Jim Coleman: 0:00

I look at the future of places quite often. So cities, towns, cities, regions, countries. So what will their economy look like in 10, 20, 30 years? How do they grow? How do they create new types of business, new jobs, how do they house more people? Basically, how does a place evolve in a way that it has a sustainable economic base? What kinds of industries would be present in the future? Is it the existing industries, but they've evolved and developed? Is it new industries? How big are they? How small are they, and what kind of ingredients do we need to put into place to make that happen? Infrastructure, labour market, skills, education. Sometimes it's about marketing a place so that it draws in investment.

Jim Coleman: 0:46

A lot of our work is also about specific elements in developing a place a new infrastructure, transport, energy utilities, water, digital infrastructure. Before we design that, how do we make the case to invest in it? So we do a lot of work around what's called business case. So you make the case for investment, particularly if you need to go to the government to invest in a big bit of infrastructure. How do we make the case that the benefit outweighs the cost? What are the benefits? And these are the individual ingredients to create the economic future of a place.

Darren Evans: 1:18

So have you got involved, or would you have got involved with something around the HS2?

Jim Coleman: 1:25

rail link. Yeah, wsp does a lot of work on HS2. Yeah, in terms of engineering and planning. So that has been a big project for WSP. I'm not really personally involved in it myself, but we would do the company would do a lot around the engineering and the planning and even things like landscape development, landscape solutions to the new line. We also do a lot of work around engagement, because it's such a huge project. It involves so many different stakeholders and communities.

Jim Coleman: 1:55

There's a need to engage constantly and we have a big function in WSP that does that community engagement, stakeholder engagement. So there would be a lot of big projects, the kind of bread and butter of WSP. Sometimes we're involved in those things, sometimes not. And in previous firms I've been involved in the early stages of what was called Crossrail, now the Elizabeth Line. So quite a long time ago the firm I was with then we looked at the regenerative impacts of Crossrail as it was being planned, before it was really being constructed, in order that the, the, the policies were put in place to try and maximize the benefits in particular locations. So we do a lot of work around that. If the, the government, is already on the path of investing in major infrastructure because there's a need, say, for connectivity improvements, my team would look at okay, if this is coming, then how do we maximize the economic impact and the social impact and the impacts on a kind of sustainable future pathway, so that it's not just a big physical project, it becomes something which is economically and societally beneficial?

Darren Evans: 3:01

yeah, and so what is the thing that you're working on at the moment? Many, many things.

Jim Coleman: 3:06

The exciting thing that you're working on, the exciting thing interesting project in greater manchester looking at net zero affordable housing. We do a lot of work around housing. We've done a lot of work for homes england looking at how how homes england and other agencies can help local authorities to accelerate housing delivery At net zero specifically or just general, just general.

Jim Coleman: 3:27

so the problem starts with housing at all. Just getting housing is a big challenge for all sorts of reasons, some to do with how the planning process operates or the capacity of planning. Sometimes it's about land values, viability issues, all sorts of things. A lot of it, quite often, is just around the politics of new housing.

Jim Coleman: 3:46

It's a highly politicised thing. So we've done a lot of work helping think through how to make the case for housing, how to provide more capacity, particularly to local planning authorities, to facilitate the delivery of housing. So there's just getting housing at all is then we get to thinking about affordable housing. Okay, this is even more of a challenge. There are lots of policies in place, but how do we make it work both as a policy instrument but also as part of a commercial housing project? We also look at the role of the public sector as a provider of housing and how that can work. And then we get to net zero housing. So housing per se affordable housing.

Jim Coleman: 4:28

net zero affordable housing, so this becomes even more challenging.

Darren Evans: 4:32

So can I start at the beginning, then, of that process? When you said housing, just getting housing is a bit of a political. You didn't use the word hot potato, but am I incorrect in using that word? Not really Okay, and as we're recording this, we in the air, shall we say in terms of what government is going to be running the country from the 4th of july onwards? What barriers are in the way that you see and feel and your team know easily removable if people would just get on better?

Jim Coleman: 5:06

there are some practical issues around delivering housing and there's the availability of land, how serviceable that land is with existing infrastructure. What do you mean by serviceable the lands? So, does it? Is it connected? Does it have power? Does it have water? Yeah, is that possible? Is it in the flood plain? Yeah, you know, all of these practical things have to be addressed and of course there's a cost to that. And these things are addressable because quite often it's a practical, technical solution which may be very expensive, but you can identify what the solution is.

