highly competitive nature of the market for such houses results in high productivity and continually lower costs. Freed from all controls, the American housebuilding industry can provide houses for a large proportion of the population at prices commensurate with their average annual family incomes. The responsible authorities are urged to take all possible steps to make available to the industry adequate supplies of essen- tial materials, particularly timber, and to ease or remove the existing onerous restrictions on private enterprise house- building, for sale and rental.
12. Building owner, architect, quantity surveyor, con- tractor and sub-contractors should all co-operate more closely to reduce building costs. In particular, each should do his part in carrying out without delay the procedure laid down in the Form of Contract for the certification of work done and the settlement of intermediate and final accounts in order to reduce the heavy financial burden imposed on the industry by present practice. Consideration might also be given to the introduction of the American practice of making final payment within 30 days of completion of work on the security of a contract guarantee bond.
13. Consideration should be given to the simplification of the Standard Method of Measurement.
14. The efforts made to stimulate recruitment to the American building industry appear to have had a considerable measure of success. In any comparison with the apprentice- ship system in Britain the following points are worthy of examination:
(a) the considerable range in the permitted age of entry into
apprenticeship, usually between 17 and 25 years;
(c)
(b) the varying length of apprenticeship in the different
trades, the average period being under 4 years; whereas standards of training are nationally prescribed. the Local Joint Apprenticeship Committees retain com- plete responsibility for recruitment and technical training. 15. Finally, it is necessary to emphasise the vital part which the individual operative and his union officers must play in the struggle for increasingly higher productivity and progressive reduction in costs. When architect, contractor, sub-contractor, materials manufacturer and supplier, local authority and Government department have all made their essential contribution to maximum site efficiency, the ultimate responsibility for production must still rest on the individual operative on the job. The fact that output in the building industry is so much higher in America than in Britain is not due only to the better organisation which has been developed and the natural advantages that are enjoyed. It depends, too, to a great extent, upon the keenness and initiative of the individual workman, who is proud to be a member of the building industry and anxious by his efforts to maintain the status in society and the standard of living he derives from it. He takes an interest in the job as a whole, and not merely in his own particular operation, and co- operates wholeheartedly with his employer and with the other workmen. Changes in site organisation, where these are necessary to raise output, are readily accepted, and he willingly assists in the development of new methods and techniques.
16. The high standard of living enjoyed by the American building worker depends entirely upon the efficiency and pro- ductivity of the industry. The individual workman knows that his place in the industry can only be maintained by his personal productivity and efficiency, just as high wages rates in the industry can only be sustained by collective efficiency. Here, too, the British operative must realise that his standard of living is just as closely linked to the efficiency of the industry and depends upon the personal contribution he is prepared to make towards it. Present living standards, low as they are compared with those in America, are in danger unless each and every member of the industry plays his par! in eliminating waste of effort, improving organization, and building up a high rate of productivity. Whether Marshall Aid is continued or not, failure to increase the present rate of production in the British building industry, in common with all other industries, is likely to result in a series of industrial and economic crises, with the overshadowing danger of large scale unemployment and its grim consequences.
17. American experience confirms, indeed emphasises, the inter-dependence of all sections of the industry and the need for a closer partnership between them in the real sense, expressed in greater individual effort as part of a team. Even if architects plan better, contractors organise better, sub- contractors co-operate better, and operatives produce more, the maximum efficiency will not be secured unless each, in his individual capacity, makes the necessary effort simultaneously and co-operatively.
18. It is possible in this concluding chapter to indicate only a few of the more striking aspects of American building practice. The outstanding lesson to be learned is, in our view, that the British building industry must be mobilised to eliminate everything which stands in the way of greater efficiency-be it inadequate preparation of work, bad organiza- tion by architect or contractor, or the continuance of unneces- sary or restrictive controls or practices so that each member of the industry can, in his own sphere, perform the best work of which he is capable. The Report as a whole must be studied in detail by all engaged in the industry. The greater the interest that can be stimulated, the greater is the likelihood that some real advances may be made. Discussion, unless followed by action, is not sufficient. The professional bodies and the national organisations of the industry, both at the highest level and in their branches throughout the country, should set up machinery to enquire into their individual and collective contributions to productivity and the ways in which these can best be combined in the national interest.
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