Construction Industry is a very diverse industry that includes a wide range of activities. Some of these activities include mining, quarrying, manufacturing and the supplying of products, constructing of infrastructures, and forestry. Studies have shown that this industry comprises of more than 9% of the GDP of most developed nations (Gordon, Nelson, Page, and Popkin 2006). The industry utilizes the skills of various personnel such as the project manager, construction manager, design engineer, and architects. The project manager handles the constructions while the construction engineer supervises most of the engineering projects. On the other hand, the architect is the one who designs and executes most construction projects. Therefore, he/she must consider various things before the actual construction takes place. Among them includes the environmental impact of the structure to be constructed, the budget, the schedule, the construction site safety among other things. Construction is divided into three sections which are building, infrastructure, and industrial. Regarding the building sector, it is grouped into residential and none residential. On the other hand, the infrastructure section comprises of the massive public works such as the construction of dams, bridges, highways, railways, and watersheds. However, the industrial segment entails constructing, manufacturing plants, power generation mills, and chemical process plants among other things. However, the purpose of this paper is to comprehensively describe the construction industry in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.
GENERAL CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY OVERVIEW
The construction industry plays a significant role in the economy of the United Kingdom because it constitutes more than 7% of its overall GDP (Oyegoke 2006). Moreover, this industry is divided into private and public sector whereas the public sector accounts for 25% while the rest is the private sector (Gordon, Nelson, Page, and Popkin 2006). The industry is further divided into commercial and social, residential, and infrastructure. The commercial and social sections take up to 45% of the construction industry while the residential subdivisions occupy the 40%. However, the infrastructure section only accounts for the remaining 15% of the construction industry in the UK (Gordon, Nelson, Page, and Popkin 2006). Moreover, this industry offers more than 2.2 million jobs in the United Kingdom alone. However, most of the posts it provides are contract jobs. Nonetheless, studies have revealed that contract jobs employ more than 2 million people. On average, this industry has created more than 800,000 jobs in the past few years.
However, as regards to its firms, the United Kingdom has a total of more than 194,000 construction companies. However, most of these firms employ very few people. Research has revealed that in 2009, 75,000 firms employed one person each while the remaining recruited more than 1200 people per firm. However, despite having thousands of construction firms, some of them are more prominent than others. The leading firms in the UK include Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Laing O’Rourke, Interserve, Morgan Sindall, Kier, Galliford Try, ISG, Mitie, and Skanska UK (Jackson, 2013). However, out all these firms, Balfour Beatty is the leading construction firm in the United Kingdom. It was founded by George Balfour in 1872 and has since been the most successful firm in the United Kingdom. Research has shown that it is the only UK firm that can compete with big firms like BAM, Vinci, and Euro-Big Boys (Jackson 2013). Financially, this firm accrues a pretax profit of more than 236 million sterling pounds each year. Carillion is another prominent constructing firm in the UK that rivals the Balfour Beatty. This firm was given a contract worth 100 million sterling pounds a few years ago because of its reputation. Unlike, the Balfour Beatty, the construction company goes back a few years. I fact it was founded in 1999 (Jackson 2013). On the other hand, the Laing O'Rourke is a UK constructing firm that operates on a global scale. In another word, it has businesses not only in Australia but o other parts of the world. It claims a pretax of more than 23 million sterling pounds yearly. Interserve is another world's first support service and construction firm that is based in the UK. This company has a gross revenue of 2.3 billion sterling pounds and employs more than 50, 000 million people. The other firm is the Morgan Syndall (Jackson 2013). This company plays a prominent role in the UK's construction industry. Morgan Syndall is one of the most recognizable names within this industry. However, the Kier, Galliford Try, ISG, Mitie, and Skanska UK play a prominent role in the UK construction industry because they contribute immensely on the GDP of the United Kingdom.