Jim Coleman: 5:37

You have these issues and then, on top of that, you get how people feel about new housing coming into their community and how they personally see that and how they might experience it. And then it's into issues like what happens on the roads congestion, what happens to GP surgeries there's more demand for GPs, etc. What happens to local schools People have legitimate concerns about these types of things and also things like access to green space, all sorts of things and the challenge is to make the case and this is some of the work that we've been doing that delivering new housing can address all of these things if it's done in the right way. So again, there are solutions to how you plan for healthcare services, how you plan for education, how you plan for the management of green space, etc. Etc.

Jim Coleman: 6:24

A lot of people blame the planning system. The planning system is broken. I don't adhere to that view at all. I don't think the planning system is broken. The planning system is a system and, by definition, will be imperfect.

Jim Coleman: 6:36

One of the big problems we have is the capacity of the planning system, particularly on the public sector side.

Jim Coleman: 6:41

There are just not enough planners in the system to facilitate the processes, and these processes involve addressing all of these issues that people have and also an ability to negotiate with developers, with landowners, to just move things forward, move projects forward in the right way, and if you don't have the capacity there to do that, things just slow down. It's the same with you know, when you look at renewable energy and you look at things like you know onshore wind, for example it take the one of the biggest challenges is just to get the whole thing through the planning process. And again it's because there are technical issues around capacity, the physical capacity of places, and then you get come into all of these kind of socio-political challenges about how people feel about these things coming into their community, and these all have to be addressed by experts in the system. And if you don't have enough experts in the system, everything slows down and sometimes things so you're saying that the system's not broken?

Darren Evans: 7:38

is this?

Jim Coleman: 7:39

the system doesn't have the capacity I think for sure the system doesn't have the capacity. So it's you know. Of course it could be improved, there could be reforms which improve the planning system, of course, but you could probably go quite a long way just by having more capacity in the current system. I think I mean the other thing that I do, as well as working at WSPM, also professor at Westminster University, so I do quite a lot of teaching and I teach economics, economic development, mainly to people who will hopefully become planners. Hopefully I'm trying to persuade them that economics is important, think about economics.

Jim Coleman: 8:13

But, and you know, there are kind of people coming through, young people who are realistic and they're committed and they're engaged in it. But we want them to really ideally be going into public sector side of planning. A lot of people start in the public sector and then they go into the private sector because salaries are a bit higher and maybe people see a different type of career progression. So quite a lot of challenges. I think a lot of capacity was taken out of local authorities in general, planning departments, every department, and it's never really gone back in, I think. So the system struggles to take things forward.

Darren Evans: 8:45

I think. What is there that you think that universities or maybe even the government departments can do to try and attract people either back into the public departments or keep them once they're in there?

Jim Coleman: 8:57

Well, I think there is a challenge around how young people understand the planning profession or the economic development profession the part of the profession that I'm in and how they see that as an interesting, challenging career option. So there's getting people into the training and the profession to begin with, and then there's trying to keep them in the system. I mean it's difficult because local authorities are just very fiscally, financially stretched. A lot of local authorities have major financial problems. We see bankrupt local authorities, so it's very difficult. I think there could be a lot more done in terms of just communicating what these kinds of careers involve, not just for young people, but people who are already in the labour market, who might be thinking about a career switch or doing something else.

Jim Coleman: 9:45

And this is something that's quite neglected, I think, because if we look at the transition to net zero, it's all about everything changes. The way the labour market functions, changes, types of jobs that are available will change, some jobs disappear, some jobs become vital to the process, but we're not doing enough to understand who of those people already in work, who could, you know, change, who could transition, who could, with a certain degree of kind of transition-based training, education, who could you know who could make the difference, who could do this. There's a lot of emphasis on young people. That's correct to do that, but we need to take a broader perspective. I think, on on how new roles in industries like planning, like construction, could be filled. You know who's, you know how do we transform people into the kind of people who could do these different jobs?

