Sharp focus

John Sharp has a lot to live up to. "BSRIA chairmen are a little bit like Popes," says chief executive Andrew Eastwell, "They emerge over time." The white smoke over BSRIA's Bracknell operations probably has more to do with air tightness testing than the arrival of Sharp as chairman late last year, but he is hoping that his appointment will be a holy alliance of industry and research.

Sharp is head of information and communication technology at m&e contractor N G Bailey after a varied 14 years with the firm. His expertise in IT and e-procurement dovetails nicely with BSRIA's current initiatives. His electrical engineering background could also help steer the Association into waters it has previously left uncharted.

BSRIA's remit has broadened over the years to embrace processes as well as technology. Its focus on contracting issues during the 1990s is one of the reasons why Sharp is now at the helm. "I first came across BSRIA during its productivity survey in 1996. Come to the launch, they said, and get the document free. Being a Yorkshireman, how could I refuse?" jokes Sharp.

Since that low-cost introduction Sharp has not needed freebies to see the benefits of BSRIA involvement. In 1998 he was asked to join Council, the Association's advisory body, before being voted on to the Board, where up to six non-executive directors from industry join hands with up to five full-time executives. He was elected chairman last November.

John Sharp has a long track record in electrical contracting. A cousin of industry legend Mike Stothers, Sharp joined Stothers at William Steward (now ABB) following an apprenticeship with contractor Reginald Maude. His time at Stewards included being deported from Africa. "Stewards had bought the overseas interests of Barclays Electrical and I went out to work in Zimbabwe after independence. I only had a holiday permit. After five months trying to get a working visa, they decided that there were people from their own country that could do the job. I was served a three-day deportation order, but managed to stay for three weeks."

After eight-and-a-half years, he also felt he'd outstayed his welcome at Stewards. "Coming to Baileys was the best move of my life," says Sharp. "I was able to get rid of all those accusations that I'd only got where I had because of who I was related to." After a couple of years running projects and becoming a senior contracts manager, Sharp was offered a branch directorship with N G Bailey in 1995. "I turned it down for family reasons. I didn't want to be 250 miles away from my eight-year-old son from my first marriage."

IT is the tool that helps to create standardisation but culture is the thing that makes it work

The refusal doesn't seem to have harmed Sharp's career at Bailey. "I moved into a continuous improvement role and spent 12 months visiting all of the operating locations and carried out a productivity review." This brings us neatly to where Sharp's involvement with BSRIA began.

Sharp feels strongly that IT is the key to better productivity, but it can't work on its own. "Building services companies lack standardisation," he says. "IT is the tool that helps to create standardisation, but culture is the thing that makes it work. We have spent a lot on IT but have yet to crack the culture of the industry. But we are trying hard."

One area under investigation at N G Bailey is to look at products that help procurement, and the company is an active partner in the Building Services E-Commerce Trading Group (see page 27), which aims to kick-start electronic procurement and drive down transactions costs. "We all buy lots of little things regularly, so transactions costs are huge in this industry." Sharp predicts that ultimately such an initiative may shave 2½% off costs – not bad if, like N G Bailey, you spend around £170 million on equipment each year.

Sharp hopes that BSRIA will now become involved in the project. "Once the Group came up with something viable, it was always our intention to pass it on to someone like BSRIA to work on it on behalf of the industry." Such collaboration is the backbone of BSRIA, but while N G Bailey is confident that commercial advantage is not eroded by the sharing of information, others in the industry prefer to keep things to themselves. "The E-Commerce Trading Group has never tried to take away competitive advantage from one another," points out Sharp. "Chris Butchard of ABB [a member of the Group] put it very nicely when he said 'Competitive advantage is in the manipulation of back-end data and not in its transfer between parties'."

Sharp sees the initiative going further but doesn't think the industry is ready for it yet. "Originally I saw it more as tying in to the design side – you pick up an object, drop it into the design drawing, carry out the calculations and you are guaranteed the data is correct because the object carries its own attributes. Baileys is ready for this but the industry isn't, so we've had to put it on the back burner."