on-site as efficiently and effectively as possible. It's the management and the logistical arrangements to do that and, correspondingly, the new skill sets that are required for that type of delivery model. It has to be a holistic answer and a holistic decision-making process, and those two components are important to it. A little bit there. It goes right back, as you said, to designing it in the first place. Not all projects and sites are suitable for off-site manufacture. We've used quite a variety of projects from bathroom pods through to a whole corridor that comes completely constructed and just gets plonked to one of a technical term. They've all got their place, but they're not observable for all solutions. It breaks down even to mechanical and electrical service runs and corridors that we pre-manufacture off-site so that it's not just waste, it's quality, it's health and safety. There's a whole raft of very good reasons why you'd want to construct as much off-site as possible. We actually do that, but unfortunately the last final challenge is still cost, and it's not yet clear that doing that is cheaper. A lot of the clients will say, well, I'll wait another couple of months, or if you can do it 5 per cent cheaper, traditionally, that's fine. At the end of the day, we still have to win the project, so while we can offer innovation and offer those solutions, the procurement route sometimes will dictate that they're not adopted. John Mason. Thanks very much, convener. If we can focus on the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre for a bit. First of all, can you just explain to us, because I think there has been some confusion between what is the relationship between Construction Scotland and the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre? Sure. I appreciate that that is often cited. Not to give everybody too long a history lesson, but Construction Scotland Industry Leadership Group formed in 2011-12, as the follow-on from previous industry-wide leadership groups, as opposed to perhaps specific interest groups. It had a series of working groups. One of those was the Innovation Working Group, of which I was asked to chair at the time, was asked to explore whether a call at the time that came out from the Scottish Funding Council for Innovation Centres, the Innovation Centre programme, was worthy of a response from the Construction Industry. After a few iterations, a bid was pulled together, a submission was made, and it made sense at the time for the Construction Scotland Industry Leadership Group to put forward a proposition for the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre. The smart thing in the vision at that point was that you would have an industry leadership group, which, despite having an incredibly tough job to do to unite a pretty disparate industry, would be able to do the communicating with industry as an industry leadership group, although, if funded, it would have an innovation centre that could act in partnership working collaboration under a united brand, with a united web platform, portal and activity that was interlinked to allow the two to work hand-in-glove effectively around the complementary issues of leadership and culture change within industry, driven by the industry leadership group, and the innovation work plug-in in the academic base to drive that. It came out, or was it an idea, from Construction Scotland? It was developed from a working group within Construction Scotland. Right, but legally in our two separate organisations? Yes, they were always intended. There was a separate governance structure, a separate funding structure for the innovation centre programme, so all eight innovation centres have guidance on the work around, and the industry leadership group endorsed that approach at the beginning. The challenge moving forward is how do we ensure that there is as close alignment as is necessary for two organisations that have got very well-aligned objectives around driving change and growth within the industry, but have different governance, different finance, different legal structures? Relationship now as it should be? I think that the relationship has the potential to grow into something really powerful. I think that there is a real opportunity for, I mean, we have responded to the strategy and offered support across all the working group areas, so all the six priority areas within the strategy align very well with the areas that we, in response to our industry-led boards, industry demand that we see. There is huge alignment there, so there is no reason why it should not. Focusing the work potential, that is always a good word. Looking at phases and targets and things like that, as I understand it, phase one has completed, that was 2013 to 2018, and we are heading towards phase two. You gave us a report or the organisation gave us a report as to some of the achievements between 2013 and 2018, for example supporting over 230 innovation projects, engaging over 1,350 businesses. I am not sure if we have seen targets, you know, like was the 230 better than you were hoping or not as good, or were the targets not as specific as that? No, the targets were very specific, so the industry steering group at the time, when the bid was put together, identified targets in partnership, I suppose, with the other key stakeholders. I am happy to share it, I do not know if you want me to go through it. Well, maybe not just now, but maybe you could list it, because we have got a list, I think, of about eight things that you have achieved in these five years. Yeah, there are nine key objectives, innovation centre, just to get the dates. The innovation centre was launched October 2014 for a five-year period, so October 2014 to… Right, so if you could maybe send us afterwards how the actual compares with the targets, and then I suppose following on from that, in phase 2, so that is 2019 to 23? That will officially start first of June 2019, yeah. Okay, and again, there are some figures mentioned there. Can you tell us how these targets were set or who set them? Was that yourselves or did wider industry get involved? Yes, so two or three key parts to that. Those figures are driven by feedback that came back from an open consultation with industry. They are shaped by our industry-led board, and they reflect the wider publications and documents that have come out from a number of different parts of industry in terms of priority areas, focus areas, opportunities for growth and change, including construction Scotland strategy, but also things like the farmer review construction 2025, the industrial strategy, the transform and construction programme has very clear specific areas that it sees as opportunities, so the phase 2 programme around driving digital transformation, culture change, building sustainably, and adopting greater industrialisation are all driven from those wide industry markers and drivers, I guess, that sit in that broader context. Right, so do you think then there's broad agreement that these are, you know, the correct targets? For example, 100 academic to business collaborations, is that a reasonable target? Yes, I think