Darren Evans: 10:34

I'd like to talk about the skills gap that we've got a bit, a little bit later on in the conversation, but yeah, just particularly staying with the, the private versus public sector yeah what three things would you say that someone needs to consider when moving away from the public into the private sector that may persuade them to stay in the public sector?

Jim Coleman: 10:57

There's certainly something around how you make a difference, I think, and of course you can make a difference societally in the private sector I like to think we do, me and my team but maybe in the public sector there's maybe possibly more of an impact there. It's also probably something that takes you closer to the community, community interests. You know, just seeing what people are dealing with in local areas, whether they're residents or businesses, etc. There's probably it used to be the case that there was more flexibility in the public sector in terms of work-life balance etc. Because things are so stretched now I don't know if that's still the case. I mean, people in the public sector work extremely hard as they do in the private sector. So I think maybe there isn't the same kind of flexibility there, Although I do see people in the public sector maybe working from home more than in the private sector. So maybe there's still a bit of as we go forward. I would like to think that, you know, as the economy improves which hopefully it will do, and you know and we grow and eventually the government of the day, whoever it is, has more fiscal room to spend on things like regeneration, urban regeneration.

Jim Coleman: 12:09

In the late 90s into the noughties there was a lot of big urban regeneration, particularly in northern cities and in London, and it would be nice to think there would be a wave of that coming again in the future, particularly as we try to decarbonise. So, being in the public sector, maybe you're closer to the policy design, the decision making, accessing funding. The day-to-day role is delivering the regeneration agenda in a place and there's still places in the country that need to be regenerated. The previous wave we see a lot of regeneration in Glasgow and Manchester and Leeds. There are places coastal communities for example that still need that kind of physical and economic and social regeneration. So hopefully at some point in the future there will be another wave of this. You have to be optimistic, I think.

Darren Evans: 13:00

It's interesting I've never considered that before that there would be another significant wave of government spending around infrastructure and around regeneration.

Jim Coleman: 13:11

Well, the current government has had for quite a long time a policy of levelling up and to my mind we've been trying to level up for about 40 years now really, since the UK de-industrialised, so that hasn't gone away as a need. There's still a huge imbalance economically between London and the south Places like Bradford. Well, places like Bradford, yes and other parts of the north of the country and the Midlands, and even in the southeast there's an imbalance.

Jim Coleman: 13:39

You can find places which are extremely wealthy, do very well, and places which are struggling. So there's still a need to level up the economy, because if parts of the economy don't aren't reaching the full potential, then the whole national economy suffers. You know there's capacity that could be generated there. So I don't think leveling up. Leveling up may change its name, may be called something else, but the principal objective will remain, and that involves physical change, new infrastructure, changing buildings, making them more sustainable, decarbonizing them. So these things are going to have to continue somehow. I think so. Eventually we'll see a wave of, I think, hopefully the next generation of regeneration projects yeah, I've seen that same thing.

Darren Evans: 14:29

I think for as long as I can remember hearing a politician speak, they've used a phrase like leveling up, yeah, and there being the difference aggregated between the north and the south so the strength of London as an international business centre, as a financial services centre, despite Brexit, continues.

Jim Coleman: 14:49

That doesn't somehow get levelled off or flattened, that continues. That strength continues to pull in investment. I mean, arguably we could be positioning London in an even stronger way, you know, as an even more important magnet to attract that investment. So that continues to happen. Places which struggle and have struggled for a long time again, these things could somehow reinforce each other. So I think there's a kind of natural tendency for strong places to just get even stronger economically.

Jim Coleman: 15:20

I think, arguably we also haven't invested enough in infrastructure outside of the south of the country. You know we've had new infrastructure in London and the southeast. We've had new infrastructure in London. In the southeast We've had Crossrail Elizabeth Line. It's made a huge difference. It's very well used. It adds to a transport system that's already pretty good by international standards. If you go to the north of the country. Arguably, if you were to connect Manchester, leeds, bradford, sheffield with much stronger transport-related infrastructure, the boost there could be enormous, but it hasn't happened.

Darren Evans: 15:57

And is that a political blocker? Is it a local blocker, where people are saying I don't want these transport links coming through my town or through my city?

Jim Coleman: 16:06

There will always be a bit of that. There will always be a little bit of that everywhere you go, but you need to take a strategic perspective.

