Small is Beautiful?
9/11/2011
This is the first of what we hope will be a stream of thought and opinion, inspired by our own experiences, feedback from clients and project teams and generally whats going on in the industry.
So to kick things off….Another One Bites the Dust: farewell to E C Harris, hello Arcadis. Should we mourn the loss of independence of yet another great name in the industry; or is this an indication of how clients want major projects to be delivered in the future? And what does it mean for the likes of us, the SMEs, who make up the bulk of the construction industry? If clients only want to do business with mega consultants will we have to live off scraps?
I think we need to show our worth now more than ever; we need to emphasise that we offer value, the personal approach, flexibility and, most importantly, ourselves. Clients get US actively working on the project; the work doesn’t get farmed out to a provincial office which needs to make its earnings target for the month.
We wish the new union good luck; we have many friends there and have enjoyed our working relationship with them over the years. But we cant help thinking that the construction world is becoming too polarized; the middle ground is disappearing. Its Tesco vs the local grocer.