For years, our industry has forever spoken about how we need to change, how our industry needs to be better and how we can change things for good. We have moved on quite a bit from the years when we used to have targets of certain number of deaths per project, but things have not really moved on in a significant way to transform things. Our industry builds communities, cities and at the center of most of our civilized lifestyle, yet our leaders do not get the visibility, accountability as well as credit they deserve.

What does it take to lead and change the construction industry? Does our leadership need to represent the industry’s ambition? Does leadership need to inspire us to see our industry in a different light. Is our leadership repetitive? The type of people at the top never seems to change and this says a lot about what we need to address. We often look at - filling the skills gap, making our industry more inclusive, improving the carbon footprint of the industry, but one thing that does not change is the leadership. This is part of the problem.

Having recently supported the Diverse Leaders Pledge led by the NLA, we are making progress with industry partners and coming together to further improve things on a practical level and making our industry more inclusive.

As much as inclusion is a big part of improving our industry and workspace, it is not the only issue. We have several cultural issues to address and whichever way you want to look at it, we have been able to solve them, and someone needs to take responsibility for this – Leaders.

A representative leadership strategy, with everyone involved in the big decisions and discussions is only going to benefit all of us. Mental health issue, suicides, diversity, poor payment terms and all the other issues that affect our space, can all be solved if our thinking changes and we are able to see from a different lens. 

Our industry is often client led, with the Government being the biggest client and so often this has been the starting point for us doing the right this. However, have we ever thought about the industry itself leading the way rather than waiting for financial factors to change? We do care and it is about time we take charge on issues that affect us.

As we start our business and economic recovery in 2022, a lot of fresh thinking needs to be part of our decision making and thinking. This year BPIC have a number of engagements to enable us to collaborate, including events to promote careers, networking events as well as our awards ceremony - https://www.bpicnetwork.com/bpicawards . We are going to be starting our new office fit out soon and this will enable us to have a home for built environment inclusion! Let us build back better, more sustainable, and inclusive. 

Come along to the Diverse Leaders reverse mentoring evening where leaders can demonstrate their commitment to industry change by meeting and learning from more junior professionals.