The business improvement consultancy joins through the Birmingham and Black Country club, bringing evidence from one contractor of error costs cut by around £300,000 a year.

Construction’s productivity has flatlined for a quarter of a century. Red Jam, a process improvement consultancy that has spent twenty years raising it in manufacturing, retail and social housing, has joined Constructing Excellence Midlands to help the sector close the gap.

The problem is well documented: Office for National Statistics analysis found little or negative growth in construction output per hour worked between 1997 and 2020, while the industry’s real value added grew 12% between 1997 and 2019 against 53% for the whole economy.

Red Jam joins through the Birmingham and Black Country club and will contribute across Constructing Excellence’s wider national network. It arrives with evidence that the gains are real: its work implementing Viewpoint Field View, part of Trimble, helped one contractor cut error costs by around £300,000 a year.

Andy Almey, Managing Director of Red Jam, said: “Joining Constructing Excellence is a natural fit for us. Birmingham is our home club, but the work is national and so is the problem. Productivity in construction has barely moved in decades, and a lot of that comes down to handovers that break down, rework that nobody counts, and digital tools that get bought but never properly adopted. We have spent twenty years fixing exactly that in manufacturing, retail and social housing. We want to bring that to the network, help drive real uptake of the tools already available, and learn plenty from the members in return.”

Red Jam works with clients across construction, manufacturing, social housing and retail. Its focus is the operational detail of how work actually gets done: productivity, rework and defect costs, and the digital tools that let site teams and the back office work from the same information. That process work is paired with leadership and capability development, so improvements are owned by the client’s own teams rather than dependent on consultants.

The network will get an early look at the approach. Andy Almey will speak at the Smart Construction (Innovation) Conference & Exhibition, hosted by Constructing Excellence in the North East at Teesside University, Middlesbrough, on 7 October 2026. His session, drawing on case studies from housing and construction, will argue that continuous improvement, rather than technology alone, is the foundation for smart construction, and that the most value comes when organisations align people, processes, data and technology.

Andrew Carpenter, Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence Midlands, said: “We are pleased to welcome Red Jam to Constructing Excellence. Their hands-on experience of process improvement and digital adoption across sectors speaks directly to the productivity challenges our members face. Cross-sector insight of this kind strengthens the wider community and supports the improved performance, collaboration and long-term growth we exist to promote.”