so. Given that we have 14 university partners, the figures on the engagement historically have been of that kind of nature, so we're keen to grow it, but we're conscious that the model has to evolve and develop, so we are looking at phase 2 that will not be entirely focused on universities, which has been the case with phase 1. We'll have greater engagement with colleges, which has not been something we've ever been funded to support directly, albeit that we have done quite a lot around colleges because industry has demanded it. I think that that's only natural with the evolution of a programme into a second phase as it looks at those areas of success, looks at those areas where industry is keen to take forward greater opportunity and respond positively to that. The set of those targets has been done with, you know, as I mentioned, the consultation with industry gave us good feedback on phase 1. The industry-led board gives us good direction around where it sees the opportunities and our stakeholder partners are supportive, and in the mix of, suppose, in terms of how we set targets that will allow us to stretch what we're doing but also meet the wider objectives of... When we launched the inquiry, we always take evidence and I think it would be fair to say that we got a mixture. Some of it was very positive, said that the CSIC has been a source of extremely positive support, helped us in projects, encouraged engagement with CSIC, has transformed our approach, so that's very positive. We also did have some negative stuff. There was little usable input, somebody said. The wider industry has no insight as to what it has actually achieved. Is there an issue that what's going on inside the innovation centre, the wider industry maybe doesn't get or understand? I think in some respects it's inevitable in an industry of 45,000 businesses with over 230,000 employees that an organisation with 11 outward facing staff is going to have a challenge engaging with all of it. If that's an unreasonable assumption then I would welcome ideas as to how we do that using all the digital channels that we use, social media platforms, engagement events, activity across Scotland. The reality is that we're a programme that has to fund projects and to run the centre that has £1.5 million a year as a budget, so within that we have to identify the areas where we can make greatest impact. We have over 6,500 individuals that we contact with, that we engage with regularly on our database, so that they get kept up to date and that is growing at a significant rate month on month, so I think that the future looks positive, but yes, there's always areas where we can engage more broadly, but that's where part of, if you don't mind me, using the opportunity, put the call out to the trade professional federation bodies within Scotland who, if they don't know about us, should know about us and we would welcome the opportunity to engage with them, because by going to them we can reach their members much more easily. I think some of my colleagues will explore some of this further, but I've just been interested in a comment from Mr Caldwell, Professor Hairstons, about how does the wider sector see the innovation centre? Do you think that there's a lack of knowledge about it? I can only speak for ourselves, but we've engaged quite heavily with it. I think that we have a timber engineering part to our business, which has been looking at both the members here today and working with them collaboratively. Claire could probably answer that in more detail, unfortunately, but I'm well aware of the centre and do receive communication from them, even through the normal industry media newsletters and so on that you get. There's always a little article on it and what they're doing and that kind of thing, so from our perspective there's certainly an awareness of what's been going on. The organisations that we are working with are quite innovative organisations, so they have a knowledge of the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, perhaps a scope for a wider reach into the professions, construction engineers, et cetera, but certainly the organisations that we work with that are looking to drive innovation have a good knowledge of the innovation centre and what it's doing and, indeed, to my knowledge, at least engaging with it on research projects. I think that Robert's point is that it's no surprise that we engage with businesses that are looking to innovate and it's probably no surprise, albeit that it's a much tougher task, it's what we are keen to do, is not have as much awareness across businesses that perhaps don't, so that has to be borne in mind in some respects. I think that we absolutely get that point, but some of the criticism hasn't come from the admittedly 45,000 businesses that are out there, it's come from Construction Scotland, which you helpfully established as the separate industry leadership group, and it's beyond awareness. I wonder whether I could just test some of their criticisms with the panel and see if you consider them valid. Construction Scotland has told us that, due to the way in which the Construction Innovation Centre has been funded and governed, it hasn't been able to support the more strategic policy and transformational research needs of overall industry. Is that a fair assessment? I might as well start with Stephen Good. On the issue of governance, as I touched on earlier, the governance model was endorsed by Construction Scotland when the bid was put in. The governance model hasn't changed over the piece, albeit members of the governance board have changed. The question is that you can put something in at the beginning, but if it's not working, has that been highlighted and is it going to change? I think that it's important to understand whether it's not working from one other organisation's perspective, or perhaps whether it's not working from the industry perspective. The evidence that we can turn to is that the governance model is consistent with the Innovation Centre programme. It is industry leaders that lead our industry-led governance board. From that point of view, it's clear. In particular, given that we have quite a wide range of industry leaders, including the calibre of Mark Farmer, for example, who has been involved in UK-wide and international leadership around industry, that's important. The question is, for me, one of the organisation's ability to collaborate, as opposed to necessarily changing governance models. The ambition from the Innovation Centre governance board and the executive team has always been to collaborate with every organisation. That's how this industry will change, ultimately, by doing things constructively together, not by perhaps feeling the need to control things differently. On the issue of finance and funding of projects, the innovation centre programme model was around using the academic expertise that exists in Scotland, which is world-class, to drive change within whichever industry the innovation centre is focused on. That model requires industry to have skin in the game. It requires industry to lead those projects. We don't support projects that don't