Can Liverpool clean up its culture of crime?

One of the industry's long-held beliefs is that you've got to be local to build in Liverpool. A familiar tale among contractors is that day one of opening a site would be made memorable by a visit from a door-challenged individual (too big to get through) telling you about the site protection you were going to have.

Contractors who tried to ignore threats found their sites regularly vandalised.

But the damage caused was not the real problem: it was the delays resulting from having to reorder materials that set them back. Even the locals were wary. It may be one reason why few national contractors set up shop in the area.

But all that could be changing. Under a local initiative called Seahog, police are targeting building sites to make sure their security firms are using guards who have Security Industry Authority accreditation. According to Chief Superintendent Andy Cooke, they are determined to stamp it out because it funds crime, endangers residents who may live on the building sites and undermines those who train their staff and take a responsible attitude to safety.

Since last summer, 214 people have been caught out and the directors of one firm have been fined. Liverpool City Council is supporting the initiative by refusing to work with non-accredited firms and the initiative has been so successful that other police forces in the UK are taking note.

Although site security may have been bad news for Merseyside in the past, councils in the North have been praised for their alacrity in taking up education spending initiatives that have resulted in a bonanza of education work under the Building Schools for the Future and Academy frameworks for the region.

Willmott Dixon has been so successful at winning frameworks in St Helens, Rotherham, Wigan, Sheffield and Cheshire, among others, that northern regional managing director Peter Owen is currently recruiting to open an office in Manchester in January 2009. It will follow the opening of a Dartford office next January.

It all adds to a very full pot of building work for the contractor that includes prisons, health centres and leisure complexes. Owen is also noticing an upsurge in demand for prefab hotels.

But that success brings the challenge of managing its resources and sticking to the company ethos of keeping the teams and the workloads manageable. The company yardstick is that no managing director should take on more than 150 staff or £100m of work. "Otherwise you get disconnect," he says, where people cease to be individuals to the boss.

Owen believes Liverpool is being opened up to new influences in the run-up to donning its City of Culture mantle next year. "There used to be an internal mafia of local architects, builders and clients who gave the work to their own people, but the city has gone through such regeneration that worldwide names are now coming in."

Liverpool Docks redevelopment

The Civil Engineering Contractors' Association (CECA) has also been logging a raft of new schemes for Liverpool, including the redevelopment of the docks and a new ship terminal, and there is praise for the local authority's decision to develop a steady programme of work over the next 10 to 15 years, rather than to try to get 20 super schemes up and running fast.

Amec is also noticing the upswing in work, as Liverpool uses the new status to build its economy for the long term. Nigel Brook, the MD for the northern office of the design and project services arm, points to its hotel work and its contract for John Lennon Airport's enlargement. It goes some way to compensate for the slowdown it is experiencing on road building. Liverpool is also enjoying a boom in hi-tech buildings in places like Speke Boulevard, where high specification pharmaceutical and biotech buildings are being constructed.

But Brook is concerned at the skills shortage across the board in the region, envying contractors in London and the South East that have been mopping up the flood of Eastern European craftsmen in recent years. "In Manchester and Liverpool there is a huge inner city apartment-building programme, which is very labour intensive. Although they are using prefabricated bathrooms, the density of the rooms and the finishes needed are soaking up labour."

The absence of major construction firms in the region handicaps local firms from acquiring innovation and supply chain expertise. It also hits local employment. Ian Robinson, the director for the North West regional office of CECA, notes that two-thirds of his 56-strong membership are small to medium-sized local firms.

Usually they are not part of the supply chains of the larger concerns, so when major contracts are let in the area, they miss out. "We never forget that SMEs are the people who employ people in the regions," he says. So if the SMEs lose out, so does the indigenous population, which breeds resentment.

Skills shortages

Local under-employment and skills shortages are now being targeted at regional level. Construction for Merseyside (CFM) was set up almost exactly a year ago, part-funded by the European Union, to encourage business development and employment. Its chief executive Guy Lawson explains: "We were set up by Sir Joe Dwyer [chairman of Liverpool Vision] and others who were finding that local projects were going over budget and the quality of work was poor. People were designing out bricks because bricklayers were becoming too expensive. The board's objective was to make the industry more competitive in the future."

CFM is targeting both employers, to help assess needs, and young people with GCSEs. They have a free recruitment service and can help employers get grants. One of their early successes has been to persuade two of the larger regional contractors to relocate to Merseyside, but unfortunately the names are still under wraps. Additionally CFM is also working via the planning system to reach clients submitting planning applications.

Here participating local authorities will invite them to sign up to a voluntary charter in which they promise to use local builders and subcontractors wherever possible. CFM also helps clients to build supply chains and negotiate training agreements that will include apprenticeships, work placements and taking on unemployed people. Clients can then bring pressure to bear on their contractors to comply.

Their efforts have paid off. In its first year, CFM has assisted 120 companies with training agreements and helped 250 people to become more employable. Other areas are looking to jump on the bandwagon.

Individually, companies are also trying to improve training in the region. The Eric Wright group of companies based in Preston set up the Eric Wright Learning Foundation, targeting 14- to 16- year-olds who might want a career in construction. Now up to 400 students have time off from school to take part in half-day sessions. The company is hoping students who sign up for two years will be exempted when they start college from the first year of the NVQ, thus stealing a march on other 16-year-olds.

Peter Guy, MD of Eric Wright, explains: "We are trying to show kids that there is an alternative to academic careers."

He hopes it will help with the very tight labour market at the moment. Wet trades are at a premium with bricklayers and plasterers commanding more than £100 a day compared with the £60 to £70 that was the norm three years ago.

Training and funding

For the civil engineers, Robinson feels that the area is doing its bit to match skills and vacancies. Now central government and other major client groups need to play their part in ensuring continuity of workload. "The industry is ever exhorted to recruit and train the next generation of employees, but without better certainty of available workload and work type and the supporting funding, how can contractors justify such investment in human resources and appropriate levels of training?" he says. "We need to know the statuses and their funding."

Looking ahead, he is concerned that the Olympics will be bad news for the area. He is not worried about the drain of people and materials southward during the construction. Instead he fears that the almost inevitable cost overruns will cause a backlash that will hit contractors, and those whose industry is in a fledgling state will be the worst hit.

Still, construction's unerring ability to cope in the face of adversity will usually come to the fore. As one wag commented on the building site protection racketeers: "So long as they remain competitive and keep our sites trouble-free, we are not going to complain."