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Construction Leadership Council chairman Andy Mitchell has told the industry鈥檚 biggest firms to help smaller firms adopt new working practices to speed up the post-pandemic recovery.

The CLC, which has just racked up its 50^th online meeting of the crisis, has published its so-called Roadmap to Recovery, a three-stage guide plotting the industry鈥檚 route out of the lockdown.

The plan outlines how firms can use new technology to modernise and adapt to social distancing restrictions.

Productivity remains one of the biggest issues for sites with the experts warning that jobs will never operate at 100% capacity while social distancing protocols remain in place.

, Mitchell said: 鈥淸One of the challenges is] how the bigger firms help the smaller firms embrace technology when fundamentally people haven鈥檛 got research departments and they haven鈥檛 got people sat there working away on things.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot to do and a lot of that is about the industry helping itself, because the big players won鈥檛 get any work if the small players can鈥檛 keep going.鈥�

And Fergus Harradence, deputy director of construction at the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, said major firms had to show leadership to help smaller firms get through the recovery phase.

He added: 鈥淚t鈥檚 a conscious choice to do things differently and to try and change things but genuinely I think we are on the cusp of being able to do that. You need a few more large organisations to consciously decide that they will act more collaboratively.鈥�

BuildUK chief executive Suzannah Nichol said firms had to work together more for any recovery to stand a chance of working. 鈥淚f one part of the supply chain stops working, then it all falls apart,鈥� she said.

Asked about what would happen in the event of a second wave of covid-19, Mitchell said construction now has experience of operating during a lockdown.

He added: 鈥淐omparing other industries, if you take the pubs and restaurants, which haven鈥檛 had a chance to get back up and running in a 2m distance world, they haven鈥檛 had a chance to learn how to keep going. We have.

鈥淚 think we would do a lot better than we did first time round but of course some of the agonies which people are struggling with will still be there and I think it鈥檚 the cumulative effect on the commerce and cash side of things which I worry about more than I do the practicalities of physically starting again.鈥�

Yesterday, Atkins became the latest firm in the industry to announce it was cutting jobs because of the slowdown brought on by the covid-19 pandemic. Wates, M&E contractor T Clarke and brickmakers Ibstock and Forterra have already said they are axing close to 1,000 jobs between them.