Jim Coleman: 16:14

You need to look at. You need to think about the country as a system of places that have to work in their own right but also have to work in combination with each other. And if we look across the northern cities, for example, you've got a lot of big local authorities with kind of powerful, influential politicians who generally all want new investment to come in. I mean they have to kind of agree as a collective group on the best way to do that and to make the case. And sometimes the challenge is to make the case based on a kind of the prescribed way of making the case for investment. I mean we do a lot of business case work and we use the Treasury's usual approach to business cases called the Green Book. Anyone out there who does business case will know all about the Green Book. And for a long time the criticism there was.

Jim Coleman: 17:03

The benefits of investment were measured in terms of land value, uplift real estate value etc. And those values are always bigger in the south than they are in the north. It's just the way the market works. So you tend to bias things towards the south of the country. You don't really properly consider the strategic impact that an investment might have somewhere else. That's changed a bit, but I think it needs to change more really in of how you make a balanced strategic case for change.

Jim Coleman: 17:32

And it's not pure, just pure economic change. It's improving transport connectivity between northern cities has an economic benefit, but also the social impact, the social value that can come through that is also very important. More difficult to measure and to quantify, but it's one that you kind of know when you see it. You know and it's it's hugely important to how these places function, not just these cities but all the places in between, and how we think about the future of places. So I think that's one of the reasons why we're still leveling up. We've never really properly invested in that kind of infrastructure. It also doesn't help us that we have this kind of model. We've got one huge city right down in the southeast corner and then kind of every other city is kind of the same size spread all over the place. If we were more like Germany and cities were all similar sizes and there wasn't one big dominant city, then it might be a different story. So that doesn't help us. But that's also not an excuse for not not addressing these things.

Darren Evans: 18:30

I'm wondering what the impact of having a five-year government term being in place, of having that larger, bigger picture that you're talking about, because the government surely are only going to plead to the people to try and get re-elected, but five years is really quite short in terms of, yes, long big projects that we're talking about here it is, yes, it is.

Jim Coleman: 18:51

I mean, yeah, this. The electoral cycle is also a complicating factor. Yeah, as it is in other countries, certainly not unique.

Darren Evans: 18:59

Yeah, and I'm not for a second suggesting that we need to move to a dictatorship that will solve everyone's problems, but I'm just talking here and it's probably more from the from the voters perspective. Is that now, as I'm considering how I'm going to vote and the discussion is going around in my home about how we vote? Yeah very much.

Jim Coleman: 19:21

The thinking is short term, it's not long term yes, I mean you can't achieve change without long-term strategic planning and thinking. That does tend to get trapped within electoral cycles, unfortunately. I mean it's helpful if you have electoral cycles. I guess if you have the same government over a number of cycles, that's helpful if they have the right policy. It's also about pragmatic government. It's not just national government, it's also about pragmatic government. It's not just national government, it's also local government, I mean.

Jim Coleman: 19:51

I used to live in Manchester and Manchester's achieved an awful lot in terms of regeneration and economic development. It's a very vibrant city. When you go there, you feel the vibrancy and I think one of the reasons for that is very consistent political leadership. I mean the same leaders actually for quite a long time, but also a consistent approach to leadership and a consistent approach to presenting the city as a place for investment or a place to live or a place to do business again in a long-term, consistent way, and also an ability to work with central government, irrespective of who is in government again, a consistent approach to working with the national government and that's paid huge dividends for Manchester when you look at what's happened there in terms of development and also things like the tram network in Manchester, which is very extensive now. That's huge investments and really good clever, consistent case-making and you need the equivalent of that thinking in terms of central government. It probably takes quite the bold leadership. I think you know bold leaders and bold leadership and consistent, consistent case. You need to keep, keep making the case.

Jim Coleman: 21:02

I always say this when I talk to my clients about how do we get funding, how do we make the case for this and how can we take this project forward? And I always say, okay, you need to create a strong case for doing it, and then you need to make the case to all the people who need to hear it, and then you need to make the case again, and again, and again, and you don't stop until you get it. You don't just make the case once and then hope that it happens. You need to be consistent, consistent and same message again and again, same argument. Be clear about what the argument is and make sure the argument is technically correct and keep making it, keep articulating the case. But it does need strategic leadership. We work all over the world and we work in places that have changed a lot. You can look at a place like Dubai, like Singapore.

