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Blog: Neil Kermode reflects on the importance of investing in infrastructure

The visit to EMEC last weekend by Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade, underlined the welcome change that is going on in the UK. At last the nation seems to be reawakening to the importance of infrastructure.

Vince Cable at Billia Croo with Alistair Carmichael and Neil Kermode

As a Civil Engineer I have always thought that money spent on infrastructure is investment; it is not an avoidable expense. Without infrastructure there can be no civilisation and we only have the standard of living we presently enjoy because our predecessors spent time effort and money on building the ‘stuff’ we see around us today.

Without roads, bridges, water supply, railways, housing and of course our energy system we would be practically immobile, scratching a living from a circle of land limited by how far we could walk in a few days to gather fuel, food and particularly water. But I am pleased to say we are not constrained like this. We travel freely and enjoy unheard of standards of living.

These investments made were not made esoterically. People had a particular need and found ways to deal with it. Roads and railways were built to get products from point of production to market. Water supply was put in to deal with burgeoning populations and sewers were put in to deal with the associated public health problems.  But it is also interesting to realise that often the use of infrastructure may change and develop further over time. Telephone lines were originally telegraph lines for trade, had a brief flourish of carrying the human voice as telephone calls and have now gone back to data with the internet. Electricity was originally mainly for lighting to replace gas and boiled up whale, but then found a use as a power source for motors and more recently electronics.

None of this would have come about without infrastructure. And we still frequently rely upon the decisions taken by our forebears as to where these investments should be made as we travel the rail lines laid out by Brunel, follow the lines of roads planned and built by Stevenson, use the sewers designed by Bazalgette, and the electricity supply system grid envisaged by Tom Johnston & others.

I had the privilege to reflect on this whole topic area earlier this month when I collected the President of the Institution of Civil Engineer’s award for Energy Infrastructure at the British Construction Industry Awards in London. The glittering event celebrated some of the stunning works we have seen completed this year and I was in awe of the teams who delivered us the Olympic venues, Kings Cross Station, the new Tyne road tunnel and so many other impressive pieces of infrastructure.

Presentation of ICE President's Award to Neil Kermode, EMEC Managing Director

I was therefore particularly gratified to be presented with our Award by Michael Fallon MP the Minister for Business and Enterprise who has infrastructure on his portfolio. He is the Minister in charge of this ’lasting stuff’. We got the Award as recognition for the ground breaking investments made here in Orkney that have allowed EMEC to be created and underpin a new industry.  The Award is recognition that building a test centre has so far brought together 14 different companies to test their innovative wave and tidal devices.

When dealing with the daily challenges of the job at EMEC it is sometimes hard to maintain the perspective of how important this facility is. It is one thing for us to know there is no-where else in the world that is doing this at the scale or pace it is moving here in Orkney. It is another thing to receive such tangible recognition on how important it is from those in power who are far away from the daily action.

Seeing the Olympic Delivery Team receive the accolades they so richly deserved from the Minister was a privilege. Much has been made in the construction press of the lasting effect that the Olympics produced. Not just the effect of world-class venues in regenerating the area, but in the myriad of changes that were introduced to make it work.

Many of these changes were ‘impossible’ and ‘doomed to failure’, but were done anyway by a determined and focussed team with an absolutely immovable deadline and solid political backing. Remember the debacles of the unfinished Greek venues and accommodation in earlier games? I was delighted that we learnt from that and I was amazed that we actually made our games work perfectly. We didn’t settle for a half hearted but good intentioned attempt. We made plans and drove them through. Who would have thought there would be very little opposition to the dedicated travel lanes through London; the closure of major public spaces to erect venues; the remodelling of worn out and run down pieces of contaminated industrial land. But ‘we did it’ and the world looked on amazed at what we achieved.

I have lost count of the times I have heard people say how proud they have been to have had the games be such a success. Proud, despite the fact that they were earlier privately dreading the disruption and the fear of it being a fiasco. Proud despite the fact that their only contribution was to watch it on TV, having taken no part in the actual construction or running of the events. But people were actually personally proud and buoyed up by the success. It was seen and felt to be a credit to the nation and one that everybody shared.

And the nation ‘got behind the programme’ and the level of athletes’ success exceeded all our expectations. We excelled because so many things were done right and the ‘impossible’ was achieved and the ‘inevitable’ failures were avoided.

The lesson I take from this all is that the right commitment to the right project at the right time allows impossible things to be achieved. In the field of energy supply we are on the brink of making momentous decisions about how we will power the nation for the coming generations. The opportunity to decouple ourselves from the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, and to build a sustainable energy future? A future that does not rely upon continuously finding and then burning 4 cubic miles of rotten pre-historic swamp goo every year[1]? Such ideas are regarded as ‘impossible’ and ‘doomed to failure’ by some with a limited vision of the opportunities that such a sustainable path offers.

The Olympics shows that we really can achieve ambitious plans when we set about it in the right way. We should not be shy of deciding to invest in the future.

Infrastructure changes lives. Thankfully our ancestors had the impatient itch to make things better and invested in ‘stuff’. Now it is our turn. It is gratifying to see that the public mood at last seems to see this as investment and I think we are actually getting ready to do it properly at last.


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