have industry leadership. The projects could be criticised for being too business-focused, as opposed to broader sector leadership-focused, but I would refer back to the point about SMEs made earlier. If we are engaging with the SMEs who, broadly, you could argue, are perhaps not recognised as the industry leaders in the larger leadership sense, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't support SME businesses that are trying to innovate. The model is, I think, successful. The issue is perhaps more around willingness to engage and collaborate. Since publication of the Construction Scotland strategy, Construction Scotland is aware of our offer to engage directly with each of the working group chairs to take forward what we have within our gift. I appreciate that the model is not perfect in so much that the tool that we have in our toolbox is funding to support industry to draw on academic expertise. We recognise in Construction Scotland that that is not the only support that industry needs, but industry has to take responsibility, I suppose, for accessing the other support that is already there. Scotland is blessed with a hugely deep innovation support landscape. It is often not easy to navigate, and that is one of our jobs for the Construction industry is to try and declutter the support that is available from others, such as interface and Squatch Enterprise, Helens Islands Enterprise and other organisations for this sector, this industry. The support to deliver some of the strategic stuff is there. We can coordinate or facilitate some of that for Construction Scotland, but if the criticism is that we can't fund all the things that we want to do on our own, that is partly because the model isn't there to do it and, in some respects, shouldn't be if these other things exist. We don't have any ambition to duplicate other things that are already there. Professor? In terms of the projects that we have engaged with the innovation centre and we have engaged with projects of values of about £300,000 over the first five years, they have largely been related to a lead industry partner. Correspondingly, the results and the findings of that are fed to that industry partner. If there are any commercial sensitivities around the work, it can often be difficult for us to publish that work, especially in a gold standard peer review publication, which is the academic endeavour to get our work out there. That is often not necessarily viewed by industry as being critical to what they want. Ultimately, they want their problems solved, not necessarily for the work to be published. From an academic standpoint, that is how we want to internationalise our findings and get outreach. I would say that there is certainly scope to try to improve on that and hopefully for industry to understand the value in doing so, because it raises the bar in terms of what we are doing and achieving here on that international platform. I would say that one of the projects that has been very successful, which Robertson is a part of as well, is the off-site solution Scotland, which is a collaborative framework of lead off-site providers in Scotland. That was originally brought together at the very inception of the innovation centre. Indeed, it was originally UK Commission for Employment and Skills funding, which is now part of business, I understand. However, that project moved forward further under the innovation centre with dedicated research assistance support. Off-site solution Scotland is now well-formed as a co-operative with its own legal and financial entity, with a view to scaling off-site construction in Scotland with innovation centre, Scottish Enterprise and academic support, primarily coming from Edinburgh and Napier as a lead academic institution on that basis. More of those types of frameworks and collaborations would be absolutely key through either well-connected industries who could be, in a sense, viewed as competitors, but actually coming together as a collaboration makes a lot of sense and also how that can permeate further through the supply chain, both up and down. I think that some of my colleagues will explore that further with you, but can I come back to your original point? That was another criticism made by Construction Scotland in that they highlight a problem being the very commercial nature of some of the projects, which means that the learning from them cannot initially, at least be shared amongst others yet the innovation centre tells us that the majority of learning is shared and there is a culture of open IP. The two do not really sit entirely comfortably with each other, would that be fair? There is always a sense of that because it is not just for the innovation centre but we do things like knowledge transfer partnerships through the innovate UK, there are other funding mechanisms, either through Scottish Enterprise etc. If we are doing research and innovation work for an industry partner, there is inevitably going to be commercial sensitivities and an necessity for them to trust what we are doing. I think that we are well skilled indeed to publish that work without ervoding the commercial sensitivities around it. Certainly, we have a track record of doing so, so I think that there is a necessity for an industry almost to see the value in publishing and journal publishing and creating academic outputs from work because it is not always fully apparent to them, but it means that it is peer reviewed, the methodology is demonstrated to be robust and correspondingly the findings have resonance and impact. That is what is absolutely key for us as an academic institution is creating impact and legacy from our research and building a body of work that can inform future innovation as well. Are the Robertson group a member of Construction Scotland? I believe that we are. I am not sure, sorry, it is not my idea. I do not know whether you could shed any light on what appears to be going on because there is a dissonance between what the construction industry group tells us in Construction Scotland and what we are being told by the innovation centre. I absolutely get the potential of the collaboration is one that would be excellent but it is not happening and I am just wondering why. Do you shed any light on that? Probably not, I am sorry, but a couple of observations perhaps is that I believe that Construction Scotland is quite a wide-ranging membership from companies like ourselves down to small contractors and covers most, and that is the intention of it. So it is quite difficult for them to represent everyone in the same way to the same extent, I suspect, so I am not sure where the author of that response is. They had the foresight to actually want the development of the innovation centre and agreed governance models at the beginning, so something has happened along the way and I am just trying to understand what that is. I could certainly take that back and look into that. Stephen probably has a view. There is different leadership in the initial leadership group now who may have different views on what they see as the priorities from when the innovation centre was conceived back in 2014. I think on