In an interview with our sister title Daily Business, Reekie, who is also co-chair of the Scottish Construction Leadership Forum Transformation Board, said Scotland’s construction sector has made real progress on productivity, collaboration, procurement and skills, but too often only “in pockets”. His priority is long-term stewardship and making change stick across a fragmented sector.

The interview covers a wide range of live issues for the industry, including:

• The viability gap: tighter public capital budgets, rising wages and materials costs, and stricter environmental requirements are squeezing projects, with SFT exploring alternative private finance models for major infrastructure.
• Workforce wellbeing: Reekie says the sector’s track record on mental health is poor and that employers should be asking how many of those they recruited five years ago are still with them.
• Procurement reform: new guidance introduces graduated pricing in tender scoring, so bidding below the average price no longer earns extra points, tackling the problem of low bids that can’t be delivered.
• Payment practices: he discusses the UK Government’s move to ban retentions, and how better quality and greater competence could make them unnecessary.

Reekie hopes delegates at the Summit leave with a concrete commitment to do something differently, and a new connection to work with. “If people go away and think it was a lovely day out and keep doing the same things we have not served our purpose,” he said.

The Scottish Construction Summit takes place on Thursday 22 October at the SEC in Glasgow, and is expected to attract around 2,000 delegates. Sign up to attend here.

Read the full interview for Reekie’s thoughts on quality, competence and why the industry shouldn’t still be having the same conversations in 25 years’ time.