Jim Coleman: 21:51

They went from being not much happening at all and Singapore's case, very damaged after the Second World War and different form of government, but consistent strategy, long-term consistent strategy with key objectives which are about creating business destination, creating opportunity for investment, incentivising investment in particular ways, engineering a particular quality of life in the real estate, in the housing offer, in the buildings, in the malls, in the leisure attractions.

Jim Coleman: 22:24

So there's a kind of an engineering of a place that has positives and negatives it would have to be said, but that's done in order to attract a kind of international business elite, really from that region, but from you know. It's where, you know, europe meets Asia, in Dubai, you know, and it becomes a place, a connecting place, a meeting place. You know, it's the place to have your regional headquarters and, again, these things become self-reinforcing once it starts down that route and it starts to become the place of connectivity and business and trade and more people see it that way, then it just gets bigger, it snowballs, it does snowball, yes, and that's the kind of effect you know, coming back to cities in the UK. That's the kind of effect that we're trying to catalyse here really put ingredients in place that start to generate new forms of business and that attracts more investment and the more clustering and the skills base improves and it should become bigger.

Darren Evans: 23:27

So, with that in mind, how can sustainable practices drive the start of that snowball effect?

Jim Coleman: 23:35

Yeah. So the transition to net zero, which is a legal obligation on the part of the government, and the new government will inherit that legal obligation that becomes the basis for having to do things Decarbonize transport, decarbonise the built environment, decarbonise energy the one that everybody forgets decarbonise agriculture and food production. We always forget that one, because what we eat and how we eat it big impact on carbon. So immediately it's the need to do things differently. That then gets reinforced by the need for large private organisations to disclose where the carbon is in their operations or in their supply chain. They have to publish disclosures, they have to adhere to ESG principles, otherwise they will not attract investors from investment funds, financial sources that need to see these credentials. So everything again starts to snowball a little bit. Are you talking the likes of BlackRock? All large companies are either already having to do this or will have to do this, irrespective of where they are in the world. There's a lot of complexity, things that the rules are a little bit different, or the emerging rules are a bit different, different places, eu versus North America versus Asia, etc. So there's there's an issue of what we call interoperability on some of these ways of measuring things, but that will change behaviour. It's already changing behaviour.

Jim Coleman: 24:58

What needs to happen is that these kind of corporate moves need to start filtering down into how we plan projects, whether they're individual buildings or individual pieces of infrastructure, how we plan projects whether they're individual buildings or individual pieces of infrastructure, how we create and develop the workforce capable of implementing things, and then how that becomes impactful in terms of new jobs created, incomes going up, people getting different types of jobs, people's household incomes improving, people's welfare improving.

Jim Coleman: 25:26

So it's how those kind of top level corporate decisions start to filter down into the ordinary lives of regular people like us, you know, as we go about our daily business, and that's where sustainability can drive change, I think. But it's sustainability as a systemic process that does change things, as opposed to sustainability as a statement, you know, as as a corporate brochure. It should be a real process of you know. You should experience the change in your own life. You're, you know you should become more sustainable, but you should also feel the benefit of it, whether that's air quality improving or whether it's your house being retrofitted or you're able to get a different kind of job, and that job pays more than the one you already had.

Darren Evans: 26:15

And so how, then, would you measure the impact? How would we measure the impact?

Jim Coleman: 26:20

Well, the way you measure something depends on the objectives that you've set in the first place. So with sustainability processes, one of the big objectives is to reduce carbon emissions, of course, to get to net zero carbon emissions. So we need to measure that, to measure the carbon that is emitted or not emitted and the cost of doing that.

Jim Coleman: 26:39

But we also need to measure things like new jobs, skills, qualifications, incomes. We need to measure how people's behavi are changing. So I think one of the challenges with the sustainability process is we kind of expect physical things to somehow do the work for us, because the building is more sustainable, the car is more sustainable, the transport is more sustainable, the energy is renewable, but we can kind of carry on doing what we do.