the sense in creating a united website, I appreciate that it is just one dimension of how we engage with the industry, but the sense in creating a united website with common branding and common approach to messaging I think remains sound for the industry leadership group and the innovation centre for that industry to work hand and glove. There is no bad vision behind that. Operationally, some may feel that that is less of a priority, but I will go back to the fact that we have a common website with Constructions Scotland. If Members here or Members of Constructions Scotland want to revisit that website in the future and explore the case studies that exist there for the completed projects that have been undertaken, the dissemination events that we hold as recently as two weeks ago, the building better homes event, was attended by six-day industry members to hear about four projects that have completed the dissemination from academic and industry partners. Answers that question, we do not need to take my word for it, they were all there and I am happy to provide you. GDPR allows me with the names of who attended. In a wider sense, our web portal directly allows anybody who accesses it, Constructions Scotland members or others, to connect into all the other national funding programmes in Scotland and across the UK that are supporting innovation in the construction industry, tying into the catapult centres across the UK, tying into Confer, which is a web portal that uses AI to scan academic research papers on everything to be fair. It is not the richest database for construction-related research, but that perhaps points to whether there is the breadth of rich research into construction that the industry perhaps could commission if it wanted to do that. There are plenty of vehicles and mechanisms accessible through a website that is currently shared between Constructions Scotland and the Innovation Centre that provides answers to all those things that perhaps the writers of the comments might want to refresh their memory around them. I am sure that they are listening with rapt attention. If I could briefly take you back to the digital agenda, please, there are two lovely comments in the papers that we have in front of us. One is from yourself, Stephen, that says that the construction industry is in the verge of a digital and manufacturing revolution. There is another comment here that says that the construction industry has remained in the stone age. I suspect that the truth is somewhere in between, but I would like to explore with you which side of that line you think we are actually on and where we might be going in terms of digital skills within the industry. I appreciate that I have been hogging the mic, perhaps. I don't think that the two are incompatible. I think that the industry is on the verge of a digital and manufacturing revolution, and I think that the industry is in a place where it has got a lot to do to catch up. The statistics that sit behind that are McKinsey global, which provides a lot of statistics on a lot of industries. Most recent evidence for all industries or 20 odd industries across the world in terms of their level of digitalisation placed construction second from bottom, just above hunting and fishing. I think that that probably identifies where we are currently, but in some respects, certainly from our point of view, that creates a huge opportunity, because the 19 or 20 odd industries that sit above us, who have embraced digital transformation that Robert touched on industry 4.0 earlier, perhaps presents an opportunity for industry not to have to reinvent the wheel. It comes back to that point of collaboration. It is not just about industry talking to more construction industry folk about how to drive change. It is actually about reaching out into other industries, how have they embraced change, how have they adopted digital technologies, and are all huge opportunities for the construction industry. I think that it is important to note that this construction sector industry in the UK and globally is already adopting a huge amount of digital technologies, whether that is moving from paper-based drawings on-site to iPads to level 2 BIM and building information models, and beyond or advanced off-site semi-automated solutions. Augmented virtual reality offers huge potential. I think that the future looks incredibly positive for those businesses that want to embrace that change. For those that do not, the harsh reality is that organisations such as Facebook and Amazon and Google and Airbnb are investing in prefabricated manufacturing companies because they see opportunities in the industry. Our job, in some respects, is to sound like a daft expression, but to try and help this industry to disrupt itself before it gets disrupted by others. We are hugely positive about the opportunities that technology presents for this industry. Industry has to embrace those opportunities. The other comment suggests that that observation of some of the parts might not. Do you think that digital skills are coming in at the right level at the graduate entry level? Is industry aware of its growing reliance on the digital transformation agenda? Does more work need to be done at the graduate entry level from the bottom up to get the software development and software awareness skills in the industry? A lot of what we have spoken about today and will continue to talk about comes back to me to culture and leadership. If industry develops the right leadership skills and embraces the right culture, it can co-ordinate the activity that it wants to see happen, and, by its nature, I suspect, because it has impacted all of us, it will embrace digital technologies as and when those enabling technologies offer benefits for those businesses. Business is not just going to adopt ARVR technology because an innovation centre told them that it should. It will do it if it can recognise some benefit, ultimately. Innovation for us is about change that delivers some degree of value, and it is about capturing that value. It is absolutely key. Where the skills and training sits around that will be quite broad. It will be at all different levels. It will be at leadership levels. It will be at apprenticeship levels. It will be this industry engaging at primary school level, in some respects, to make it an industry of choice, as opposed to perhaps perceived as an industry of last resort. The change is coming. It is how industry organises itself culturally and in a leadership sense to take full advantage of that. I will touch on what some individual businesses are doing around that, but the change is coming. There is always a challenge that some businesses will lead that charge. The obvious observation is that, as an innovation centre, we will work with innovative businesses. Those changes will embrace the new technologies, but at a wider mainstream level, the industry, given that it is so big, wide and fragmented, will have some catching up to do, as will the deliverers of the skills support around that. It is not a linear process, but there is a lot of moving parts. You were saying that it is mostly SMEs. Is it the