Building the Future Commission: March progress report

I’m drawing breath to reflect on the work of the Building the Future Commission over the last month. There is a lot, so much in fact that while I intended to post this article on the last day of February it’s taken me till today to take stock, so now that we're into a new month I'm badging it the March progress report. What follows are the highlights of Building Magazine 's latest coverage for the commission and links through for further reading. And we’ve got a lot more in the pipeline so I’ll give you a taster of some of what’s to come.

Before all of that, I should mention our new Ideas Hub and how to take part. We’ve had a lot of emails to the commission, which has prompted us to set up a more structured way to submit your ideas to us. It’s simple really: we have an online form that asks for some basic details about you and for a maximum of 500 words to explain your big idea. We ask you to outline the problem you are seeking to address, the change that needs to happen and the benefit that would come as result. We’ll review submissions, get back to you if we have any follow up questions and present as many as we can on our website. We’d love to hear from you, so do follow the link by clicking here or on the image below:

?So, to some of the commission’s activity in February:

• We launched the Young Person’s Advisory Panel to harness the knowledge of the next generation of leaders in the construction sector. This panel brings together a great bunch of talented younger people (I won't name tag everyone here but they work for firms and organisations such as Ramboll . Faithful+Gould , RIBA , Turner & Townsend , Home Builders Federation , Gleeds , The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) , 戴德梁行 , Fenwick Elliott LLP . Chartered Institute of Housing and many more) and I’m pleased to say they are now all connected in a LinkedIn group where they are having regular discussions about key topics. Already they have tackled how to help young people navigate pathways into #construction #careers and shared what they think are the best bits of #innovation happening in the industry. The plan is for us to unpack some of these discussions in a virtual meet up and to share recordings with our wider audience next month, so watch this space…

• In our search for case studies that point to industry innovation we visited the University of Salford's Energy House 2.0, a ￡16m research facility that tests the homes of the future for thermal performance, energy efficiency and coping with extreme temperatures for our #netzero and #energy stream. ?
• We ran an in-depth piece on what the government’s proposed ban on single staircase developments is likely to mean for construction and housebuilding for our #buildingsafety stream.
• We talked to Sir Robert McAlpine about how it teamed up with consultancy Timewise to understand how on-site construction could benefit from flexible working, and we heard first hand accounts from workers about difference this approach makes to their every day lives for our #workplace #culture and #leadership stream.
• We investigated the potential of building performance rating system NABERS UK as an alternative to Part L for our #netzero and #energy stream.
• We visited the Hanover Square development by Bond Street station in London to consider major infrastructure projects can catalyse the delivery of excellent placemaking for our creating #communities stream.

And for what is coming up soon:

• We have our first regional roundtable debate in the East of England in partnership with Constructing Excellence on 23 March, and we will be reporting on the proposals for change that emerge from that discussion, which is focused on tackling the skills shortage in the region, soon afterwards. You can find key dates in the commission’s diary on our refreshed commission web page. A big date to flag up – though some time in the future - is our Commission Summit on 27 September, when there will be the opportunity to come along and hear debates and take part in Q&A sessions in person . We will release more details of what will be happening on that day in the months to come.
• We will publish an interview a big hitter in the world of #infrastructure talking about how to get big infrastructure projects delivered in the current political climate.
• We will examine whether the #qualifications landscape needs to change and assess whether more flexibility is needed for our #skills and #education stream.
• We will assess a potential new model for collaborative working and procurement being used by the Ministry of Justice for its #prisons programme which is for our #projectdelivery & #digital stream.
• We will look at plans for one of the largest planned timber #housing development and lessons it could offer in how to secure community support for relatively high density schemes in the parts of the country that tend to oppose #development.

That's not an exhaustive list, we have ideas coming in all the time so expect much more. And in the meantime you can follow our progress using #BuildingTheFuture on social media and another reminder that you can now get involved by sending submission to the commission through our Ideas Hub.