SAVING THE WORLD ONE DAY AT A TIME

 Letter from Lesley – Friday 14 May 2021

Edinburgh is prone to days when, although it isn’t raining or actually foggy, you seem to be wandering around in the clouds. Arthur’s Seat, that giant local landmark, has all but disappeared from view as if, like in some brilliant conjuring trick, someone it has spirited away - with the defunct volcano re-appearing - as if by magic - sometime later.

You feel, quite honestly, that you are not seeing the full picture.

I am sure it is something you all experience in your working lives when you have to pick through details and drawings, sites and submissions to get to the heart of what needs to be done.

It is the same for the Association for Project Safety [APS]. We know you are all out there - but we don’t often get to see you all. That was one of the real joys of our Building the Future of Mental Health conference this week when we could meet up – albeit remotely – with so many of you. It was a great event and I am very grateful to Ray Bone – our president elect – for hosting the day. I’d also like to thank all our speakers for giving up their time and to our sponsors – Bernard Sims Associates, Syngerie Training and Shirley Parson recruitment - for making the day possible. We have had some great feedback which is very encouraging for the home team who work so hard to put on events and deal with your queries. They don’t need me but I really – REALLY - need them.

We are now working on making highlights of the day available on the website. It will take us a little while but it is coming and I’ll let you know when it is available.

And we are already working on the flagship annual conference. Please ‘save the day’ for Wednesday 1 September 2021. It will be a remote event this year I am afraid – we’d have loved to see you face-to-face but I can’t take that level of financial risk with your money. I simply can’t lay out around ￡30K when there is the risk that either the venue may get closed in a local lock-down or you can’t travel if some new Covid variant sets us all back.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t make a great day of it. So, I am after a bit of help.

We are going to look at how the construction industry is facing the future. There will be the obvious – information about the Building Safety Bill that made it back into the Queen’s Speech this week and how this will impact the role of the PD. And we thought we would take a leap forward and look at the new techniques and technologies that are coming on stream.

But we want to know what other subjects you might like us to cover. We know you enjoy the panels and the workshops so please email [email protected] with any thoughts you have for sessions we can include. If we can’t manage to have those in the conference itself we will try to put on individual webinars for the most popular subjects.

We always want to hear from you. It’s the twice-yearly Council meeting on 19 May 2021 when the directors and all the committee chairs get together. If you want your regional representative to bring up anything on your behalf just get in touch with them before Wednesday. You will find their details at: www.aps.org.uk/about/regions