case that a lot of SMEs do not understand the technology and they cannot afford it anyway, so they are just not going to make that step change or enable them to make the step change? Is it organisations like yourself, or how do they enable them to make the step change? I will touch on that. There is always a risk in doing something different. There is a nervousness absolutely around technology, but probably all experienced it when we started using smartphones in different ways. There is always a human nature that is, I suppose, broadly risk averse. When change comes, there will be those that adopt early, because they see the opportunity and think that they have the skills to take that opportunity forward and there will be those that would prefer late and be second, third, fourth and ninth. From an SME point of view, we have worked with some micro SME businesses who are right in the middle of the technology space, so they do not see themselves as a construction business. They see themselves as a technology business working in the construction industry. That is an interesting twist to put on where some of the SMEs perhaps see their model in the future, because they wake up a bit more global, perhaps. Often construction can be criticised for being a bit parochial, whereas some of the businesses that embrace technology and innovation and change do not see Scotland as their only market. That is hugely interesting for an industry that does not export an awful lot. Professor Hirstons, have we got the right digital skills in the industry, or are we doing it correctly, or do we need to do more to get that in there? That is a good question, isn't it? One of the things that we have touched on here is that, as we move forward and we are into disciplinary or multidisciplinary nature of it, because, obviously, if we think historically about construction and the professions, they are quite siloed. Moving forward into things such as building an information model and the whole purpose of that is to create a more collaborative approach, a more collaborative workflow and create transparency around the products and the systems. The sector is fragmented. The supply chain can be difficult to synthesise and, correspondingly, trying to build that into digital models can be difficult. However, as we move to a more industrialised, factory-based approach, fundamentally, that should become easier. Manufacturing organisations have enterprise resource planning systems. They have ideally internal digital frameworks that cut across the relevant departments. Fundamentally, it should lend itself to a more digitised approach as we move forward and move forward to a more manufacturing way of creating the built environment. In terms of the SMEs, a lot of the companies that we have worked with, the SME organisations, come back to Stephen Point about that. Those organisations have quite strong leadership and have a particular culture to them—an innovative culture. Often, they are at the forefront for a particular reason, whether it is digitisation or a capture of information to demonstrate the environmental credentials of their product or whether that is to create virtual reality, augmented reality for the augmented worker or to demonstrate from a marketing perspective the value of the product or the consumer's understanding of the product, so that they can get an early design freeze, which is key for a manufactured approach. Some of those organisations have been at the forefront of trying to drive that digital agenda, but we have seen more of it in the sector. A large part of productivity is key to that. I would say that what was being asked earlier on is that Scotland is not alone in many of those challenges. Productivity, international and construction are poor and stagnating at best, but those organisations, if you look at the US, Qatar, as the CEO of that organisation, are from a tech background. The aspiration for it was to defragment the construction sector to create a more environmentally better-performing product with a productivity-driven agenda. That tech start-up has a £3 billion valuation after four years. Organisations are looking at it from a different perspective. Those that aren't will get left behind fundamentally, and there will be things that will disrupt the sector. Thinking about the product both as a physical and digital asset and the information that can be collated from that digital asset through the user's engagement with it, that becomes a data management and how you capture that data and how you utilise it and how you monetise it effectively. There are absolutely changes afoot, so the organisations that aren't looking at it will get left behind. We have to think laterally about the skills, knowledge and individuals that have to move into that sector and how we will deliver that future workforce, because it will be different. To move on to Dean Lockhart, but just before that, Jamie Halcro Johnston has a supplementary. One of the things that we've been talking about here is the role of universities and colleges. Before that, schools could play a greater role within that. Last week was Apprenticeship's week, and colleagues visited apprentices across the country. One of the groups that I met talked about the potential for a dedicated construction foundation apprenticeship, and I was wondering whether getting that involvement earlier into schools could be something that would be of interest and might be an opportunity to integrate some of the digital skills that you've been talking about. We all want to encourage STEM and, for me, the built environment and having school kids involved. There's a great product which I'm sure individuals here are aware of, design engine, construct, class of your own. The model that they've created and gone into schools using the digital environment and encouraging school kids to design class of your own by its very name, but that doesn't have to be restricted even to their school. It could literally be on local sites, vacant and derelict land sites, which we have a challenge with in Scotland. We can be encouraging kids to think of what can be done to deliver the future built environment and have them actively engage. What's really neat about it is the STEM-oriented skills that they would pick up through that process. As we know, the younger generation are very digitally aware, so their engagement with that type of process can be a lot easier for them. The tools and technology that are available to facilitate that is particularly if we can have industry engagement or what we've tried to encourage even student mentorship, so having students from the university go in and facilitate that learning, because often the school teachers don't necessarily have the knowledge and the background to deliver it, but we can create a sort of mentorship model to encourage it, but I think absolutely it's fundamental and it can be a tool for further learning. Whether that individual goes into a career in construction or delivers the built environment or not, the education that it can provide, understanding the problem-solving, etc, can provide a much wider educational basis. Albeit it hasn't been an