B&ES president stresses need for commitment to new thinking
The construction industry must demonstrate its commitment to new ideas, new thinking and new working practices —whatever the drivers and wherever they may originate. That was the message from the new president of the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES), Sue Sharp, last month. She is the first president since the association changed its name from HVCA in March 2012.
She told guests of the B&ES president’s luncheon, ‘It is important to emphasise that our decision to rebrand was just one element in a repositioning programme designed to ensure that the association remains relevant and “fit for purpose” in the years and decades to come.’
Key elements in the programme include refreshing the association’s member-services package in line with the developing marketplace and enhancing its influence with Government and other key stakeholders. The programme also aims to cement existing relationships with other industry organisations that share B&ES’s goals, aspirations and values, and providing a ‘natural home’ for all building engineering services specialists.
Sue Sharp elaborated, ‘Our initiatives, aims and objectives must also be viewed in the wider context of the industry, a nation and a planet for which change is the only constant — and one in which the rate of change is infinitely greater than ever before in our history. What we did yesterday is no longer good enough.’
Referring to the association’s long recognition of the need for a single organisation to represent the wider building-engineering services sector and having no doubt that B&ES is ideally placed to be that organisation, she stressed that B&ES did not intend ‘to encroach on territory occupied by organisations with whom we already have well established and well developed relationships.
‘It is our stated intention to forge new relationships and renew existing alliances with all like-minded organisations, and so ensure that the voice of the industry as a whole is heard load and clear on the key issues of the day.’
