Paul Nash to prioritise ethics and continued expansion of the professional body

New CIOB president Paul Nash has told Building his priorities in the role will include championing professional ethics and governance, and continued expansion of the body.

The Turner & Townsend director, who began his year-long tenure as CIOB president last month, believes globalisation and advances in technology have brought ethics and governance issues to the fore.

He said: “Governance needs to underpin everything as when it goes wrong as we’ve seen outside as well as inside our industry it goes very wrong and the damage financially and for reputations can be huge.”

Nash wants the CIOB to raise awareness of ethics issues and provide members with the practical tools to help tackle the challenge. The CIOB’s academy is already launching an ethics and governance module this year.

This push is on top of continuing the CIOB’s growth plans to increase its global membership, as well as looking at whether the CIOB could become an academic accreditation body.

Nash added that the government needs to create more certainty around its construction pipeline. At T&T, he is working on HM Revenue & Customs’ estate plans to create 13 new regional hubs, which has already seen the government sign up for space in Ruskin Square, Croydon.

Nash also urged the Office for National Statistics to publish a separate broader measure of construction output to include consultancy work - a move the statistics body says it will consider.