Jim Coleman: 27:08

So we also need to measure how people's how people's behavior changes. So stop wasting things. Don't travel if you don't have to walk. Don't drive if you can, cycle if you can. Not everybody can. So these kind of behavioral things are also hugely important because we can make physical changes, but if we can't change behavior, then we're not going to get to the end results. We need ways of measuring that. I mean, the really challenging thing is you need to change mindset and the psychology of existing in the economy and society. These things are very difficult to measure, but we need to behave differently. We can regulate people's behaviour. We do a lot of work on things like congestion charging, road user pricing, which is a good way to make yourself very unpopular very quickly.

Jim Coleman: 27:56

Especially in London right, Although everybody's kind of forgotten about the ULAs now actually.

Darren Evans: 28:02

Well, this is the thing. Have they really forgotten?

Jim Coleman: 28:04

about it? Well, everyone complains. Not actually everybody doesn't complain. A vocal minority complains, not actually everybody doesn't complain.

Darren Evans: 28:09

A vocal minority complains.

Jim Coleman: 28:09

Okay, you hear a lot of noise until it happens, and then the vast majority of people just get on with it.

Darren Evans: 28:15

Just suck it up, do the British thing.

Jim Coleman: 28:17

Yeah, but these are forms of regulation. It's quite a specific form of regulation you need to pay. If you have a certain type of vehicle and you're driving in a particular direction, you've got to pay something. Okay, and that controls your behaviour. But we also need behaviour to change, which is not necessarily tightly regulated. It's changing because it's the right thing to do, and this is very difficult to measure, but we have to somehow sense that, I think, in the right way.

Darren Evans: 28:43

One of the things that fascinates me is the major changes in behaviour have come over the years through the more of a carrot approach as opposed to the slick approach so I'll give you two examples. One would be the iphone. Yeah, what has happened with the iphone has changed the way that we listen, consume, yeah music media, the way that we talk to people and communicate and that we connect.

Darren Evans: 29:07

The other example I'll give is the motor car. I put the CO2 emissions element of that, but Henry Ford wasn't after faster horses, he was after a complete shift of thinking in order to get an output. And I'm just wondering here, in the pursuit that we have of reducing carbon, are we going about it completely the wrong way? In the pursuit that we have of reducing carbon, are we going about it completely the different, completely the wrong way? Because history has taught us that to change mindsets, we need to play a different game than the one that we're playing at the moment.

Jim Coleman: 29:42

Okay, there's two things there. There's just what you said change mindset. The other thing is this needs to go really quickly. We need to make all the difference in the next five years. So 2050 is the target for net zero, but if you don't really change things in the next few years, forget 2050. We can't start worrying about this in 2045. It's too late. So we need to move very quickly.

Jim Coleman: 30:07

So the question then is OK, can we wait for people to adjust the way they behave, naturally in line with it? People do. Yes, people's behavior does change over time, because things get invented and we have to adapt to them. Well, that's good, but it might not go fast enough. And if you look at climate change and what it's already doing to places around the world, including here in the UK, we need to move quite quickly. So maybe we need a bit more stick than carrot. We don't necessarily have the luxury of waiting. Saying that, though, ideally you need to bring people with you. You know, people do need to change their behavior because they feel it's the right thing to do and they also feel it's within their ability to change. They can control the change. So I think we're going to have to just juggle a lot of this. I thought you know it's it's been a little bit too much, like we're doing what I was sitting thinking about. How do we do this when actually we should be just just getting?

Jim Coleman: 31:00

just get on with it so you do need a bit of stick and a bit of carrots and just keep juggling, keep trying to balance as we go through, because I think you know at wsp we talk about net zero all the time, continuously. We love net zero, we're completely committed. But if we were to walk down any street and just talk to people randomly, does it mean the same thing to them, I wonder? So there's probably a bit to do just in terms of getting into people's minds. People now think about the climate, maybe in a way they didn't do before, because they see it.

Darren Evans: 31:32

I think that COVID appeared, at least to me, to have a significant change in the way that people viewed their environment, their physical environment I think it did.

Jim Coleman: 31:41

I mean covered, did a few things. I think it changed the way people see their, their environment, yes, their immediate physical environment. People had to because you were stuck in it. So you had to rethink it and how easy it is to get to any kind of natural environment green space. If you have a garden, great. If you don't have a garden, okay, where's natural environment green space? If you have a garden, great. If you don't have a garden, okay, where's your nearest green space? So people had to think through that. People also had to think about how they act in the best interest of society. So we all had to go and get vaccinated not everybody got vaccinated.

