Thinking ahead

A few months ago a significant seminar took place involving senior representatives from the ECA, HVCA, CIBSE, BSRIA and FETA.

I had the privilege of chairing the first two days, but the really productive results emerged under the auspices of Dr Don Leeper on the final day. He and his fellow workshop facilitators managed to pull together the strands of discussions that had emerged and assemble them into a series of tasks for the institutions and associations.

The seminar's theme was the future of the building services sector in 2010. One demand was to find a more exciting name for the sector. There was general concern at the lack of good quality students joining m&e degree courses. Some courses have closed through lack of students and others are dangerously close to the level of economic viability. Delegates commented that the title 'building services engineering' sounded dull and was unlikely to enthuse seventeen year olds to choose it as their university discipline. But no one came up with a better name.

Does it matter? Perhaps we should concentrate on the vision rather than the title. At this year's CIBSE agm, incoming president Terry Wyatt gave an outstanding presidential address. He bluntly threw down a challenge for the industry: adapt or die. He predicted major financial threats to the sector from greater standardisation of products and design, but also real opportunities in the drive towards sustainability and the requirement to confront the environmental crisis. Those are at the core of the work of the m&e sector. It is not a sunset industry. On the contrary, it should be at the forefront of new technology and creative innovation.

That should be the message to young people contemplating a career. It is, as Wyatt rightly stressed, about making buildings work. We can all admire great architectural or engineering projects as we walk by them, but passers-by do not live or work in them. Those that do use them want an office that functions; a theatre with good lighting and ventilation; a tunnel with effective signalling and fire escape mechanisms; or a hospital with the right temperatures and a clinically excellent operating theatre.

The m&e sector will be at the forefront of innovation for the new techniques that will emerge by 2010

All of these vital features are the responsibility of the m&e sector in design, manufacture, installation, commissioning and on-going maintenance. The m&e professional is adding value to the community and the environment, and the work may well outlive its creator.

The seminar sought to concentrate upon what clients would require by 2010. Perhaps inevitably, much of the discussion focused on what clients expect now but by no means always get. That may well be partly their fault in that they do not know what they want and are not prepared to pay for it properly in any case. But it is plain that in seven years' time the sector will contain startling new features, many of them driven by nano-technology, which we cannot even guess at present because engineering change can happen so quickly.

Just think of the speed of innovation nowadays compared with that in the time of our great-grandparents. In 1875, no one had a telephone. By 1975, most businesses still only had land lines. Now, everyone has a mobile. In 1874, Remington first produced a commercial typewriter. Only in the 1960s did typewriters become electric, and no one had a computer-driven word processor. Fax machines have developed in the last 30 years, and as for e-mail, when I left Parliament in 1992, no MPs had it – now they all can and most do. The only certain thing is that the m&e sector will be at the forefront of innovation for the new techniques that will emerge by 2010.

Who will pay for them? Public funding is important. It has driven IT development in Finland and Singapore, where far-seeing administrations have pumped millions into research. But at the end of the day, the market will decide.