If the UK is to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change a low-carbon transition (LCT) must be achieved, whereby our energy infrastructure and economy dramatically reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The thesis argues that the UK construction sector is key to the success of the LCT and proposes some longer-term skills forecasts to assess whether future supply will meet demand. The thesis uses secondary data to examine features of the UK construction sector which make it essential to achieving the LCT by building and installing the low-carbon infrastructure. Existing construction skills forecasting methodologies are reviewed to determine the required properties for the long-term projection. A novel model where underlying activity, technical change and institutional change co-evolve is developed to frame forecasts of the demand and supply of skills necessary for the LCT and identify if any potential skills shortages could disrupt it. To predict long-term UK growth patterns a new approach - Multi-channel Singular Spectral Analysis - is employed, using educational and demographic forecasts and incorporating business cycles. Technical change is explored using four Government produced 2050 pathways, each proposing a differing bundle of technologies to deliver the LCT. The skills demand for each pathway is then forecast and evaluated. Additional forecasts cover other potential demands and the impact of institutions. In particular, the additional impacts of adaptation measures and the possibility of building more dwellings to meet growing demand are evaluated. The results suggest that given appropriate policies and if the impacts of recessions are minimalised, and the number of new construction workers continues to grow, shortages can be avoided. UK skills policy and training, currently based on an employer-led philosophy, is evaluated to determine if it can provide a timely response to the increased demand for construction skills or whether a more proactive approach is required. The thesis argues that, if a more proactive engagement by the construction skills institutions and policy makers is adopted, the supply of skills could be sufficient to achieve the LCT. However, the higher levels of adaptation measures combined with building sufficient dwelling to meet demand could produce destabilising addition demand on the construction sector leading to problems with the LCT.

This thesis examines the call for reform in the governance of risk and control within major construction programmes in the UK. Over the next 8 years, Construction 2025 describes aspirations for major improvements in productivity, cost efficiency and delivery lead times. However, the pathway to reform remains unclear. Major infrastructure projects have a history of dissonance where competing value systems can create friction. However, the productive friction from multiple evaluative perspectives can also be a fundamental part of resolving emergent and perplexing problems. Construction 2025 highlights the need to develop stronger delivery relationships with an emphasis on the early engagement of suppliers and “fixing” the front-end of projects through more rigorous procurement strategies. It also notes that “much” of the waste in construction is fundamentally linked to the treatment of risk. Intelligent Clients, such as Heathrow, have been identified as exemplars in developing superior models of risk governance that work “with” suppliers to articulate the nature of value and evaluative purpose (CE, 2009). This thesis is a study of the composition and evolution of control in the construction of Terminal 5 (T5) and the more recent Terminal 2 (T2) at Heathrow. Terminal 5 is considered a landmark case that challenged traditional self-seeking opportunism with a lean partnering philosophy delivered through integrated teams. A year later Terminal 2 moved away from the partnering with suppliers, engaging a 3rd party integrator managed through an intelligent control system. At the time this raised concerns that T2 represented a relinquishing of the project management capability developed on T5 and a weaker model of integration. However, T2 was a success. This thesis draws on extensive project-based technical data, interviews with industry experts and policy reports to build a comparative picture of the calculative infrastructures. Temporal bracketing is used to trace the patterns of development into “phases of control” as a sequence of evaluative orders. Both cases move the conception of control beyond directive forms of control “over” resources to consider the nature of social integration and the complexity of enrolling allied interests. The findings explore a variety of innovative calculative technologies that translated tensions into productive friction. In both cases Heathrow did not fix the front-end. Instead an adaptive calculative infrastructure mediated collective deliberation, critical inquiry and emergent learning. These findings suggest that the current reform discussion would benefit from more explicit consideration of the importance of architectures of control in making projects valuable, governing risk and shaping conduct towards enterprise and discovery.