We Need to Build More Cathedrals and Shout About It!

Quarrying and its associated downstream activities of building products and road construction represent one of our country’s oldest, most basic and essential industries.

In developed western societies, construction, the main output of quarry products, is one of the first indicators of significant economic change and is often used by analysts as a gauge of the health of the economy and a barometer for economic growth or decline. For instance, the Construction Products Association construction activity monitor for the second quarter of 2008 said ‘The global economic slowdown has meant significant downward revisions in economic growth forecasts over the course of the last six months’.¹ Serious stuff as economic slowdown means reduction in construction demand, a slowdown in the construction of the built environment, loss of employment and a rising cost of living, all of which impact directly or indirectly upon everyone in our society.

Why is the quarrying industry, which is the feedstock of construction and a fundamental part of the economic cycle, not better appreciated and understood by the population at large? Why is the general public so uninformed about quarrying, the people who work in it and the key part the industry and its employees play in supplying the materials that construct the built environment? Particularly, when the industry plays such a vital part in determining their economic well being and that of the country as a whole?

It seems puzzling, certainly disappointing and even worrying that the very bedrock (pardon the pun) of infrastructure development in our society and such an important indicator of economic growth and ultimately personal well being should be so little understood and appreciated by the general public, particularly when society demands more and better housing, ongoing road improvements and continued expansion and development of the built environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the issues and changes that have created this apparent dichotomy.

History suggests that this was not always the case, that there was a time when quarrying was seen as an important and vital part of communities; when the workforce and the quarry were highly regarded as an indispensable and valuable part of the local population. There are many examples of this throughout the UK, with perhaps a good illustration being the town of Dalbeattie in the south west of Scotland which still advertises itself as ’the granite burgh of the south, due to the thriving granite industry in the area and set in the granite hills of Galloway’. The local tourist board in Dalbeattie is proud of its heritage, both past and present as quarrying still occurs in the area and presumably it is seen as a competitive advantage to advertise this to tourists. In Aberdeenshire, Kemnay granite was exported throughout the UK and was used to build several London bridges including the Tower, Blackfriars, Southwark, Vauxhall, Kew and Putney. The Queen Victoria Memorial opposite Buckingham Palace was also built using granite from Kemnay. Importantly in the early part of last century the Kemnay population, who numbered 3000 were directly or indirectly involved with the quarry, through relatives, neighbours and friends, many of whom derived their living from working in the quarry. Kemnay granite workers were in great demand not only throughout the UK, but travelled with their products to America and beyond. They were proud of the quarry’s products, its reputation and knowledgeable about the projects that the quarry supplied.²

It might also be worth considering the relative importance of the quarry manager and quarry owner in these heady days of yester year, as they were frequently regarded as important members of the local community, alongside the bank manager, the doctor and the local clergy. They were respected within the communities that they lived and worked in and were usually key members and attendee of local community organisations and events. Their opinions and views were sought at local business forums; they opened fetes and occasionally officiated at their most difficult and politically charged duty of judging the best sponge cake at the annual women’s rural show! The quarry owner and the quarry manager lived in the community and were an integral part of it. They had their finger on the pulse of the town or village around the quarry and were enmeshed in the local politics. At the risk of plagiarising a current health and safety maxim, many of these old fashioned quarry owners and managers, exhibited a form of ‘visible felt leadership’ in their communities that had the effect of ensuring that the people of the town or village had a personal, intimate and balanced view of the quarry and its relative worth to the local and wider community.

In these days, before the advent of widespread car ownership, the workforce was usually drawn from the surrounding community. They played an important and often underestimated part in informing and educating their neighbours and the wider populace, about the positive aspects of the quarry, its operations and the prestigious projects built by the fruits of their labour.

Not for them the apocryphal tale told by one of the current crop of senior managers working in quarrying in Scotland, who attended a school in the 1970’s, with a quarry nearby and when he or his classmates were struggling with their lessons or being inattentive, the teacher used to say, ‘you better listen and learn or you’ll end up working in that quarry next door!’- Possibly a sentiment that sums up the general view held by many outside of this industry today.