area where we have had capacity within our existing model to reach an awful lot in our schools. We have hosted probably now several thousand schoolchildren to the innovation centre to expose them, I suppose, to the art of the possible. What could this industry look like? What sort of technologies could this industry use? How do they relate to your—my kids are 10 and 12—and are significantly more digitally savvy than I am? In some respects, they are the future of this industry, so this industry has to be appealing to them, so this industry has a responsibility to engage with schoolchildren and young people at all ages to paint an appropriate picture of what this industry is. If the perception is that this industry is pushing a wheelbarrow around a muddy building site, that will disengage a lot of children who see their future being in digital, potentially, data lab or any other innovation centres. I often have an on-going conversation around the talent war. How do we make sure that children who want to be data scientists recognise that the construction industry in the future is going to be an area where that is a really valuable role? As robot operators or people who co-ordinate BIM models and its kind of minecraft for grown-ups in some respects, there are huge opportunities. The industry is going back to Mark Farmer's review of the labour model. That was one of his key observations. If you want to engage the future talent of this industry to create the skills that we need in the future, you have to engage with children that are at primary school just now, whose parents, teachers and guidance teachers do not know what this industry is going to be. We will do what we can around that, but we have to be mindful that for every bus of school kids that comes to the factory, that may slow down project activity that we are doing with businesses, so there is an opportunity to widen that remit potentially. It is incumbent on us to make sure that that pipeline of talent for the future is engaged wants to work in this amazing industry, which has so many different diverse opportunities and it does not just attract talent on the basis of whether you are a joiner. Do you think that that perception could improve the number of women taking on apprenticeships? Absolutely. Which is obviously very loud. I think that it is 11 per cent of the industry's female. The industry has work to do to get evidence coming out of all areas telling you that better balance delivers better businesses, better educational institutes. We have to, as an industry, make sure that we are not disengaging 50 per cent of the population because that talent needs to work in this industry. Robert touched on the class of your own initiative in the DEC programme, and Alison Watson, who runs that, again joined our board because she saw huge value in engaging around the opportunities that businesses of the Robertson Group who engage with that programme, see in terms of developing that pipeline, developing that talent by using the digital skills that industry is using today. We were involved with the colleges around this future-equipped pilot project fairly recently, and a big part of that was about training the trainers, because if those that are teaching schoolchildren or college lecturers don't know about what the industry is going to look like in the future, it's very difficult to inspire children about what it's going to look like. Part of our role is to do that, educate the educators piece, and the education part that we do is to bring in the expertise from universities, engage them in the technologies that businesses are already using and say, this is what the future looks like. There's a lot to do around that. I think that the outreach using things like CITBs go construct a model as a hub, as a lunchpin for it, as opposed to what often happens. Again, it's understandable in an industry that's so broad and fragmented, but if construction Scotland, for example, if it's key role is to unite the industry, one of the greatest opportunities would be for it to be able to have programmes that are co-ordinated and all sing from a common place around where the industry is going, what the opportunities are and how you see routes into that. Thank you. We'll move on to Dean Lockhart, who may take up that scene. Thank you, convener. To continue to explore the future of the sector, I'd like to hear from the panel about your views about future growth, where the future growth of the sector might come from, and where the key areas of opportunity lie ahead. Perhaps looking at the next five to ten years, where would you see the key areas of growth in the sector coming from? My particular area of focus is around off-site industrialised construction, as you can probably tell, which embraces digitisation. Scotland is exceptionally well positioned to be capitalising on that and thinking of it right the way through the supply chain to the forest floor. We have worked extensively with the organisations in off-site solutions Scotland, which are largely timber-based off-site manufacturers. We also work closely with the Forestry Commission and the industry leadership group there, and they correspond to the supply chain from forest floor all the way through to end product. There are real opportunities in there to create, because timber is essentially a clean-tech solution for the built environment, and there's an opportunity to evolve products, processes, engineered timber products and systems, enhanced panelised systems, what can be manufactured in timber off-site facilities such as those at Robertsons, CCG and Glasgow, MAC, our construction calendar, I make all the way up to North Scotland and Cathness. Taking a fabric first approach, delivering affordable housing, which is sustainable and sequestrate carbon, which therefore helps us in terms of the climate agenda. It also helps the social and economic impact from a start-up position and the creation of new products and systems and the new skills for the delivery of that built environment. Ultimately, if it's renewable energy sources that are then powering those houses, it's a win-win scenario, because we're conserving energy through the fabric performance, sequestrating carbon within it and the utilisation of renewable energy to ultimately power that infrastructure. I think that we can be a trailblazer on that front if the correct levers are pulled and we look to synthesise that supply chain as much as possible and create a digital thread throughout it, which takes you right back to the forest floor. I wish I had that crystal ball and we'd be in a great place to look ahead. The digital side of things is going to be huge. We embraced it properly probably about five years ago and set up a team and roll out training across our business. I think that the idea, the previous question about going into schools, is a great one. We engage with thousands and thousands of school children every year on not just schools projects but any other projects to try and promote the industry and so on and to add that digital side of things would be great from the future coming through. The benefits to really getting involved with building