We're all managers now

The debate on the construction industry's professional institutes is clearly still very much alive, and what we currently have is an imperfect model. Changes to these arrangements, however, will not happen overnight; nevertheless I believe there is much yet to be gained from existing organisations, which have been around a long time and I suspect will outlive most other industry associations in some form or another.

Professional institutes do change. Over the past decade the Chartered Institute of Building has moved from being a narrowly focused body to become a broad institute covering a range of disciplines. Quite right too! As Construction Industry Council chief Graham Watts pointed out, we need to focus on integrated teams and an integrated industry. The issues facing the CIOB are issues of a broadly based industry: it is therefore a home for building surveyors and quantity surveyors, alongside construction managers, designers and facilities managers, and many other disciplines in between. The glue that holds it all together is "management".