To counter this, in the early 1990’s BACMI (the QPA) introduced an initiative for school children called ‘Understanding Industry’. This required senior members of quarrying companies to go into schools, to give lectures and form discussion groups with 5th and 6th formers, to explain about the benefits that the industry brought to society. It was apparent to many of us who entered into these initiatives that the younger generation seemed to know intuitively about the much publicised negative aspects of the industry - traffic movements, dust, noise and environmental impact, loss of habitat and so on, but they were completely unaware of the benefits that quarrying provides in terms of the built environment and their ultimate well being. They knew little of the mitigation works carried out by the industry to reduce its environmental impact, nothing of the environmental improvements brought about by high quality restoration works and had no appreciation of the fact that wildlife only exists in quarries, because they represent safe habitats for species to thrive and grow in.³

Quarrying was not on their radar as an industry that they wanted to work in and they knew practically nothing of the micro or macroeconomic relationship between the quarrying industry, construction and the built environment. The extent of this ‘intuitive’ negative view coupled, with a complete lack of understanding of the quarrying industry that was evident within the classrooms was a very real concern to many of us who took part in the exercise. It suggested a serious gap in the mindset of society in terms of their appreciation and understanding of the industry and more seriously, that this was being compounded by each generation. As stated by one 5th former who attended a good school in an affluent leafy city suburb, “I thought that many of the workers in quarries came from prisons to break up the stones”- obviously she had been watching too many American films about working on chain gangs!

Despite being a well intentioned and excellent initiative, there is little doubt that Understanding Industry and other similar initiatives did little to increase public awareness of the quarrying sector, (maybe more of a comment on the quality and input of the participants!), as who but the most myopic commentator would not agree that the mindset gap that society has regarding the industry, has widened even further in the intervening years.

If you have read this paper to this point, I can imagine you saying so what - that is history and we cannot go back in time! Clearly we cannot turn the clocks back, nor would we want to and I am not suggesting for a moment that we should, but we can learn from history and perhaps examine some of the issues and factors that have contributed to the general public’s uninformed and often distorted view of the quarrying industry today.

Perhaps, society’s lack of empathy and understanding of the economic benefits and the important role of quarrying is a comparatively recent event and an examination of some of the major changes that have taken place in the industry and society over that period might shed light on themes that could be developed to improve this undesirable position.

The last 40 years have seen fundamental demographic changes in society that have had a significant impact on the UK quarrying industry.

In many areas, throughout the UK, the traditional recruiting grounds for the industry have all but disappeared. Recruits often came from mining, heavy industries and the farming industry as they could provide artisans and a labour force whose background, experience and employment expectations meant that they could easily adapt to the nature and requirements of the industry. Communities local to quarries provided this labour pool and it was not unusual to have three generations from the same family working in the quarry. The demise of the mining industry and the substantial reduction in heavy industry, coupled with greater mobility through car ownership has meant that in many quarries the workforce has changed and is often no longer drawn from the local communities surrounding it. In these circumstances the old traditional links and empathy between the quarry workforce and the local community broke down and the quarry was often seen at best as a necessary evil and at worst a threat to the well being of the community.

These changes in the structure of society were also accompanied by a cultural shift in the expectations of successive generations of the population who had expectations of employment in the ‘softer and more centrally heated’ type of occupations that society had to offer. These changes made quarrying an unattractive industry to work in for prospective employees.

Add to this the completely unacceptable health and safety record and deplorable environmental performance that quarries had up to and around the middle part of the last century, then even the most blinkered devotee of the industry must accept the negative impact that these had on influencing society’s opinion of quarrying. In the eyes of the public, quarries were not only a bad place to work in, but they became a bad neighbour to have on your doorstep.

The most obvious and arguably the most significant transformation that occurred in the UK quarrying industry during the past 40 years was the change of ownership. This period saw a gradual transfer from small independent owners and managers to corporate ownership and corporate management by national, multi-national, international and latterly global businesses.

The corporate culture introduced by these major companies has brought about fundamental changes to the quarrying industry in every area of its operations. The major companies showed a positive lead, by introducing and accelerating substantial improvements in many parts of the industry and to a large extent they led the independent owners and operators in this respect. Working conditions have improved significantly over the period, with demonstrable continuous performance improvement in health and safety. The industry still has a lot more to do in this crucial area, but working in a quarry has never been safer and the workforce can expect to complete a day’s work and go home to their family at the end of a shift without injury. Great strides have been made in improving and measuring environmental performance and in sustainably exploiting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of the areas where the quarries operate. Product innovation has seen advances in the development of new sustainable products and in creating initiatives for community engagement, with the best receiving national recognition in the Sunday Times top 50 Best Green Companies.⁴

The need to improve health and safety standards prompted and heralded changes in the legislation that governed the industry, as the 1954 Mine and Quarries Act was replaced by the 1999 Quarries Regulations. The new Regulations were also designed to reflect the change in ownership by placing many of the duties under them on the ‘Operator’, usually the company with the intention of moving away from the progressively obsolete 1954 Act, with its ineffectual definitions of section 1 Quarry owner’s responsibilities, section 98 Quarry manager’s responsibilities and the section 103 Deputy manager’s responsibilities.

