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Suggests that the construction industry′s reputation for poor quality, including the failure to complete on time and within budget is well‐deserved, but that quality management holds the key to great improvements in this contractual minefield. Examines the role played by arbitration as an alternative to the law courts in construction disputes, plus the various relationships involved in construction industry project management. Illustrates four frequently conflicting elements that must be resolved by discussion before the project gets under way and argues that good management depends on balancing conflicting demands and negotiating a settlement of potential and actual disputes. Shows how contract management adjudication procedures can be controlled, from the architect′s original design to the hand‐over of the final building/edifice, concluding that, alongside TQM, a neutral adjudication tribunal is more likely to bring about a solution if it recognises the particular management culture associated with the construction industry.

The starting point for an action programme for the whole company has been mentioned in the first of the articles of this series in the January 1972 edition. It is, of course, the appropriate training of top management and those key executives who must make policy decisions affecting the whole structure of the change programme.

In July 1971 under the title ‘Task Analysis for SI Metric Training’ we published a skeleton of the training task for metric change. This analysis concluded that training for metrication presented the biggest single technical training task undertaken in British industry. We consider the task so important that, although essentially transient, it is worthy of closer attention. Over the next 12 months, therefore, we propose to deal with different aspects of metric change as they affect training, providing training officers with practical guidance in a readily usable form, in some cases with direct access to training material. Decimal Currency came and went and in many ways proved to be the biggest non‐event of the year. Whether this was largely because the training tasks were taken seriously and dealt with comprehensively, or whether it was really due to the inherent simplicity of the change can never be proved. This painless transition has already lulled some companies into a false sense of security over metric change, in the belief that changing to metric can and will be achieved with similar ease once a sufficient number of other companies have changed. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Metrication Board's fourth report, published in April, entitled GOING METRIC: PROGRESS IN 1972, was full of carefully couched ambiguities as is common with official documents dealing with delicate, or what are thought to be delicate, areas politically. Nevertheless it told a sorry tale of lack of progress with metrication in almost every area of activity within the United Kingdom.

Assuming that the stage reached in the previous article has been successfully completed ie, that top management has prepared its policy for change to metric working the most likely area of training will be in the design or technical offices.

WITHIN EVERY COMPANY THE TIMING FOR METRIC TRAINING will vary from department to department. In the January issue we suggested the preparation of a network to deal with training activities and that this should be related to the company's overall change network.

In the last issue figure 11 analysed training needs. The company analysis showed that there was little technical training required for craftsmen and even less for general production workers on the shop floor. In terms of the SI system and the technical implications, calculations and metric thinking this is so. Indeed, some consider that the bulk of the working population will need no metric training at all to enable them to work as effectively after metric change as they do now.

Whilst there is an enormous range of industrial activity, and many hundreds of job classifications, the analysis of the working task in relation to metric training needs is a much simpler matter. Broadly, the needs for metric appreciation and depth training can be split into three areas. ▾ High level management — where the degree of technical thinking and calculation is usually relatively small. ▾ Technical and middle levels of management — which includes designers, technologists, technicians — who use their technical skills in their design or managerial function. ▾ Craftsmen and unskilled workers — where the extent of the thinking is small or confined to a very narrow technical band. The range of the doing may be either extensive or limited.

summary and conclusions The fundamental effects of change on the training function ANY FAR‐REACHING CHANGE PROGRAMME SUCH AS THE electrification of railways, port containerisation, driving on the opposite side of the road, decimalisation, or metrication that will affect the complete organisation, whether this be a manufacturing or service unit or a national or social group, has certain common fundamental elements.

The first three sections of this series have considered the tasks of training in a logical, and indeed, in the chronological sequence in which the matter should proceed up to the point where new metric products emerge in the design area. From this point onwards it is inevitable that activities and training requirements become less easily classifiable in any strict chronological sequence by function alone. In the first place, training probably becomes necessary in parallel with the many other functions involved. Also the characteristic of the company and its products and procedures can differ widely, precluding simple generalisations. It is therefore proposed to divide up the remaining training areas in such a way that those functions which have similar requirements are grouped together rather than by time sequences.