Contract Scotland Live Series: Constructing Success

Join us on this episode to find out exactly what is happening with salaries & employment in the Scottish construction, engineering and property sectors.Alan is joined by ⁠Jamie Porter⁠ (one of our Divisional Heads) and Jade Mitchell (Senior Consultant).Our salary guide is the most comprehensive of its kind, focused solely on the market in Scotland. It’s by far and away the most demanded document/piece of research that we put together.We take an in-depth look at each sector, highlighting some of the key findings and the most interesting trends in each area, and find the time to touch on the work we've been doing around employment benefits and some of the key insights from our last set of data.Whether you’re an employer in the Scottish construction industry, or currently working within it, then this data is invaluable in a number of ways – staff retention & being a ‘sticky employer’, attraction of new talent, benchmarking your own salary/value, informing your next career move, etc!

1 year on from our launch, and in anticipation of PD Project Delivery’s trip to Scotland/the UK at the end of October, we invited their Director & Owner, Paul Doherty, to come back and give us an update on what’s happening in Australia right now & into 2025. Paul told his story back in our first episode, but in short, he was a successful & progressive civil engineer in Scotland (our words!), before deciding to head to Australia in 2012. 🦘🏄‍♂️ What started as a plan to do a bit of work and have a holiday, turned into a new life down under…! Several years later, after working on major infrastructure projects with some of Australia’s leading contractors, he set up PD Project Delivery Pty Ltd. Based out of Brisbane, Queensland, PD Project Delivery now work on major projects across Australia. If you’ve ever considered taking your career to Australia, then this is an episode to catch. For ‘Round 2’ of the PD Project Delivery story, we covered areas such as; • What has changed in the market in Australia in the last 12 months? • Have there been any surprises, positive or otherwise? • What’s happening with PD Project Delivery at the moment? • What are Paul's expectations of 2025 and beyond for the business? • Why is he coming to Scotland in late October? • What do we foresee for the market in Australia in the coming years? • The current visa situation and what the options are. We also take a moment to talk about the work that Contract Scotland & PD Project Delivery are doing together and the success that we’ve had in the last 12 months. You can also read more/sign up for info on our events below; 👉🏼 Stirling – Saturday 26th October – 9am to 12pm. An Aussie Breakfast BBQ in Scotland… https://www.contractscotland.co.uk/pd-project-delivery-event-stirling/ 👉🏼 Glasgow – Tuesday 29th October – 6pm onwards Beers with Engineers (and Agents/Managers, and QS's etc…) https://www.contractscotland.co.uk/pd-project-delivery-event-glasgow/ #ConstructingSuccess #Jobs #Construction #Australia

In anticipation of the release of our latest salary guide , we invited both Jamie Porter (one of our Divisional Heads) and Kirstin Marshall (Senior Consultant) to tell us exactly what is happening with salaries & employment in the Scottish construction, engineering and property sector. 📈📊 Contract Scotland's salary guide is the most comprehensive of its kind, focused solely on the market north of the border. It's by far and away the most demanded document/piece of research that we put together. Jamie & Kirstin take us through each sector, highlighting some of the key findings and the most interesting trends in each area. Whether you're an employer in the Scottish construction industry, or currently working within it, then this data will be invaluable in a number of ways - staff retention & being a 'sticky employer', attraction of new talent, benchmarking your own salary/value, informing your next career move, etc!

This one’s a little different and something of a 2 for 1! We were joined by both Jocelyne Fleming, Policy and Public Affairs Officer for Scotland at the CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building), and John-Paul Toner, Director at Contract Scotland and one of the judges for the CIOB Scotland awards. We discussed the CIOB in Scotland and the CIOB Scotland Awards 2024, including; • The current state of play for policy at the CIOB in Scotland, why the CIOB is important and who it represents! • The priorities for 2024 & beyond. • What are the biggest challenges facing Scottish building & construction? • What is on the horizon for the CIOB in Scotland and how can people get involved? • Why having our own CIOB Awards in Scotland is significant. John-Paul then gives us a quick tour of the award categories, including the inside track of what the judges will be looking for (what’s going to make your entry stand out!) and his top tips for entering in 2024. #CIOBScotland #Awards2024 #ConstructingSuccess