Jim Coleman: 32:09

Most people did, though, because it's the right thing to do as a society to protect ourselves. So it I think it did help us maybe see how a kind of mass societal movement, in order to achieve the right thing, could happen, because it needs government guidance, government leadership, I think, which comes back to this whole point about long-term strategic leadership.

Darren Evans: 32:32

But we need to move quickly so, with the speed that we need to shift and move, I am not seeing too many people that really want to make a difference in the environment or live more sustainably or do something that's going to have an impact on the planet.

Darren Evans: 32:51

Shift and move into roles paid roles yeah where they are actually doing that, when people are at school, maybe at university. I'm not seeing any evidence that suggests there's an overwhelming flood of people that want to come into roles that will have a direct impact on CO2 emissions and sustainability.

Jim Coleman: 33:11

Yeah, well, it's interesting. So we did some research about a year and a half ago where we did a big survey of young learners aged 16 to 23,. I think they were at school, further education, higher education and we asked them about green economy transition, how they see green economy, green jobs, green skills and also what choices they're making about their own careers. And we asked them thinking about the green transition, what industries do they think are the most important in order to get us to transition to a green economy? And at the top were things like utilities, energy, construction, transport, even agriculture okay, kind of got quite out of the same. These are the things people see as important. Then we asked them what industries are you going to go into? And those industries which, from the top half, suddenly went down to the bottom half. So transport construction started to go down to the bottom of the heap and up at the top we had medicine, professional services, all very useful. But it was interesting to see that people think they identify what is important, but they don't see themselves in these industries. And I think that's one of the challenges to get people to see the opportunities. And you know there's an opportunity in terms of helping the whole process of change and decarbonisation, getting to net zero. You can play a role in doing that and driving that, but as you do it, you can also get a really good job with prospects that pays well, whether that's in construction, construction management or, you know, transport design, whatever it might be. There are good jobs out there with great prospects which will help contribute to the net zero target.

Jim Coleman: 34:49

But young people are not seeing that, necessarily seeing a disjoint between what's important, what they want to do. So that's an education communication process. What I see my own students is. I see people who are very engaged in these issues in climate, the, the role of urban places and buildings in addressing climate. I see a lot of interest and I think they're going to go into some of these jobs. But we need that to be scaled up across the whole country. So we need that enthusiasm to be tapped into and steer people in the right direction and to make sure that people know that, yes, you could go into finance or legal services or marketing or communication or technology. Yes, but you can also go into construction and transport and engineering related to energy and it's just as rewarding in terms of a energy and it's just as rewarding in terms of a career, and it's just as rewarding financially.

Darren Evans: 35:40

What would you say to persuade a 16 year old that's just about to do their, or finish their, gcses?

Jim Coleman: 35:47

yeah to, to take on board the things that you're saying um, I think tapping into, you know, a young person's interest in the future of society. Young people have lived through a pandemic. They see war in Europe, they see war in the Middle East, they understand geopolitical tensions so in some ways they're more aware. They've been more exposed to challenges and challenges that have affected them. Covid would have affected their educational experience in a way you know them. Covid would have affected their educational experience and the way you know. We would have drifted through education without having to worry. Nobody worried about pandemic coming.

Jim Coleman: 36:22

We didn't even know what a pandemic so there's maybe more exposure, more realism about the way the world works now and, I think, tapping into the need to address that and to create kind of positive societal outcomes. So there's almost a kind of philosophical kind of think about the future and your role, your contribution in the future. There's that dimension but, as I've said, you can do that and you can get a really well-paid job as you do that. I think it's these two things coming together. So you know, working in advanced material science related to construction of new buildings using MMC, you know there'll be fantastic jobs doing that and that's. You know, at the end of the day it's construction sector. So you can be in the sector, you can be doing a great job, you can be making a difference and I think that's the kind of bringing these things together will help, I think.

Darren Evans: 37:12

Well, Jim, I've enjoyed this conversation.

Jim Coleman: 37:14

We could keep going, I think.

Darren Evans: 37:15

I think now we're in a good position to go to the demolition zone. Are you ready? Yeah, ready, let's do it. So you have created two towers here. One is slightly taller than the other one, but they're pretty slim.