These improvements and changes still beg the question set at the outset of this paper - why does the general public not appreciate the benefits of quarrying, its economic importance and the resultant impact that the quarrying industry has on the well being of society?

Could it be that the industry has still not found an effective way of communicating with the general public and has failed, quite abysmally to use its assets effectively to get the message across to the people who matter? To what extent have those within the industry been the architects of their own misfortune and added fuel to the flame of the Nimbys and the anti-quarry lobby?

In the days before corporate ownership and control, communications were of necessity much simpler and much less sophisticated, as described in the early part of this paper. The quarry owner, manager and their workforce were the communicators and the best advocates for the industry. They were the disciples who met and communicated with the public. They made them aware of the benefits of their quarry and of its importance to their community and who would disagree that they did not do a reasonable job in their time?

In the present day, there are few would argue that the role of a quarry manager is important, demanding and challenging requiring a high level of qualification, training and competence. However, is there a case to answer that an unintended consequence of the reallocation of duties and responsibilities under the 1999 Quarries Regulations has to some extent emasculated the role of the quarry manager within the new corporate structures? Has this had the effect of reducing their former status and position within the corporate framework, which in turn has affected their ability or willingness to communicate regularly and effectively with the general public and spread a positive message about their industry?

Irrespective of the subtleties, real or imagined that legislative change may have brought to the status of quarry managers, perhaps today’s breed of ‘professional’ quarry managers have allowed themselves and their relative position within the corporate pecking order to be progressively weakened? Their apparent unwillingness and reluctance to put their head above the parapet, to speak out on issues that affect them or their industry and to engage frequently and communicate effectively with the general public about the positive aspects of quarrying, has done them no favours. Is the industry recruiting the right type of quarry manager and by their silence are we to assume that they are content to work in an industry that is so misunderstood and so much unappreciated by the public at large? By their inactions and apparent preference to remain in the shadows of the industry, have they failed to get a positive quarry message across to the public and contributed to the public’s overall lack of understanding and appreciation of quarrying?

The operator, quarry manager and the workforce of today usually live apart from the local community around the quarry and cannot communicate and influence the local communities as their predecessors did in the past. Today therefore, there is an even greater need for more effective means of communications and for the manager and others to have a high visible personal contact with local and wider communities to spread a positive quarry message.

Today, in many major companies, communications with the press and public are often regarded as part of a centralised function, requiring an anonymous ‘spokesperson’ to send out a statement on its behalf. This statement may be in response to questions about a particular quarry, its operations or refer to the impact the quarry has on the general public or worse still make the cardinal error of saying, “no comment”. In the more enlightened major companies, some quarry managers are given media training, but in practice are rarely given (or take) the opportunity to speak to the press and public. Selected members of the workforce are rarely used (or trained) as communicators with the public and hardly ever with the press - perhaps the industry is the poorer for this omission. It is generally accepted that the more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate, but with appropriate training in handling press and public relations the front line personnel - quarry managers and selected and trained members of the workforce may be better advocates for the industry and better able to change and influence public opinion than the carefully crafted, but anonymous centralised statement.

Assuming that candidates have the requisite academic and functional skills required there is a strong case to say that communication skills should be the key competence for quarry managers, for selected members of a quarry workforce and for many of the wider specialist occupations within the business as a whole.

The principal professional and trade associations representing the industry are the Institute of Quarrying, the Quarry Products Association and the British Aggregates Association, all of whom represent the interests of those employed within the industry and of their member companies. In the spirit of this paper it might be appropriate to question their effectiveness in influencing public opinion and creating positive images about the industry in the mind of society over the last 40 years. This period has seen the introduction of unprecedented legislative change that has affected the quarrying industry and this has been a major preoccupation of the trade associations and the Institute of Quarrying over that time, but seems to have had little effect on influencing and helping to create an empathetic society that understands the benefits of the industry.

