Why can’t British builders be more like the Poles?

Over the past 20 years or so, I have found myself almost continuously on the client side of building contracts, large and small, domestic, corporate and charitable, in four different countries: Britain, France, Hong Kong and Japan. It is an activity in which optimism is rarely justified by experience: builders the world over tend habitually to under-estimate the time required for any task, to have trouble with supply chains, to misread architects’ plans, and to fall off ladders and take time off to recover

The most recent contract I’ve been involved with, in the hands of a team of native Yorkshire contractors and labourers, is by no means the biggest – I once supervised a £3 million office project in Tokyo – but it has been the most troublesome and frustrating. Just across the town, I have been able to watch daily progress on another site, which happens to be in the hands of a team of Poles. The contrast between the two has been very much in my mind these past few weeks, so I was intrigued by an article by Richard Ford in the Times headlined: Migrants in Britain – the official verdict. They work harder and earn more.’ ‘Immigrants have a better work ethic than the British,’ the piece goes on, ‘and are willing to work longer hours with less time off sick. Weekly mean earnings of migrants are also £60 higher than their UK counterparts.’

Well, I don’t want to go into too much detail about my current project, except to say that what was meant to be a five-month contract – a generous time allowance for a modest extension to an existing building – will certainly run to seven months, and it’s touch and go whether there will be light switches and door handles in place for the grand opening.