Construction’s image appears to improving

The survey also found that public attitudes to the industry are not as bad as contractors themselves assume it to be.

The Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS) commissioned Lychgate Projects to carry out a survey to gauge the general public's views of the construction industry – the third year this research has been conducted, to monitor how the public's perception is changing over time.

Questions were put by telephone last year to a nationally representative sample of more than 1,000 people. The data has now been crunched and analysed. (See charts below.)

CCS exists to improve the image of construction and make building sites more tolerable for their neighbours. The survey suggests that scheme managers can claim some success for their work: the public's overall impression of the construction industry has improved from a rating of 5.5 out of 10 in 2009 to 6.2 in 2010.

Those interviewed who had a particularly positive impression of the construction industry have risen from 31% in 2009 to 40% in 2010.

One of the questions put to the respondents each year is 'what is the most annoying thing about the construction industry?' and, while the same issues that appeared in 2009 have appeared again in 2010, the number of people affected by these issues has fallen in nearly every area highlighted.

Delays caused by traffic (34% down from 37% in 2009), construction vehicles and cars parked around sites (32% down from 39%), mud and dust around sites (25% down from 30%), poor pedestrian routes around sites (25% down from 27%) and noise (23% down from 30%) were the top five issues raised by the respondents. While it is clear that the participants of the survey were less annoyed about the above points than in 2009, there is clearly still room for improvement, CCS said.

Lychgate also contacted more than 2,000 members of the construction industry. When asked about the general public's impression of the construction industry, both contractors and clients perceived the public's impression as more negative than it actually is. When contractors and clients were asked how they think the public viewed construction, they gave it an average score of 5.7 and 5.5 respectively, but the actual rating the general public gave the industry was an average of 6.2.

Got a story? Email news@theconstructionindex.co.uk