Inaugural Clic Dinner

Twelve leaders, one table, no pitches: how CLIC began

It started in a bar. After a Clear North event in Manchester in the summer of 2024, a handful of commercial managers and directors from completely different sectors drifted downstairs and started talking shop: payment disputes, building regs, the state of the market, the things nobody says on a panel. The conversation ran long. Somebody pointed out there was no room in the industry where senior commercial people from different sectors could actually compare notes. So we built one.

The first CLIC dinner sat twelve senior commercial leaders around a table at King Street Townhouse in May 2025, under the theme "commercial leadership in a changing world." Nuclear, power and utilities, retail fit-out, civils, rail, M&E, residential — contractor-side, client-side and freelance, deliberately mixed by sector and by generation. Chatham House Rules from the first minute. No slides. Nobody selling anything.

What even is a Quantity Surveyor anymore?

The room's strongest conviction was that the old measurement-heavy QS has quietly been replaced. The modern job is contracts, commercial risk and money — as one member put it, "the modern QS is money," and "a good QS will pay for themselves." The measurement work has largely moved to engineers, while commercial teams administer contracts, protect entitlement and recover cash. Someone captured the timing problem exactly: clients "only decide they need a quantity surveyor when someone owes them a hundred grand."

The other half of the conversation was title inflation. Commercial managers, associate directors, senior commercial managers — a lot of one-upmanship, the room felt, over what is functionally still a QS role. The consensus was that contractual complexity, NEC in particular, is what kept the profession relevant: the more complicated the contract, the more you need someone who can actually run it.

AI: from buzzword to bottom line

This was the most animated part of the night, and it was neither hype nor dismissal. Members shared real uses — producing an impacted programme without a planner, running contract reviews against your own criteria, using specialist tools rather than plain ChatGPT because the general models "spit out the wrong clauses." The counter-theme was false confidence: AI produces plausible answers that are sometimes fundamentally wrong, and the danger lives in the hands of people who can't tell the difference. "It doesn't have common sense," one member said. "The thing AI can't do is strategise a deal over dinner. That's where the human still wins."

Data security drew a hard line. Members from high-security environments said they simply cannot put sensitive data into these tools, and nobody in the room could say for certain where that information ends up. The most memorable perspective was the long view: the biggest automation money always chases the highest-paid, hardest-to-train jobs, which means commercial work won't be first in the queue. One member, unbothered, summed up his position on the whole thing — "I'll be retired before it matters."

Progression, or a hollow title?

The distinction the room kept circling was responsibility versus accountability. "People want the title," one member said, "but they don't want the accountability." Leaders described inheriting senior-titled people who couldn't run a job on their own, hold a subcontractor to account, or have a difficult conversation. Titles, several agreed, are increasingly handed out to retain people in a tight market rather than to mark that they're ready.

The hopeful counter-pattern was that almost everyone who had progressed fast could point to being thrown in early and trusted. The development model the room admired was autonomy with a safety net: "Don't come to me for permission — tell me what you're going to do, and I'll correct you if needed." And a warning that the industry keeps promoting brilliant technical QSs into management with no management training at all, then wonders why they struggle. "Manage your managers," as one member put it.

Does chartership still matter?

The most divisive thread of the evening. Some still value RICS as proof someone has been tested under pressure. Others were blunt that it has become more a badge than a guarantee you can run a job. The sharpest line came from the recruitment side of the table: "No contractor has ever asked me for a RICS-qualified freelancer. They want competence" — someone who can value works and issue a notice, not a glossy brochure.

The start of something

The first dinner ended the way every one since has: with the recognition that the problems in the room weren't unique, and that talking about them honestly with cross-sector peers was rarer and more useful than anyone expected. "It didn't feel like another CPD event," one guest said. "It was real talk." The next dinner was set for July. The table has grown since, but the rule hasn't changed: no pitches, just the conversation the industry doesn't otherwise have.

CLIC is an invitation-only network for senior commercial leaders in UK construction and infrastructure. Dinners operate under Chatham House Rules. If you lead a commercial function and want a seat at the table, apply through the site.