The Construction Playbook sets out key policies and guidance for how public works projects and programmes are assessed, procured and delivered.

Published in December 2020, the Construction Playbook captures commercial best practices and specific sector reforms outlining the government’s expectations of how contracting authorities and suppliers, including the supply chain, should engage with each other.

The Construction Leadership Council (CLC), through its own members and also through its wider links with the industry, has collaborated and supported the combined efforts of the Cabinet Office and Infrastructure & Projects Authority, with input from across the public sector, to develop and publish the Construction Playbook, and to endorse its aim of creating a more strategic relationship between Government and the construction sector.

The Construction Playbook aims to embed a new approach to the procurement and delivery of construction projects and programmes, which is more collaborative, engages the whole supply chain, encourages investment in innovation and skills, and supports a more sustainable, resilient and profitable industry, capable of delivering higher-quality, safer and better performing built assets for its clients. It will create the foundation for a new approach to construction, where we can utilise digital and offsite manufacturing technologies to increase the capability of the industry, and accelerate the delivery of built assets.

It will also aim to deliver a better and fairer industry, with stronger and more open relationships between the industry and its clients, fewer disputes, and more equitable contractual terms, that ensure prompt and fair payment and a balanced allocation of risk, where these are managed by the organisation best placed to do so. Finally, it will help ensure that investment in construction projects creates the greatest economic, social and environmental value possible, and contributes to the delivery of strategic policy objectives such as our legal obligation to achieve net zero carbon by 2050 and levelling up across the UK.

These are set out in 14 key policies for how the government should assess, procure and deliver public works projects and programmes which all central government departments and their arm’s length bodies are expected to follow on a ‘comply or explain’ basis and will be enforced through spending controls.  The key policies are:

• Commercial Pipelines
• Market Health & Capability Assessments
• Portfolios & Longer term Contracting
• Harmonise, Digitise & Rationalise Demand
• Further Embed Digital Technologies
• Early Supply Chain Involvement
• Outcome-Based Approach
• Benchmarking & Should Cost Models
• Delivery Model Assessments
• Effective Contracting
• Risk Allocation
• Payment Mechanism & Pricing Approach
• Assessing the Economic & Financial Standing of Suppliers
• Resolution Planning

TICA-ACAD will be looking at each of these in more detail over the coming weeks, focusing on each particular policy and its potential to improve the industry that we are all a part of.