When the trade associations have not been fighting their mutually destructive internecine battles, they have concentrated a large part of their limited resources in dealing and communicating with government, both national and European, the legislators, civil servants and local government officials. However, there has been a lot less effort and resource put into shaping and influencing public opinion over the last 40 years. For example, how much easier would it have been for the industry to fight the imposition of the aggregate levy in 2002, if public opinion was on the side of quarrying and would any government of any political colour have had the temerity to introduce a bill that was so unpopular with a supportive public who were backing the industry? Is it a pipe dream to imagine attending a planning committee meeting for a new green field quarry, with a large deputation from the local community there in support of the applicant and singing his praises? Naive thinking perhaps, but who knows if more of a bottom up approach, rather than a top down one, had been applied by the Institution and the Associations over the last 40 years, that a more sympathetic public and a correspondingly less hostile government may have been the outcome.

During this period, could the Institute of Quarrying have been, less introspective and more outgoing? Could the Institute have been more directly involved in shaping public opinion, by adding to and aggressively supporting the debate about the importance of the quarrying industry and the great benefit its members contribute to society? By adopting a much more high profile approach in the press and media, could the Institute have served their members better and raised their profile and member’s status to higher levels? The Institute of Quarrying website states that Quarry Management has been the official journal of the Institute for 90 years and as a reader for more than 20 years, its dull, esoteric, anodyne and repetitive format is hardly the stuff to inspire its readers and if it fell into the wrong hands (heaven forefend a member of the public!), it would turn them off the idea of quarrying forever!

Is it now time for the Institute, its members and the trade associations to ‘Move with the cheese and enjoy it’?⁵

Public opinion and perception is formed and affected by what the public see and hear on a regular basis. When they look at the site information board for a major construction project, they usually see the names of the engineering consultants and main contractors, but rarely the name of the quarry supply company. This is particularly the case for large contracts, when the value of the quarry supply can form a major part of the total contract value. All the more puzzling, as the supplying quarry can not only constitute the largest cost element of the contract price, but be the only member of the supply chain, with committed substantial capital assets employed to supply it. Generally, the engineering consultants and the main contractors have limited capital assets in their operations and businesses, but seem to get a disproportionate amount of publicity (usually positive, particularly on major prestigious projects) from the media. As a consequence, the public are often unaware of the important part played by the supplying quarry. In the public mind quarry supplies and products are rarely associated with prominent or important projects, which on completion can often bring real and tangible benefit to society.

Main contractors would argue that as the signatory to the contract, they carry the greater risk and liability, but a review of the terms and conditions contained in many standard model forms of contracts and local variations and amendments that are often added to the standard contract, when compared to the risk that a quarrying company runs in not getting a sufficient return on its capital employed, might suggest that the greater risk lies with the quarry company.

As a major supplier to the construction sector has the quarrying industry allowed itself to subordinate its worth and the relative importance of its service and products, thus adding to the gap in thinking and to the negative mindset that the public has of the industry?

Three people were at work on a construction site. All were doing the same job, but when each was asked what the job was, the answers varied. Breaking rocks, the first replied. Earning my living the second said. Helping to build a cathedral, said the third.⁶

Perhaps the industry needs to build more cathedrals and have its employees and Institutions shout about it!

David N Scott

1. Construction Products Association, published in association with Ernst and Young
2. John Fyfe – One Hundred and Fifty Years 1846 – 1996; published by Time Pieces Publications
3. Natural Quarry – A photographic Quest by David Boag; published by Aggregate Industries UK Ltd
4. Aggregate Industries Sustainability Report – Ten Years ten Places
5. Who Moved My Cheese – Dr Spencer Johnson; published by Penguin Putnam Inc
6. Peter Schultz – Researcher at the Scripps Research Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are entirely those of the author.

Notes on the author:

David N Scott BSc, MBA, FIQ, FIHT, FCMI is recently retired from the position of Area Director for Scotland for Aggregate Industries. He is currently working on a part-time basis for the company on various projects in the UK. He was previously Operations Director for Tarmac Quarry Products in Scotland and has been associated with the industry for over 30 years. He was a past Chairman of the Quarry Products Association in Scotland and steered the setting up of the QPA in Scotland as a limited company, with a Board of Directors, affiliated to the UK QPA. This change allowed the Scottish arm to respond more effectively to the plethora of unique legislative change coming from the Scottish Executive. He was a former Director of St. Margaret’s Hospice for Scotland and, unlike Jeremy Paxman, he is a Burns enthusiast.