Some of the UK’s largest construction companies are to take the unusual step of urging their clients to push them harder on social responsibility matters.
The companies, through the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (Ciria), have decided to offer guidance to clients on how to ‘understand, integrate and monitor social responsibility throughout the lifecycle of a project’.
Ciria’s 500 members, who include Alfred McAlpine, Carillion and Taylor Woodrow, believe that pressure from clients with a good grasp of corporate social responsibility issues is one of the best ways to improve the sector’s social and environmental performance.
Martin Hunt, manager of the ‘Social responsibility for construction clients’ project at Ciria, said the idea was to produce a practical toolkit for clients that detailed what they should be looking for, such as whether companies are talking to the local community about building work and monitoring the conduct of their suppliers.
‘We will identify the key social responsibility goals for different types of client groups and liaise with existing construction projects to identify how a more socially responsible approach can benefit clients and other stakeholders,’ he said.
Hunt added: ‘Little advice or guidance is available on how to be a socially responsible client and we hope to put that right. The idea is that clients have a significant influence on the behaviour of construction companies and that by getting them to act in a more socially responsible way we can create a cascade effect.’
Ciria says the reasons why the construction industry has become more conscious of CSR include adverse publicity over controversial dam projects and a drop in the number of graduates entering the construction business, which it says is partly due to applicants preferring what they think are more socially responsible sectors.
It concedes that the industry’s reputation on safety and the environment ‘is in need of significant improvement’ and that public perception of its performance ‘is often tainted by high profile protests and clashes with local communities and lobby groups’.
It claims that more construction companies now think demonstrating social responsibility ‘is critical to future business success, primarily because it will impact positively upon competitiveness, risk and liability management, investor confidence and staff recruitment and retention’.
The UK construction industry accounts for eight per cent of national gross domestic product and employs one and a half million people.
The idea for the £130,000 ($210,000) project surfaced at a Ciria conference last autumn on CSR in UK construction attended by CSR minister Stephen Timms, whose Department of Trade and Industry is part-funding the work. Two non-governmental organizations, Forum for the Future and the Prince’s Foundation, will help Ciria draw up the guidance.
Ciria is currently looking for more companies to pilot the guidance, which it hopes to publish in the summer of 2004.