There has been a seismic shift over the last three decades in the way the building services sector conducts its business and Gerry Samuelsson-Brown of research organisation BSRIA has witnessed many of the changes. Ian Vallely discusses her impressive career.
If knowing all the right questions is the key to wisdom then Gerry Samuelsson-Brown is very wise indeed. The principal consultant at Bracknell-based research organisation BSRIA (Building Services Research and Information Association) has more or less made it her life's work to ask the right questions... and to provide many of the answers.

Thirty-four years at BSRIA has taught Mrs Samuelsson-Brown that change brings opportunities.

One of the most dramatic changes in construction has been the development of higher levels of trust and a greater willingness to work together. This probably started in the 1990s with the publication of landmark reports by Sir Michael Latham (Constructing the Team - 1994) and Sir John Egan (Rethinking Construction - 1998 and Accelerating Change - 2002).

Says Mrs Samuelsson-Brown: 'When I started in the industry, people tended to work in silos and in isolation. They were particularly concerned about confidentiality and worried about sharing statistics.'

However, she says, as trust was forged and a partnering culture embraced, people started to share learning and admit consultants and m&e contractors to the project team at an earlier stage.

For Mrs Samuelsson-Brown, this made perfect business sense: 'The building services element of a typical new construction project represents about 27 per cent of the cost.

If more than a quarter is taken by building services, then isn't it a nonsense not to bring those people in to inform the right solution and isn't it ridiculous to take the lowest possible price knowing the building has got to exist for a long time, probably without the best solution that could have been chosen?'

The answer to both questions is clearly an emphatic 'yes' and, in the 1990s, this was starting to be recognised. As Mrs Samuelsson-Brown points out: 'At that time, there were encouraging signs that unenlightened working practices were being tackled.'

She adds: 'Latham and Egan promoted and accelerated this, but I think perhaps it was beginning to go that way anyway. More people were trying to do the right thing.'

However, she warns, all this good work is under threat because of the short-term thinking brought about by the recent recession: 'The partnering ethos has begun to fall by the wayside and people are starting to think again in terms of lowest price rather than best solution.'

And she sees no improvement, at least for the time being: 'A lot of people out there have said they are beginning to pick up more interest, but it is taking longer to transfer inquiries into [sometimes literally] concrete jobs because people are cautious and are taking longer to make decisions.

'Those jobs that do go ahead tend to be at lower margins. Some m&e contractors are probably doing work at cost, which isn't sustainable.'

As a result, she believes, many more medium-sized firms could go under or be swallowed up through acquisition: 'There is not so much new work around and the climate is tremendously competitive. Of course, it always has been, but I think tender lists have got longer again so instead of, perhaps, a one in three chance of winning the job, that is now one in five or more. I think many m&e contractors will therefore have to work quite leanly for at least another couple of years.'

And this has significant knock-on effects; for example, laying people off clearly places stress on the remaining workforce.

But the stress doesn't end there. Mrs Samuelsson-Brown explains: 'I also suspect that a lot of the workforce will have to be willing to be more mobile; people will have to move further to complete projects and that in itself could be stressful from a work-home balance point of view.'

When we do eventually emerge fully from the recession, Mrs Samuelsson-Brown thinks the sector's emphasis will probably shift to refurbishment: 'The opportunities are in existing buildings, a huge amount of the stock of which is in dire need of upgrade. There is massive potential there, not just for refurbishment, but also on the maintenance side.'

And much of this will revolve around energy: 'I would say, to boost their chances of success, m&e contractors have really got to embrace the energy agenda. So, for example, besides installing traditional hvac equipment, m&e contractors could look more carefully at the energy saving potential...

'I think that, for m&e contractors, the way forward is to offer energy solutions and perhaps a package where they are tied in with the consultant so there is joined-up thinking.'

Gerry Samuelsson-Brown - a working life observed


Geraldine (Gerry) Samuelsson-Brown joined BSRIA in 1977 as a librarian, but immediately set about redefining her role. As a result, in the early 1980s, she and a colleague started BSRIA's research unit, now around 25 people strong.

Mrs Samuelsson-Brown also decided to expand her own knowledge. She explains: 'I had a library qualification and was doing research, but felt I needed more so I took a psychology degree with the Open University in my own time. I graduated in 1987 and that changed how I worked; I started looking more at how people did things and how teams worked.'

Her academic experience also resulted in a range of 'soft skills' such as benchmarking, customer satisfaction and partnering, and meant she gradually moved away from more technical, manufacturing-based issues.

That, in turn, led her to write a 'partnering toolkit'. She knew that there was an appetite for partnering in the industry, but this was always undertaken with the client's view in mind... what was good for them, how they could get a better deal, and so on.

'I thought m&e contractors needed something that would advise them how to get a better deal through partnering so I wrote the toolkit from the m&e contractor's point of view with an encouragement for them to try and get engaged early on so they could influence the decisions made and be part of the team.'

This chimed with the mood of the times - Sir John Egan's report, Rethinking Construction, challenged the industry to measure its performance over a range of activities and to meet ambitious improvement targets, effectively introducing the idea of key performance indicators (KPIs).

However, m&e contractors did not want to measure themselves against civil engineers or house builders; they needed their own suite. Mrs Samuelsson-Brown again: 'The Government gave me the funding to test this, and I became the producer of the KPIs for the m&e industry for 10 years. I was also training people in KPIs and how to apply them to their businesses.'

Contractors use KPIs either to measure their projects to see how they have done and what lessons can be learned or, at the end of the year, they might look cumulatively at their projects and compare them against the industry standard as a snapshot in time to see how they've kept pace.

But Mrs Samuelsson-Brown's contribution to the industry did not stop with KPIs. She also got involved in a 'Partners in Innovation' project launched in 2003 to look at advancing mobile technologies. As a result, a community was formed called COMIT (Construction Opportunities for Mobile IT).

Mrs Samuelsson-Brown is secretary of this group, which comprises a mix of construction stakeholders, technology providers and people from academia who come together four times a year to resolve problems. The group also works on site. Mrs Samuelsson-Brown explains: 'For example, a construction member might say: 'We have a remote site that needs a rapid set up', and a technology provider might say: 'I've got a tool that can address that which will have to be slightly tailored for your circumstances'. They'll then work together to solve the problem.'

COMIT was supported by Government funding for two years. At the end of that period, Mrs Samuelsson-Brown and her colleagues had created a thriving community of interested people. She says: 'I suggested that we didn't have to stop just because the funding ended. So we continue as a self-funded group. We are now in our sixth year [as a standalone organisation].'

Mrs Samuelsson-Brown retires from BSRIA at the end of September this year.