information modelling is obvious to us now and we're already realising some of those benefits in terms of building the building twice you build it once in the computer. You sort out as many problems as you can, you won't ever sort out all of them and it makes your job once you're on site so your deliverability is more credible, it's more consistent in your meeting budgets and timescales consistently on all jobs. We've seen the benefits from that side, we've seen the benefits from client engagement side to the augmented reality to let them walk through their building whilst the previous building is still on the site, they can see what the new building is going to look like and actually the more you can develop that and get a design locked in earlier it allows you to build it better and be more consistent. I don't see different sectors developing particularly, it's just a personal opinion, I think it's improving what we do in the sectors that are there. Renewables certainly need to become more of, well that's just what we do, rather than, well let's see if we can't fit some renewables into this building, it should be there already and we should be doing that as an industry, it just makes sense all round, the cost of energy now is such and we want it to be reliable sources as well. I think in terms of sustainable delivery, it's got to continue to be emphasised that it has been over the years, each year more so but we've got to be aware of that and look at that and try and find new or better ways to make sure that we are developing a sustainable industry not just from a green perspective but that's really important but from a sustainable business perspective we need to be here in 10 years to make sure that we can deliver on those things and from the FM side if we develop the digital side of things properly, running buildings become so much easier, everything's there, you mentioned already, we already use iPads on-site, it's perhaps not the normal image that you see but our project managers all have iPads all go around looking at drawings, checking what's being built is what's done and anything that's not gets recorded in touch with a button that's back and so you're looking at that continuous improvement thing all the time and the digitisation of the industry is helping that significantly. To one of the previous questions around why are our phase 2 priorities in certain spaces, they sit around culture change and that's wide and broad so perhaps not a direct answer but the other three areas around digital transformation accelerate and industrialisation so the manufacturing side of things that Robert touched on and building sustainably particularly with the backdrop of the awareness that I touched on earlier, young people's awareness of digital but equally in the last couple of months, young people's awareness of the environment and the potential challenges that we face in the construction industry is a huge contributor to some of the problems, in terms of waste, in terms of CO2 production so I think big opportunities for industry in Scotland, Scotland as a nation is, as Robert used the term trailblazing solutions that pull together a lot of these things into a holistic kind of offering so using the best digital enabling technologies to deliver the best most efficiently manufactured products wherever they may be whether it is on site or in a factory environment somewhere else and to very demanding energy targets because that in some respects is our responsibility as an industry to make sure that we are not contributing to the problem so those areas align as it happens particularly well with the transform and construction programme industrial strategy approach around digital manufacturing and energy and that's about how we design buildings better, how we manufacture buildings better and how we then operate and run buildings better so those areas I think where again as Robert touched on Scotland has already got some world class leading expertise around the manufacturing and digital side of things the market opportunity into the rest of the UK alone is huge as everybody else is looking for smarter you know better faster cheaper solutions I think Scotland has huge opportunity around that I would agree well and I don't think it's in any one particular sector although I do think there is a huge opportunity in the kind of retrofit market a lot of what we talk about tends to be how do we build new things better but actually how do we tackle the elephant in the room which is the existing stock of which there's a lot and the technical challenges are often a little tougher how do you take you know existing buildings on that same sort of journey to make sure that contribution is as well made as well I think there's big major opportunities for the industry now to Angela Constance as we're running out of time so Angela Constance thank you convener and good morning to the panel looking to the future I wonder if people are concerned about brexit and whether just for the record you could summarise what you see as the main challenges for the sector maybe your top two or three and that can obviously beyond innovation in matters we've discussed thus far and also given that the Scottish Government economic strategy one of its four priorities is innovation along with investment inclusive growth internationalisation what more could government at all levels and across the public sector do to support the construction sector better and I'll start with mr good if that's okay brexit I suppose in some respects I would view brexit as being an additional spark for this industry to reform you know before brexit kind of came along as a potential scenario the industry you know farmer review and others have cited that industry needs to change the challenges that brexit will bring whether it's about confidence in terms of investment whether it's about supply of materials and goods and services whether it's about people and the availability of skilled labour are all challenges that not just this industry is going to face but I don't think I don't think you know I think this industry has got a reform you know agenda in front of it despite brexit in some respects um the wider question around um the wider question around sorry that's my train of thought the way to the sector um and the leverage the lever is supposed for government I think you coming back to points in our our feedback in terms of the written evidence earlier discussions today government and its agencies that buy from the construction industry have huge levers I appreciate that there are procurement challenges sometimes around how to do that effectively but in some respects the the policy is already there for public sector clients and others to buy things from this industry in such a way that it drives investment in skills and innovation and technology but sometimes it chooses not to do it would be my kind of observation so if government can do anything it would be to encourage those agencies and organisations that already have the potential levers within their control in terms of policy to use them as effectively as they can to help the industry that is willing as you've