CEO Andrew Carpenter – November Overview
So here we all are again in lockdown. Thankfully, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, recognised the importance of the UK construction industry in his speech when introducing the latest set of rules and regulations. For our sites it is ‘business as usual’ with the rest of us confined to our homes again. I feel very confident however that thanks to the sterling work of the Construction Leadership Council once again the sector will prove how adept we are with dealing with a crisis and assist the nation through this period of uncertainty.
For CE Midlands, our works seems to grow and grow as the need for collaborative working increases with clients looking for innovative solutions to maintain their building programmes. Our work with Nottingham Trent University continues at pace and we were able to provide an update on the Clients’ Commitments Best Practice Guide at the hugely successful Construction Summit on 5th November 2020. At the Summit we were delighted to welcome Andrew Stephenson MP, Minister of State for HS2, to deliver the keynote presentation and this may be viewed by visiting our brand new web site, along with all the other excellent speeches, on our brand new web site at www.cemidlands.org. Our grateful thanks go to Shakespeare Martineau for generously sponsoring the online summit and providing such a thought-provoking presentation that may also be viewed on our new web site.
In addition to Andrew’s keynote presentation and Richard Whittaker and Stuart Grabham updating the guide, excellent presentations followed from Simon Rawlinson of the Construction Leadership Council on the Roadmap to Recovery, Vince Kesterton of Interserve on the building of the Birmingham Nightingale Hospital with all the best practice examples that could and should find their way into everyday behaviour, and Simon Delahunty-Forrest in unveiling the Birmingham City Centre 2040 Future Plan. However I have to say I was most proud of the presentations given by Paul Chatwin, Amrit Sagoo and Noel Street as they unveiled our ‘How to Guide to Mental Health and Wellbeing’, ‘How to Guide to Best Practice Procurement’ and links with the Grid respectively. The hours and hours of effort provided by our members throughout our network of Theme Groups came to fruition and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Details of all these new documents again may be found on our new web site.
Our regular Friday webinars continue, although there has been a slight downturn in viewers which is disappointing. Please do support our November and December webinars as we have an interesting line-up of speakers and topics including this coming Friday 13th November 2020 when Steve Clarke covers the all-important issue of ‘getting more for less’ which never seems to go away and is particularly critical during these troubled times. Further topics include required skills for MMC, the Building Safety Bill and of course our eagerly awaited monthly ‘State of the Nation’ sessions.
We have added to our series of podcasts when I interviewed Suzannah Nicholl, Chief Executive of Build UK, so please do listen to that when you have a spare twenty minutes. It may be found by visiting: https://audioboom.com/posts/7719647-suzannah-nichol-mbe-chief-executive-of-build-uk
The big news since our last newsletter however is a complete turnaround in terms of how we intend to run our 2020 Built Environment Awards by taking them online. The ceremony will take place on Friday 4th December at 12.00pm East Midlands and 2.00pm West Midlands and we hope that all members and supporters will tune in to see who has been successful and help celebrate best practice across the region. As it’s taking place online and during the afternoon rather than make it a ‘black tie’ event we’ve decided to make it ‘loud & proud’ and would ask you to watch in your loudest shirts and ensure you use social media throughout the event to publicise both yourself and the event – let’s go viral! Details of how to book may be found elsewhere within this newsletter.
Finally, I would like to thank the increasing number of people actively involved in CE Midlands with the results previously outlined apparent across the region. We continue to be the ‘driving force’ for the improvement agenda across the Midlands construction sector and if you are not yet actively involved please do so now!
ANDREW CARPENTER, Chief Executive CE Midlands
