I’d like to tell you a story. It is a story that can trace its origins back to a Toyota factory in Toyota City, Japan in the 1950s. Our tale centres around an engineer named Taiichi Ohno, who is remembered as the man who shaped Toyota’s production system.

Now, as in all factories, there was a constant pursuit of ever-greater efficiency at this particular Toyota factory. And that was a problem. You see, efficiency and output climbed higher every day, but mistakes piled up too, with minor defects snowballing into costly recalls. The workers noticed these issues, but stopping the production line was unthinkable. And yet, good old Taiichi Ohno spotted a solution to these growing problems. And that solution was the workers themselves.

He proposed a simple solution. A solution he called The Andon Cord. Any worker, at any time, could pull that cord and halt the entire line to fix an issue or a defect on the spot, rather than allowing it to progress down the production line.

The Andon Cord worked. It didn’t just change Toyota; it changed manufacturing around the world. The success of the Andon cord was not due to technology but rather the culture of ownership it fostered.

Successful though the Andon Cord concept was in the sphere of manufacturing – and then later in software development, health care and customer service – it would not and could not work in the UK demolition and construction sector, even though the industry is plagued with defects that cost it upwards of £20 billion per year in reworks.

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When construction giant Carillion collapsed in 2018, it did so with debts of £2 billion owed to more than 30,000 suppliers. By the time that ISG folded in 2024, it had amassed debts of more than £1.1 billion. At the time of the collapse, it was about to post a pre-tax loss of £138 million. Closer to home, when demolition contractor Squibb Group went under, it did so owing more than £24 million.

In each instance, creditors had little prospect of recouping any of the monies owed.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the course of the past year or so, around 5,000 UK construction companies have slipped beneath the surface. Many of these will have done so with debts, some of them hefty. Those debts will have had a significant impact upon the entire supply chain, from plant hirers and scaffolders to piling contractors to recruitment companies.

Now I could ramble on about how this typifies the boom and bust cycle of construction. I could hold forth on how this is a reflection upon the wafer-thin profit margins within the sector. I could wax lyrical about how none of these major collapses has led to any kind of shift in the way in which this industry does business. And I could also question just how many of the directors involved in all of this bounced back, seemingly unscathed, to start afresh while their supply chain was left to carry the can.

But I am going to take a different approach in this instance. And for my inspiration, I am going to use the satellite navigation app, Waze.

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Once every three years, they come. From over a hundred nations, from the frozen north to the burning equator, they make their way to Munich. A million strong, they arrive at the Messe Munchen exhibition centre, drawn by something greater than mere curiosity. This is not just an exhibition. This is Bauma. And for those in the demolition and construction industry, it is more than a trade show. It’s a pilgrimage.

They come to stand in the shadow of giants. Towering cranes stretch toward the heavens like the spires of imaginary cathedrals, their booms reaching into infinity, their steel forms etched against the sky as if in silent prayer. The faithful gaze upward, dwarfed by the sheer scale of human ingenuity, feeling the same reverence one might feel when standing beneath the arches of a great temple. This is a sacred space, a place where faith in machines, in industry, in progress, is reaffirmed.

Massive dump trucks crouch like mythical beasts, waiting to be tamed. Excavators, their arms outstretched, promise power and precision beyond imagination. Each machine is more than metal and hydraulics. To those who gather, they are symbols: of progress; of strength; of the very foundation upon which the world is built. They are relics of past triumphs and harbingers of the future, as if forged by the gods of industry themselves.

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