Construction's lack of consequences

Company failures, meaningless budget prices and project deadlines, poor workmanship and even fraud. Issues that are repeated time and again without sanction.

A construction company boss folds his failing company, leaving the supply chain in disarray. Workers unpaid, scaffolders chasing invoices, plant hire firms stuck with damaged kit and no recompense. And just when the dust settles, he reappears. New logo. New name. Same game. Same man. He re-emerges without a scratch, as if the chaos he left behind was someone else’s doing. No shame. No apology. No remorse.

A demolition worker who doesn’t show up. No message. No call. Just a machine sitting idle, its engine off, its potential squandered. An entire crew down to half pace because one man couldn’t be bothered. No formal warning. No deduction. He’s back the next day, joking like nothing happened. And somehow, he keeps his job.

A civil engineering project, sold at one price, pitched to win. Now it’s ballooned. 30, 40, even 50 percent over budget. Stakeholders gasp, politicians duck for cover, and the public sighs. But nobody gets fired. Nobody’s held accountable. They just chalk it up to “scope creep” or “market volatility.” You want the truth? It was never going to be delivered at that price. Everyone with half a brain knew.

A tower block, hailed as a beacon of regeneration, now sits abandoned. It is riddled with faults, some structural, some cosmetic, but all fatal to its future. Water ingress. Poor fireproofing. Inferior materials swapped in by subcontractors with margin targets. Now the machines are moving in to take it down, just a few years after completion. And where are the architects? The engineers? The project managers? Nowhere. Off to the next job, with barely a black mark against their name.

Operators tip machines over through sheer stupidity. Engines seized by those who never checked the oil, never let the system warm up, never gave a damn. A half-million-pound excavator wrecked, not by accident, but by neglect. They smile sheepishly, shrug their shoulders, and what do they get? A slap on the wrist. A toolbox talk. Maybe a few days off site.

We don’t talk enough about the ones who show up drunk or high. You can smell it before they even speak. Slurred words. Glassy eyes. The dangerous swagger of someone who believes they're untouchable. Sent home, sure. But back again next week? Probably. Or his employer lets him go and he is back in work with another firm 48 hours later. No proper testing. No disciplinary action. No black mark against their name.

What about the company that wins the bid by undercutting everyone else? Their prices make no sense. The competition scratches their heads, but the client signs anyway, dazzled by the cost-savings. Then comes the cost-cutting measures. Cheap materials. Fewer safety checks. Corners aren’t just cut, they’re obliterated. But who’s surprised? They couldn’t make a profit on those numbers unless they cheated the system. And yet, they’ll be on the shortlist next time too. Because the client doesn’t care about ethics. They care about price.

And let’s not forget the companies caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, committing fraud. They get hit with fines, a few directors might have to take a back seat for a while. But they’re not just back on tender lists. In many instances, they were never off. Their trade association throws up its hands and claims there’s nothing they can do. So the companies retain their membership; and they maintain their aura of credibility.

You know what all these stories have in common? It’s not just that they all belong to the demolition and construction industry. It’s not just that they all point to failures. It’s that no one pays the price. It’s that there are no consequences.

We are an industry addicted to amnesty. A sector where failure is tolerated, even rewarded. Where screw-ups don’t end careers; they just become stories for the pub.

There is no culture of accountability. There’s a culture of covering your arse, of shifting blame down the chain, of turning a blind eye until the next disaster. And when that disaster comes? We act shocked. We write new protocols. Then we go back to business as usual.

We blame the weather. We blame human error. We blame market fluctuations. We say lessons will be learned. But they never are.

There are industries where incompetence means expulsion. If a surgeon makes a mistake, lives are at risk and careers are over. If a pilot gets drunk before a flight, they never fly again. If a police officer falsifies a report, they face a tribunal.

But here? In construction and demolition?

A man can cost the company thousands, endanger his team, destroy equipment, or abandon a job altogether and be back on site within a week.

And we wonder why the industry has a bad name.

We wonder why new talent doesn’t stick around. Why clients don’t trust contractors. Why insurers raise premiums and the media paints us as cowboys.

We did this to ourselves.

We let the slackers slide. We let the reckless and the feckless roam free. We let the chancers get rich while honest companies collapse.

Because we have no spine when it comes to standards.

I’m not talking about one mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m talking about repeated patterns of failure. Wilful negligence. Corruption. Exploitation. And yet, no one is ever truly held to account.

The trade associations are scared to intervene. The employers are scared to fire. The regulators are understaffed. And everyone’s terrified of litigation.

So we do the worst thing imaginable. We do nothing.

We act like this industry is too big to change. Like it’s built on chaos and always will be. Cowardice cloaked in hi-vis.

You want to fix construction? You want to fix demolition?

Start with consequences.

Make safety violations hurt, not just in the bank account, but in the hierarchy. Suspend people. Fire people. Make examples of those who take the piss out of the system.

Reward those who care. Promote those who lead. Back those who speak up.

You can’t build towers on quicksand, and you can’t build an industry on complacency.

We have brilliant people in this game. Skilled people. Proud people. They deserve better. They deserve to work in a sector where the rules matter; where showing up on time, sober, prepared, and competent isn’t optional, it’s expected.

And if you can’t do that? If you won’t? Then there should be consequences.

Because right now, failure is a revolving door. Bad companies rebrand. Bad workers resurface. Bad decisions get buried under excuses.

But one day, that complacency will come home to roost.

And when that happens, don’t say nobody warned you. Don’t say you didn’t see it coming.

You did. You just didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

And that?

That’s the real consequence.