Members' forum successfully launched online

More than 30 GIRI members joined the first members’ forum hosted online by the Get It Right Initiative last Thursday, to discuss the issues they are facing during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and to feed back on what support they need to prepare for ‘the new normal’.

Sustainability and robustness of the supply chain; interruptions to business continuity; loss of competence due to staff furloughing and redundancies, and substitutions of materials and products were among the issues that attendees said they were already experiencing, or anticipating as potential ‘new’ causes of error in the restart process. 

Staff from GIRI member companies representing the whole construction industry spectrum, from clients to subcontractors and insurance firms joined executive director Tom Barton and GIRI Training & Consultancy director Nick Francis for the one-hour forum last week. 

Tom gave a short presentation highlighting GIRI’s priorities during the lockdown – which attendees were subsequently invited to rate in order of importance to them – before Nick conducted a ‘bite-size’ training module in the style of the industry-tested courses that are available through GIRI’s own training consultancy.

Using breakout rooms for small group conversations, attendees subsequently reconvened to discuss the issues that they anticipated they would face as a result of the slowdown, once the industry starts ramping up for work again.

Comments from the session included:

• Underpricing of future works – ‘the race to the bottom’;
• Sustainability and financial robustness of supply chains;
• Productivity;
• Where will work come from, will there be enough?
• Poor and confusing regulation;
• Impact on people;
• Aligning the supply chain to start again productively, also some subcontractors may not exist going forward; 
• Supporting our clients by helping the supply chain remain in place...acting with empathy and being truly collaborative!
• Uncertainty about change of protocols;
• The perfect GIRI storm... we've been so busy keeping things going - have we ‘got things wrong’ in the interim, that we don't yet know about?

Feedback from the event, and comments in the subsequent survey, are being used to guide GIRI’s priorities during the continued restrictions. 

In response, we will shortly be announcing the dates for a series of webinars which will take place during May, each of which will focus on one of the issues raised; managing and motivating people, in particular furloughed staff; maintaining or creating a positive quality culture on sites that are still running; working with changing supply chains and materials; addressing a ‘race to the bottom’ culture, post-COVID 19.

A video of the forum is now available on our You Tube channel for anyone who missed it, or wishes to share it with their colleagues. The slides are also available for download as a pdf.