Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding for new infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, does not provide taxpayers with good value for money and stricter criteria should be introduced to govern its use, the Treasury Select Committee has concluded in a new report published on 19 August 2011. The poor value is as a result of the higher cost of borrowing for the private sector compared to government, which could be adding as much as 70% to the cost of a project. The committee has recommended that in future government could provide the funding for these projects.

Although criticising the cost of PFI it does not mean the end to these schemes which are now widely used throughout Europe. More likely is that a new means of funding projects will be developed. The Treasury is expected to respond to the report in October.

The ONS has just launched a new website. This includes data on construction New Orders and Output. The new format is still a little difficult to follow, but there is a listing of all of their construction reports on a summary page. Included in this is the Construction Statistics Annual 2011. This is a useful document which includes data on many subjects including Planning Applications, National Lottery Funding, Local Authority Expenditure and Government Departments' Construction Plans. Don't download the document on the summary page as the links do not work, but there is a listing, with downloads hidden in the website.

In his recent blog article for CIMCIG Dave Mycock reminds us about why we add value and how this is measured. In these tough times, providing customers with value is one of the keys to survival and success, it is useful to be reminded.

In his summary Dave says "The lesson is that once you have established that your brand is different then you can start building trust with your customers. All of this means that adding value through differentiation requires a good deal of consideration. Get it right and you're laughing; get it wrong and you're Woolworths, C&A, Ratners, Laker Airlines, De Lorean and so on."
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Winning awards, be they run by Building, Construction News, other publications or CIMCIG's Construction Marketing Awards is a good means of raising profile. A useful article has been published by Ross Sturley a judge for the CMAs. He makes the point that many people do not read the judging criteria and consequently miss out important information hence failing in their bid. Ross lists 10 criteria when submitting a bid: Read the instructions; Hit the deadline; Get the judges' attention; Hit the judging criteria; Trust the judges; Don't do it on the side; Put people in it; Look at last year's winners; Keep it brief and Make it pretty.
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