Book Review 
Constructing Futures: Industry Leaders and Futures Thinking in 
Construction 
 
Paul Chan and Rachel Cooper, Wiley-Blackwell 2011, 224 pages, ISBN: 
9781405157971 (hardback), GBP 69.99, AUD 140.00 

 
 
 
“The fact that I wear red trousers, it‟s not a political or artistic take.” Thus says George 
Ferguson, RIBA ex-president, one of the fifteen influential people in UK construction who 
have been interviewed by Chan and Cooper. Fourteen men and one woman, Sandi Rhys 
Jones. They talk freely about construction, and what they say has been gathered under the 
headings of two main chapters: „sustainability‟ and „connecting stakeholders‟, mixed with the 
views of the authors. After a while, the reader discovers that the true focus of this book is the 
social dimension. 
 
This is preceded by a review of ten studies of the future of construction, published over the 
last two decades. Analytical future studies relying on formalized methods of forecasting 
received a blow by the 1973 oil crisis and its consequences for the stability of the world 
economy. Thus extrapolating the present lost much of its attraction. When John Major 
replaced Margaret Thatcher in 1990, there was soon a revival of industrial and innovation 
policies together with a wave of future or foresight studies, which were or are more like 
industry consensus exercises than unbiased, scientific analyses of trends. The semi-
scientific Delphi method, based on independent and anonymous expert guesses, merged 
with old-style commissions of the great and the good to create the foresight style of cosy 
discussion of industry problems. 
 
Chan and Cooper have looked at three such UK construction foresight reports, three US 
future studies, one Swedish (clearly UK inspired) vision and finally the Australian 
Construction 2020 exercise. As with foresight studies for other industries, if you have read 
one of them, you have read all. So here they are, the drivers for change, extracted and 
sorted by our authors: ageing population, climate change, individualism, lifestyle 
expectations, political change, rise of China/India (does anybody remember the threat from 
the big Japanese contractors in the 1980s?), technology and communication, as well as the 
9/11 latecomer, terrorist threat. 
 
What can be done to deal with what the authors see as current problems in the industry? 
Central government, with all its limitations, does appear as an important force for change. 
However, the reader who wishes to pursue the role of government will have to remain 
dependent on Change in the Construction Industry, the 2006 book by David Adamson and 
Tony Pollington, who chronicled and analysed the UK construction industry reform 
movement. It is surprising that this analysis has not been mentioned by Chan and Cooper, 
who otherwise have many useful references to literature hidden in their endnotes. Given that 
the fifteen interviewees are all from the UK construction industry, not few of the problems 
raised in the book are peculiar to British society and can be difficult for a foreign readership 
to recognize. Nevertheless, since the Latham and Egan reports were read avidly by 1990s 
policy makers in many countries, the present round of interviews is valuable. 
 
Finally, three themes are identified: emergence, boundaries and contradictions; readers may 
perhaps wonder whether any type of „industry change‟ can do without these three. The word 
„emergent‟ often occurs. The future is described as elusive, nebulous, fluid, full of 
ambiguities and paradoxes. As if the present situation is crystal clear to us. 
 



 

Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building 

Bröchner, J (2011) Book review, Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building, 11 (4) 114-115 
 

115 

While the authors disclaim scientific intentions, it is still heavy reading, and there are 
symptoms of an overexpanded vocabulary, which could have done with some editorial care 
to protect both the authors and the readers from curious uses of unusual words. However, 
Chan and Cooper have written a book that contains many interesting thoughts. 
 
Jan Bröchner 
Chalmers University of Technology 
Göteborg, Sweden