A quick guide to the Building the Future Commission’s activity over the past month

BTF June

Here are some of the highlights from commission’s coverage in June:

  • The launch an ideas competition for younger construction professionals. The Future Thinkers competition is calling on professionals who are 35 and under to submit their the most innovative idea that could improve the built environment. The deadline for entries is Friday 18 August, and you can submit your entries by emailing buildingfuturecommission@building.co.uk  
  • Our regional tour in partnership with Constructing Excellence continued with roundtable meetings in Newcastle and Manchester, the latter with support from Willmott Dixon. Detailed summaries of both discussions will be published in the coming weeks.
  • As part of our focus on project delivery we ran a two-part feature looking at the factors behind the success and failure of MMC and asked if platform systems could offer real hope for the future.
  • In a discussion about diversity in the workplace Lara Oydele, president of the Chartered Institute for Housing, put forward a radical solution, saying boardroom diversity needs to be enforced through regulation.
  • For our net zero stream, we took a detailed look at proposals by the UKGBC and the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group (EEIG) for retrofitting homes via an energy saving stamp duty initiative. 
  • The digital stream ran an interview with ALICE technologies boss René Morkos about his ambitions for his AI software.
  • We focused on one of key public sector pipelines of work: the New Hospitals Programme, asking how opportunities can be unlocked and how construction can demonstrate a return on investment to clients under increasing financial pressure.
  • We explored radical plans to reform architectural education and whether they will be enough to restore faith in architects’ technical and leadership skills post-Grenfell.

This month we have already interviewed Gauri Talathi-Lamb, the chief executive of M&E consultant FHP, about her rise to the top for our workplace culture and leadership coverage. And we are planning to:

  • Ask if T-levels wIll deliver for archtiecture and construction as part of our skills and education stream.
  • Continue our coverage of innoviations in construction by looking at the next steps for digital twins.
  • Focus on the funding gap in school building work following the recent National Audit Office report.
  • Talk to key figures involved in the drive to ensure construction product claims are backed up by evidence as part of our focus on building safety.

A tribute to Lord Kerslake

In the past few days the commission has lost the expertise of one of the sector’s most powerful voices, Lord Bob Kerslake. The Building team has benefitted hugely from Lord Kerslake’s wisdom and experience over the years and are immensely grateful that he had agreed to be one of our Building the Future Commissioners. His passing is a huge loss to housing and development world. 

Kerslake_Lord_Bob-46_prv

 

Join us at the Building the Future Commission Conference

You can join the Building the Future Commission Conference in Westminster on 27 September to hear from leading figures across the construction industry and find out more about the work of the commission.

The day will include panel debates on net zero, digital transformation and building safety as well as talks from high-profile keynote speakers on future trends and ideas that could transform the sector.

There will also be the chance to feed in your ideas to the commission and to network with other industry professionals keen to share knowledge. 

You can follow our progress using #BuildingTheFuture on social media.

BtFC launch collateral (1)

 

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