heard today to invest in technology and skills and change but as you know has a degree of risk to that so you know the infrastructure commission for example setting you know visionary long term kind of objectives and investment plans you know one very quick kind of example of what sums up for me is engaging with um a particular business who is hugely engaged in the innovation journey it always makes three observations to us as an industry we don't really want grants we don't really want loans what we want is contracts and those contracts to be you know long enough and certain enough into the future that we can make our own investment decisions around what's best for our business around skills and technology and innovation and that is where I think those levers that government can pull can help create that longer term whether it's around you know 50,000 homes or whether it's around infrastructure in a wider kind of non-domestic sense there are huge opportunities that are already there within some of the levers they just need pulled probably in the right way and that would be I suppose my ask I suppose as if those agencies that have those opportunities at their disposal could use them as effectively as they see fit to help this industry move to the footing that we all kind of want to see it move to none of it should be hugely impossible okay thank you professor yeah starting off with brexit but obviously in terms of materials and supply chain certainty and cost certainty of those materials and the impact that we'll have on the sector I can obviously speak from from an educational standpoint as well in terms of you know we have a lot of students that come from from Europe and they represent a large talent pool for us both in the educational sector and then going on into industry I can speak from a personal point of view in terms of the research centre that I operate I have an Italian, a Bulgarian, a Polish as well as Scottish and that creates and 50% female diversity which is great and we actually have a really good culture within the team with different skill sets and a blend of knowledge which is you know is inspiring we just do not want to to lose that both in terms of the students that we're bringing in and what we're doing from a research perspective and then leading that talent into the sector so yeah I think there's there are some there's some challenges ahead in that respect because we don't want to lose the sort of trajectory that we have from the sector's point of view as we've sort of heard and touched upon there's I guess a lot to do there's a lot of a lot of opportunities in the mix there for us to to embrace change and look at as I spoke of earlier the different drivers within that social, economic and political context and how would they are ultimately resolving to a more industrialised approach you know and the opportunity that resides for us to to look at the synthesis of the supply chain and the opportunity for us to use our own resources to deliver on that as a blended approach because we're never going to have all the resources here we're always going to have to to import as well so I think there's a huge opportunity there what I would like to do we interface very closely with industry as it stands I think with the new skills and knowledge that are required going forward there's opportunity to do more of that and interface directly with industry on live research and industrial challenges harnessing that student talent and almost utilising them on almost live projects or at least you know a hypothesis of what is to be live and all those real learning taking place and that real learning is starting to to drive future product process innovation into the sector so I think that that interface could be could be closer you know and we've tried to to do some of that through the creation of things like the built environment exchange in the Napier where we have student talent interface directly with organisations and we provide mentorship in that respect and so I think we can start to address challenges and be more a dynamic and agile on that front and ultimately for for those challenges to be client client led and for the procurement process and business model of construction to change in order that innovation can can can take place in a quicker and more agile manner okay thank you and finally Mr Caldwell rather than repeat a lot of what's been said I'll try and pick one or two other things because I pretty much agree with everything the guys have said Brexit challenges we've done a survey of our supply chain and perhaps slightly surprisingly there was no major worries about it particular just a kind of bearing in period from a supply chain from from our perspective we would be concerned about a general industry and in fact just a economy slow down as everybody tries to take in what's happening that always has a negative effect on construction increases in costs both materials because of potentially tariffs or availability labour obviously we've talked before about people leaving the industry that applies equally to experienced construction workers from eastern bloc in the main not only and a lot of our labor in the past 10 15 years certainly has come from that source increased labour costs as a result of lower of lower numbers in it and you know just occasionally one at the moment is clients trying to transfer Brexit risk to the contractors you know whatever the outcome might be of it any additional costs should be borne by ourselves and I don't think in all cases that's fair in that you know we don't have that crystal ball the way that nobody seems to have challenges resources in the short term hopefully we can deal with it in the long term by attracting the right people and then the right numbers into the industry through a lot of the measures we've discussed today but we've certainly got to get to young people and make it make them realise that this is an exciting industry and there's a lot going on and you can be very very tech savvy and you use that in your daily life in construction now and I think we've got to learn how to maximize the benefits of digital construction whether that be in building things better or whether that be in new construction techniques and modern methods of construction I think erroneously is sometimes get always considered to be volumetric or leaning in that direction it's not always it just means we can do things better by being smarter and it might be you bring components to site and still do it there but you just do it better and smarter so it's keeping our minds open to what those new ideas could be what can the government do I think the guys have touched on continuity of workload if possible you know it's usually beneficial to us to both plan resource but also plan development and innovation and whether an investment is worthwhile making if we can see that pipeline ahead of us it allows us to make more secure investments and to de-risk it from our perspective all right thank you very much to our panel we'll conclude this session now I'll suspend the meeting we'll move into private session so thank you for coming in to all three of you thank you