EXPERTS have warned that government plans to use public spending on major projects to fend off a recession in the construction industry could prove shortsighted. While Alistair Darling’s Pre- Budget Report announcement to bring forward public spending has been broadly welcomed by many in the construction industry, some experts have claimed that rushing through complex projects such as Building Schools for the Future risks repeating mistakes made over the past decade.

Jim Costello, director of Glasgow-based consulting engineer Hulley and Kirkwood, said: “Rushing the next generation of BSF projects through may be good for construction in the short term, but it risks ignoring the shortcomings of the last decade of public private partnerships (PPP) in education.

“Design excellence, especially in areas like sustainability, has lost out to the issue of short-term costs on many PPP projects. Lessons from this experience should be learned as we begin to really ramp up into BSF.”

“Now should be a perfect time to take stock and make sure these issues are addressed, rather than simply rush through a thousand more schools that simply aren’t as energy efficient as they should be.”

Hulley and Kirkwood has been involved in public private partnerships to build schools since 1997, during which time, claims Costello, local authorities have repeatedly begun by commissioning beacons of sustainability which would inspire generations to come, only to settle for much lower standards in order to save money in the short-term.

Costello cites examples of steel framed buildings being used even though concrete delivers much better energy performance; or cases where the space given to plant and distribution was squeezed in order to maximise internal floor area, despite the fact that doing so compromises design and maintenance regimes for years after the building is complete.

The result, he says, is that instead of raising industry standards with state-of-the-art public buildings, commerciallydriven bids have caused local authorities to end up creating hundreds of schools with relatively poor BREEAM ratings.

Before projects are brought forward solely as a means of inspiring economic growth, lessons should be learned from the past ten years in order to inspire quality of build as well, Costello argues.

“There are successes out there to learn from,” he said. “We were involved in the design of the first ever bundled PPP schools project in Falkirk in which stack ventilation has been successfully used for at least eight years now. This concept has been adopted on many other projects, but not all.

“Elsewhere there are classrooms which have been designed from the inside out - starting right from the furniture and fittings - which have now set best practice for all types of buildings.

“Local authorities aren’t used to complex projects like these and don’t need to be rushed under the premise that the economy will suffer unless they spend quickly.

“Instead, they need to be given both the time to see how solutions which were first applied on PPP projects have now become standards, or where the Government’s initial technical bulletins were challenged and successfully revisited. Only then will they have the confidence to aim to achieve the same success with their own projects.

“The choice is clear: we either insist on quality and lift standards of public building to new levels, or we rush through massive spending in the hope it gives the economy a short-term boost, then spend a generation regretting the missed opportunity we have had to revolutionise building energy use in this country.”

Of course, in the current economic climate, any investment from the public or private sectors should be welcomed. John Cridland, deputy directorgeneral of the CBI, for example, commented:

“The CBI had been calling on the government to accelerate planned public capital spending programmes where possible. We, therefore, welcome the announcement in the Pre-Budget Report that £3 billion of capital spending is being brought forward from 2010/11.

“Not only will this give the construction industry a much needed shot in the arm, it will lead to increased motorway capacity, more social housing, primary and secondary schools being renovated, as well as investment in energy efficiency measures.”

None the less, the underlying lesson here would seem to be that while massive short-term investment in the construction industry may inspire a similarly short-term upturn in the economy, the financial and economic implications could be far less appealing in the long term. If the Government drops its guard on quality for the sake of a quick fix, we could be paying back with interest for far longer than anyone anticipates.