Regarding governance, this industry falls under the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills. However, studies have revealed that the Department dictates planning and building standards for Communities and Local Government. However, to oversee the implementation and the construction of the future project, the UK government decided to create a Construction Leadership Council in 2013 (Oyegoke 2006). This council is currently being chaired by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, and Skills and an industry representative. Other significant organizations that help in the governance and the management of the construction industry include the Environment Agency, British Waterways Board, and the Civil Aviation Authority.
However, the construction industry faces various challenges. Among them includes urbanization. Studies show that there has been an influx of people into the urban area since the turn of the twentieth century. More than 75% of the people currently reside in the metropolitan area compared to the 13% in the early days of the twentieth century. This statistics shows that the construction industry must come up with ways to accommodate this growing population of the urban dwellers. Another challenge that this industry faces is the issue of climate change and sustainability. The fact the UK government desires to cut down the emission of the greenhouse by 80% by 2025, its effect might hurt the construction industry (Oyegoke 2006). The result could be because the industry contributes more than 40% of the greenhouse gases that are emitted in the United Kingdom. Therefore, most construction firms will be affected the moment the UK government enforces this law. Another challenge plaguing this industry is the performance gap. This concept means that construction does not always conform to the design that the architect created. In another word, the cost of the actual building tends to be higher than what the architect anticipated. For instance, recent findings from the Carbon Trust Low Carbon Buildings Accelerator and the Low Carbon Buildings program have demonstrated the designed costs, and the actual one often differs
BUILT ENVIRONMENT
The built environment is part of the ecosystem which is created by human beings and tends to vary in form and characteristic than the natural one (Handy, Boarnet, Ewing, and Killingsworth 2002). In other words, it is the human-made surroundings where people live and work together. However, it entails the physical features such as housing, industrial, commercial, hospitals, schools and the spaces between those buildings. Those spaces make up the parks and the infrastructure that supports human activity such as roads (Handy, Boarnet, Ewing, and Killingsworth 2002). Currently, engineers have broadened the built environment definition to encompass community gardens and healthy food access. However, the built environment is not a branch of learning on its own as a civil engineer. However, it is but an amalgamation various field. Currently, it draws upon areas such as economics, environmental sustainability, management, engineering, public health and law among other numerous fields. However, it draws more from the public health. This is why it focuses on the wellbeing of the society by constructing environmentally improved landscapes.
Currently, the built environment plays a significant role in the lives of the people. For instance, its structure, form, and function, as well as the quality of its natural environmental assets, determine the lives wellbeing of the society that lives in it. Another significant role that the built environment plays is that it has helped city planners to address the issue of population growth in the urban areas (Santamouris 2013). Recent studies have shown that more than half of the world’s population lives in the cities. Further studies have shown that 70% of people will live in towns by 2050. Therefore, the built environment will play an important role in accommodating this growing population. The built environment plays a significant role in improving the health of the people that reside in it (Handy et al. 2002). For instance, sidewalk constructions increase physical activities among people who live near them thereby lowering the rate of obesity in people. Some examples of the built environment such as parks act as recreational facilities.
However, scientists have predicted that built environment in the UK and the rest of the world will face various challenges in future. Among these challenges includes temperatures, flooding, soil heave and subsidence, and water supply constraints (Wilby 2007). Regarding increased temperatures, studies have revealed that elevated temperatures will hurt the built environment because it will make shops, offices, and houses inhabitable. Likewise, these temperatures will cause overheating of the London Underground city buses. However, as regards to flooding, studies show that they will become more frequent than before because the green spaces are disappearing in the UK at an alarming rate. Gardens are being turned into parking space thereby creating more room for surface runoff. Climate change such as severe storms and winters will increase flooding in the built environment (Handy, Boarnet, Ewing, and Killingsworth 2002). On the other hand, the rising sea levels will increase flooding in the built environments. Another future challenge for this type of environment is that long wet winters and drier summers will cause soil heave and subsidence thereby causing the destabilization of buildings and the physical infrastructures. Another challenge that built environment will face is the low water supply. Studies have revealed that that the influx of the people into the urban areas will put pressure on the water resources. As a result, the urban population will suffer from water shortage. Likewise, long summers that occur as result of climate change will reduce water supply in the built environments.