Here’s an easy one – would you like to win more profitable & sustainable contracts? Obviously. 👍🏼 In this episode, we were joined by Paul Johnstone to focus on “The Bid Journey: A Work Winning Culture”. Many construction, engineering and property businesses fall into the trap of seeing bidding/tendering as a transactional and reactive exercise. The reality is that winning work requires a much more proactive, strategic approach with an alignment of strategy, business development, sales and marketing, to understand your client’s requirements, and give you the best chance of success. 🤝🏼 With over a decade of procurement experience (and procuring/managing over £750m worth of contracts in that time), and importantly, having been ‘on the other side’ in leading the procurement of several significant construction projects/frameworks, Paul launched Optimum Business Growth in 2019 to help businesses improve their work winning performance through procurement expertise and insights. We spoke to Paul about ‘The Bid Journey’, a best practice methodology that is designed to help you win more work. Worth noting that this approach won an award for Optimum at the Glasgow Business Awards in 2023 and is into the semi-final of Scottish EDGE to receive investment for the Bid Journey tech solution. 🙌🏼 We covered; • What are the most common mistakes that organisations make when trying to win work? • What are the ‘best’ businesses doing when it comes to winning work? • What are the 4 key phases of “The Bid Journey”? • ‘New’ work VS ‘old’ work – pros & cons of bidding for work with an existing customer. • What are the current trends in work winning and what part is technology/AI playing? • What are 3 things you could do tomorrow to improve your ‘bid’ strategy. • Why did Paul set up Optimum Business Growth and where is the business headed? • What does he attribute his success to? The Bid Journey image/video that Paul referred to is available here - https://optimum-growth.co.uk/the-bid-journey/

Paying attention to workplace mental health has never been more important. Construction can be a rewarding and varied industry to work in. But it’s also one where pressures can be high, and people are more likely than average to experience work-related stress and other mental health issues. 😓 Factors include working away from home; heavy workloads; long working hours; late payments and job insecurity. Poor management training/process and a lack of understanding can add to the problem, too. In mid-2020, a report by the Chartered Institute of Building found that 26% of construction industry professionals thought about taking their own lives and 56% of construction professionals worked for organisations with no policies on mental health in the workplace. 😳 Things are changing. More and more construction businesses are starting to see their staff’s mental health & wellbeing as a priority, placing employee wellbeing at the heart of their organisations. But is everything as it seems? In this episode, we're joined by Yvonne Gilfillan to focus on The Mental Health Masquerade! 🎭 Yvonne brings incredible experience and passion to this subject, so be prepared for a whirlwind episode and to be left wanting more! Recently awarded an IOSH President’s Commendation Award and a highly sought-after speaker, Yvonne has focused on CSR and health & safety for several tier 1 international construction & engineering businesses.⭐⭐⭐ We’ll be talking about (or at least trying to get through!); • Mental health in construction - where we were and where we are now. • Have we got the focus right? Are we doing it for the right reasons? • Do we take mental health seriously? • What are the ‘best’ construction businesses doing in this area?• What is next for mental health & wellbeing in the construction industry? What is the way forward? • Who is Yvonne, where is she now and what might the future hold? • What does success mean to her?

Let’s start with this; The construction industry is fundamentally broken. 👀 How’s that for a headline? It was broken pre-pandemic and it’s definitely broken post-pandemic. What makes us say that? • Construction firms accounted for 16.9% of all insolvencies in September 2023, according to the Insolvency Service.• The number of UK construction insolvencies is up 10% on 2022 and 35% on 2019. In Scotland alone, the number of failures is up 20% on 2022.• Construction businesses make up 13.5% of all registered businesses in the UK, so we’re disproportionally affected by business failure. We’re all acutely aware of high-profile business closures, both north & south of the border, coupled with an abundance of rumours in what is quite a febrile atmosphere. The impact on the supply chain is clear. This subject is, unfortunately, burning hot at the moment and is something that we’ve deliberately pushed up the agenda for our last episode of 2023. An odd thing to cover perhaps for a live series focused on ‘success’, but to understand success, surely you have to understand risk & failure? 🤷‍♂️ Our guest for this is someone that we desperately wanted to pin down for this topic - Ryan Gilluley, Managing Director of GCM. Ryan is a fascinating individual and another successful entrepreneur with some serious drive & ambition. This guy is an expert on commercial management & dispute resolution, with a focus on improving the commercial performance & sustainability of construction businesses. We cover a number of topics, including; • What’s going wrong in construction – why do we see higher rates of business failure?• What can businesses do to protect themselves in this environment and prepare for what might lie ahead?• It’s not all doom and gloom, so what is making some construction businesses more successful than others?• Risk & margins…• Does the way construction work is tendered, awarded and delivered, set us up for problems?• Why did Ryan set up GCM and where is the business headed?• What does he attribute his success to?

Paul Doherty joined us on Constructing Success, the Contract Scotland Live Series, to discuss his own move to Australia in 2012. We’ll let Paul tell his own story, but he was a successful & progressive civil engineer in Scotland, before deciding to head down under. What started as a plan to do a bit of work and have a holiday, turned into a new life…! Several years later, after working on major infrastructure projects with some of Australia’s leading contractors, he set up PD Project Delivery. We cover everything from; Why did he decide to leave Scotland for Australia? How was the transition - what were the good bits and what did he find harder than expected? What the heck is FIFO?! Why he's stayed in Australia and is now a bonafide Scottish Aussie with his own successful company. What's happening in Australia right now - what's busy and where are the opportunities. What is the current visa situation in 2023. And finally, Paul's top 3 tips for anyone considering making the move to Australia.