Error Frequency Rate challenges

By Rupert Shingleton GIRI Board Director

"I started getting involved in GIRI activity because it seemed like a group of like minded people, passionate about doing something disruptive in our beloved Construction Industry to cut out the endemic acceptance of error. A couple of years on and it’s exciting to stand in front of almost a hundred Industry Leaders at last week GIRI Annual Review and poll 100% support for a publicly reported “Error Frequency Rate” (EFR).

As the leader of the GIRI working group developing this elusive metric, I have identified that the biggest challenge is not the design of the metric itself. The most heat generated by the working group is around the communication and role out of the metric. Will one brave organisation show their hand first? Will those not reporting be deemed to have something to hide? In these difficult times for much of the construction industry, I do have sympathy with this reticent view, recent share price volatility in the sector doesn’t encourage much other than positive news, even if measurement is a tool to improvement.

So, what to do? There are some huge programmes of work coming through where multiple contributors all work side by side, Heathrow expansion, High Speed 2, Northern Powerhouse and the National House Building programme to name a few. Are these the safe environments for those organisations “in the club” to share locally their EFR for the purpose of driving pseudo-public competitive improvement? In the early years of Crossrail the Project Assessment Framework (PAF) did exactly this, rewarding project teams for giving away their good ideas and techniques for the benefit of the wider programme.

According to my Linked-In stats history, there are a lot of business leaders likely to be reading this. You are used to making brave decisions, if GIRI set the metric, will you share?"

Please get involved. Contact Rupert directly or press@getitright.uk.com