CIVIL ENGINEERING
Civil Engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the designing, building, and maintaining bridges, roads, dams, airports, sewerage systems, pipelines and railways among other structure that are found in the built environment. This branch of engineering is broad and encompasses a wide range of sub-disciplines (Wood 2013). Among them includes construction engineering, coastal engineering, earthquake engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering, and urban engineering among others. However, the most common type of civil engineering is the transportation engineering. This form of civil engineering deals with designing, constructing, and maintaining transportation infrastructures such as roads, railway systems, canals, and airports (Khisty and Lall 2017). The second most common type of civil engineering is urban/municipal engineering. This form of civil engineering deals with the designing building and maintaining of the sewers, street lighting, water supply networks, and sidewalks. The sub-discipline manages waste collection as well as the bus service networks. Another sub-discipline of civil engineering is the construction engineering (Khisty and Lall 2017). Unlike the first two, this type of civil engineering involves planning and execution of projects and in the transportation of materials to the construction sites. The engineers found in this sub-discipline prepare the site on which construction is supposed to take place.
The forth sub-discipline of civil engineering is the coastal engineering. The personnel in this type of civil engineering play a significant role in managing the coastal region. Among the duties of the coastal engineer is to guard the coastal region against soil erosion and flooding. Another essential sub-discipline of civil engineering is environmental engineering. This form of civil engineering deals with the issue of pollution (Khisty and Lall 2017). Environmental engineers are the ones that deal with the treatment of chemical wastes as well as thermal and biological wastes. These types of engineers are the ones that purify water, manage solid waste, treat solid wastes and manage hazardous materials. Furthermore, these engineers administer green engineering and industrial ecology. The last type of civil engineering is the structural engineering (Khisty and Lall 2017). This type deal involves analysing and designing structures and buildings. Some of the structures designed by structural engineer include bridges, towers, and flyovers.
CARILLION COLLAPSE
Carillion Company is one of the major construction firms in the UK. Carillion was one of the biggest suppliers of maintenance services to Network Rail (Colley 2018). Network Rail is a company that maintains over 500,000 thousand homes for the personnel working for the Ministry of Defence (Colley 2018). The company was involved in the maintenance of the railway network that connects cities in the UK. Therefore, the collapse of the Carillion Company on 15 January 2018 hurt this company. However, other stakeholders who were affected by the collapse of this company are its employees, pensioners, shareholders, lenders, joint venture partners and its major customers such as the Network Rail (Loxley 2018). Five banks in the UK have lost a total of more 790 million sterling pounds as a result of the collapse of this company. Among them includes Royal Bank of Scotland
(RBS), HSBC, Santander, Lloyds, and Barclays. The collapse of the Carillion Company hurt the firms that it owed money (Loxley 2018). Good examples of such firms are Speedy Hire and Van Elle. Studies have shown that within twenty-four hours after the collapse of the Carillion Company, Speedy Hire and Van Elle exhibited significant loses. For instance, Speedy Hire reported a loss of £2m while Van Elle reported a loss of £1.6m. Regarding employees, the collapse has resulted in their job losses (Loxley 2018). However, the company has promised them the salary to at least mid-April 2018. Lastly, the Carillion collapse led to the suspension certain projects. A good example of such project is the one that involved the six schools that were under its construction in Ireland.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, construction industry plays a significant role in the UK and the rest of the world since it contributes 7% to the GDP of the United Kingdom. This industry encompasses the built environment and civil engineering. The built environment is the part of the environment which is created by human beings and differs significantly from the natural one. On the other hand, civil engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the designing, building, and maintaining the physical features found in the built environment. The industry has various prominent firms such as Balfour Beatty and Carillion. However, Carillion collapsed in January 2018 thereby affecting other firms.
References
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