BUILDING AN IMAGE

If you're still in the New Year's Resolution market, why not add a further resolve to the list: to speak up boldly for the construction industry at every opportunity.

Perhaps you already do. But if so, you're in a minority, and you're not being heard. An appalling industry image is the biggest albatross around construction's neck. It alienates bright new recruits, women in particular; it frightens off potential new clients; and it provokes existing clients into 'getting their intimidation in first', and imposing such onerous conditions on contractors that good relations are poisoned even before day one on site.

Construction's shoddy image may be the hoariest of cliches, but in no way does that invalidate its essential truth - nor the need to re-address it. The Sir Michael Latham image working party under Martin Laing's chairmanship, which reported just before Christmas, recognises this. Its recommendations are full of sense, and touch all the right points of sensitivity that others have also recognised as essential. Key and kernel is acknowledging that the industry's tarnished image is not due to myths, but to antediluvian working practices. 'Therefore,' it concludes, 'it is essential to any image building campaign that the recommendations of the Latham Review are implemented fully to improve the structure and operational practices of the construction industry.'

But there is more to it than this. Waiting until Latham is law, when all will be right with industry image, is unnecessarily passive. The battle to convince the world at large of construction's true worth must be waged on many fronts - and cannot wait for an entirely reformed industry's arrival. Construction may not be a perfect world, but it does not need a Martin Lewis-type to point out the abundance of 'good news' stories that portray our industry's better characteristics. Construction's importance to the environment, community, travel, home and hearth is immense, yet we never punch our weight in the public's weighing of our worth.

The Latham/Laing group sees this, but shrinks from urging the hard, immediate actions required. The whole tenor of its report, in truth, has a ring of passivity that suggests, at some subconscious level, a realisation that the public will never embrace contractors with fondness, let alone afford true respect.

This, surely, is wrong. But it will only be proved wrong if a major charm offensive can be waged at all levels. Nationally, through spending money on professional promotional matters (Ouch! Yes, it will hurt on the bottom line, but as Martin Laing notes: 'the industry must be convinced of the close correlation between image and profitability.') Regionally, through a proper push on 'centres for the built environment' (another ouch! - but sponsors can be conjured up by the clever); through such ideas as the civils museum on (see page 8); and through a nationwide 'considerate contractors scheme.' And, as important as anything, locally - through you and your colleagues looking to spread what good news you can. Make the resolution. Make the difference.