Landing-craft production could draw on industrial skills outside traditional shipbuilding. Great Western Railway's Swindon works and Southern Railway's Eastleigh works built wartime craft, developing techniques that naval constructors described as different from shipyard practice. Their practical approach proved efficient despite initial scepticism from naval constructors. From 1942 onward, structural firms followed their methods and extended LCM production beyond conventional shipyards. The preference for 'lazy, smart' workers is an argument for finishing a job efficiently enough to avoid having to repeat it. In this interpretation, railway and construction firms benefited from workers who looked for the quickest reliable method. The criticism of 1960s and 1970s management thinking is that it too often treated visible activity and hard work as evidence of efficiency without examining how the work was done.
Notable Point · 42:52-46:02
Railway works adapted LCMs for wartime mass production
Great Western and Southern Railway works developed construction methods distinct from shipyards and became important builders of wartime LCMs.