ETHICS BEFORE GRUB

The call from Stuart Mustow, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, for an industry-wide debate on ethics is a bold and unusual inititaive that deserves the fullest support. Mustow talks of environmental considerations that require a more ethical treatment (see page seven), but there is a number of more day-to-day activities where Construction's moral compass no longer operates quite as it once did. Recession has taken a heavy toll in many areas of construction during the past few years, and professional integrity has not been immune from the corrosive effects of vicious competition. 'Grub before ethics' remarked Bertolt Brecht once. It has been the secret motto of a number of people in both contracting and consulting. The overwhelming need to keep in with clients has produced more shabby professional compromises than the normally decent and honest practitioners would care to recall. Conniving with a client in delaying contractor payments in order to preserve his cashflow is only the most obvious tip of an iceberg of iniquity. Cheating people out of rightful payment has been a recurrent theme in recent times.

Had the Declan Kelly saga at Carlton Gate been more decisively resolved, the duties professionals and contractors owe to each other as well as to their client would have been more starkly highlighted. In the way that John Smith's death has pulled politicians up short to examine their consciences, Construction has need of similar catharsis which will prompt all concerned to rediscover the meaning of integrity.

Mustow's call by itself is unlikely to be sufficient, even if the Department of the Environment institutes its own ethics working party as Tony Baldry announced it would some months ago. A cause c'lŠbre would do the job much more effectively - but where is this to come from?

In the meantime, though, while we await a brave whistle-blower, a little navel-gazing is clearly required. Report after report has issued from the great and good of Construction, but none of these ever addresses the issues at which Mustow is hinting. His call to draw back the veil from misdoing is therefore doubly welcome, all the more so as it comes from an Institution that prefers to avoid controversy. It is to be hoped other similarly brave souls will heed and amplify it.