The Construction Playbook

What is the Construction playbook?

The construction sector is key to the UK economy and contributes £117Bn towards our gross domestic product (GDP) along with the employment of over two million people. The Public Sector plan to spend around £37Bn on contracts and services within the sector and have published the Construction Playbook in support of the governments ambition to transform our infrastructure networks over the next decade. The ambition is to build back better, faster and greener, ultimately helping the UK recover from the turmoil and lockdowns driven by the recent sanitary outbreak.

Right at the start

We all know that upfront planning can save a considerable amount of time, effort and heartache, and the playbook focusses on getting projects right from the start, and has set clear goals.

• Improve safety within the industry.
• Focus on whole life carbon approach and strive for net zero emissions by 2050.
• Promote social value.

The playbook explains how the Public Sector and the industry will work together in the future to help reform the Construction Industry.

Key themes

The playbook will transform how the Public Sector will assess, procure and manage public works, projects and programmes and will play a major part of our lives over the next 10 years. To achieve this the playbook explores six key themes:

• Setting clear outcome-based specifications.
• Favouring long-term contracting across portfolios
• Standardising design
• Driving innovation and modern methods of construction
• Incentivising better outcomes via win-win contracts
• Strengthening financial assessment of suppliers.

The playbook has been developed by the cabinet office and is mandatory across all central government and encouraged for the wider public sector. It applies to all new projects and programmes from December 2020.

Please click here to view the Construction Playbook.