Jim Coleman: 37:28

Yeah.

Darren Evans: 37:29

What do they represent?

Jim Coleman: 37:30

What do they represent? Okay, so I've got two myths to bust. So one is because we've talked a lot about labor force skills in construction and I think there's still a bit of a myth that construction as an industry it's, you know, the jobs are a bit dirty, they're outdoors, a bit old-fashioned, it's all middle-aged men, which is partly true, actually aging workforce whereas actually, I think the jobs in construction are.

Jim Coleman: 37:55

You know they're evolving and changing very rapidly because of the need to decarbonise buildings, that we build new, but also the existing building stock. There's huge numbers of new jobs which you know are available to people, young and old. We need to get the training structures maybe right a little bit better, improved. But I think it's a myth to think that jobs in construction are not interesting, dynamic, changing, well, paid a lot of the time and just help with the whole process of getting to net zero. So I think that's a myth which is kind of in the process of changing, but we need to change it more and we need to address it because we need to make the workforce more diverse as well, because diversity breeds creativity.

Jim Coleman: 38:42

In my experience, well, I have a very diverse team now people from all different backgrounds, different countries, different cultural traditions, different ethnicities. It's not the first time I've had a very diverse team like this, but I've also had teams which are not so diverse, more homogenous, but I do see a greater degree of creative creativity, different ways of thinking, blending different ways of thinking together, different ways of seeing the world, which is just much more interesting and more effective, because if you're delivering a service to the world, you need to see the world in all of its different forms, really. So yeah, yeah, I love that second tower.

Darren Evans: 39:22

What does that second tower is a?

Jim Coleman: 39:23

bit more specific, a bit more technical. We've been doing a lot of work at the moment looking at net zero housing and I think the myth there is net zero housing requires really complex, sophisticated new forms of construction, modern methods of construction. All a bit difficult, isn't it? And I think that's a myth because we've seen examples of where fairly traditional, standard building processes, construction processes can be used to build net zero housing under certain circumstances, with a certain type of developer, certain type of property owner, but using the existing supply chain, maybe deepening those supply chain relationships, taking things to an extra degree of specification. But it doesn't necessarily require forms of building which people think are kind of outside of their reach at the moment. We can move forward with what we've got right now. We, you know we will probably move to more sophisticated forms of construction as we go, but there's net zero projects we could be getting on with if the circumstances are right. It's not a myth.

Darren Evans: 40:28

Yeah, we've got two for one yeah, do I have to do them now?

Jim Coleman: 40:31

you've cleared both of them up, I'll let you decide how you demolish them well, I think first of all we, my engineering colleagues, would say before you do this demolition, have you thought about the embodied carbon in this structure? So we just need to pretend we thought about that yeah, so where you go?

Darren Evans: 40:49

nice, I love that. The last question what is one thing that everyone can do that would make the most difference?

Jim Coleman: 40:58

The one thing that everyone can do stop buying stuff you don't need. If you don't need it, don't buy it If you're only going to wear it once don't buy it.

Darren Evans: 41:08

Jim, it's been great having you on the show.

Jim Coleman: 41:10

It's been great being here, thank you.

Darren Evans: 41:12

I've loved listening to your perspective, your wisdom. I could have spoken to you for at least another hour. Maybe we'll have to do a round two at some point.

Darren Evans: 41:20

Do it again, but thanks very much thank you, thank you thanks I'd like you to do me a favor, and I don't mean here just to ask you to subscribe and to follow, but what I'd really like you to do is to share this podcast with as many people as you think would benefit from it.

Darren Evans: 41:39

I would love to maintain the quality of people that are joining me on this podcast, and so, in order for me to do that, I really need your help. It could be somebody that's looking to get into an industry, but they're not quite sure what industry they want to get into. Maybe it's a teenager that is just finishing their GCSEs or they want to get into. Maybe it's a teenager that is just finishing their GCSEs or starting A-levels. Maybe it's somebody that's doing an English degree at university but is not quite sure what they want to do with that degree. So I invite you just to share this podcast with as many people that you know so that we can grow this community, so that we can maintain the quality, engaging conversations that we're having together. Thank you for your help.