BRE urges firms to benchmark

British contractors need to get to grips with benchmarking to help fight off foreign competition, according to researchers about to publish the first guide on benchmarking for construction.

A spokeswoman for the Building Research Establishment said that the construction industry was far behind other sectors in taking advantage of benchmarking.

The conclusion comes after a œ330,000 investigation lasting two years into benchmarking that involved nine construction companies.

The Scottish division of the BRE is to publish the report Measuring Up: A Good Practice Guide to Benchmarking in September together with its partners, the Department of the Environment and the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

The University of Reading's Colin Gray said the industry is suffering from the lack of data on benchmarking to convince contractors about reducing building costs.

"There is an dearth of reliable, national statistics and it's making the job of getting our house in order that much harder," said Gray (See Analysis, pages 14-15).

Commercial confidentiality has been used as an excuse for not adopting benchmarking.

Graham Sanderson, head of technical services at Taywood Engineering - one of the nine firms involved in the study, said: "The firms involved in this project were first of all very cagey, they thought they had crown jewels which couldn't be shared - but they soon realised that most of what they had was common knowledge anyway."