Month: November 2014

2014 has been a successful year for CEYH – more to come in 2015 !!

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Yesterday over 20 guests and CE members came together to hear about the CEYH centres activities over the last year and to be invited to get involved in our CEYH 2015 awards on July 17th 2015 at York Railway Museum .

The  morning was a bit of a treat and an opportunity to launch our forthcoming awards , invite judges and sponsors to be involved and also let members know about  a couple of funding opportunities for organisations in the YH region .

Before jumping into the awards I took  a moment to celebrate and share some of the successes CEYH has achieved since starting back in September 2013 .

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1. Collaboration with the CE club

As one of Constructing Excellence’s nine regional partners we have forged excellent working relationships with our CE club to deliver a consistently well attended programme of monthly breakfast events here in Leeds , Sheffield and Hull – striving to promote work done through our CE national member task groups on changes to CDM regulations , new models of procurement , passiv haus and green building excellence, BIM and many other topics . All events have received good to excellent ratings in feedback showing we are doing something right and meeting the needs of construction organisations big and small within the region .

2. Exciting Membership offer

Aside from our programme of events we have worked with the club to develop a membership offering which is appetising and spiralling offering a wide range of activities to get involved in at a modest rate including attendance at our sister networks thinkBIM and green vision free of charge .

3. New Regional Board

We continue to develop our regional centre and in January will commence our CEYH board meetings which will drive and shape our agenda over the year to come . More of this to be announced in the New Year !….

4. Engaging the Young Professionals

Not only have we developed and strengthened our relationship with our club and national members but we have also worked closely with our young professionals group G4C supporting them with events marketing and most recently their G4C awards which are now open for submissions and will take place on Feb 13 in Sheffield . The winners of the G4C awards will form the short list for our young achiever award at the regional awards next year .

5. Celebrating Success at the CEYH Awards

Our regional CE awards have gone from strength to strength with our most recent awards attracting Peter Hansford, Chief Construction advisor to the government , as the keynote speaker and over 350 construction sector professionals coming together to celebrate success across the region. Further to this  Yorkshire and Humber took  home two awards for Innovation and Client of the year at the national CE awards in London .(see great blog write up by our very own @lizschofieldmay here )

Our relevance and effective dissemination of national activity at regional level is excellent and we are continually striving to improve our offering to members developing publications such as our winners brochure which is produced annually from our awards ceremony .

6. Communicating our message

Liz Schofield  is working hard to develop our blog and communication channels so that our members and winners get great publicity for all of their work and now have a following of over 1000 on our twitter account and articles from our events being published on the national website and other leading sites such as BIM crunch and UKGBC pinpoint .. All achievements we  are very proud of .

7. Coordination and collaboration

Our new project coordinator Donna organises and liaises with our guests , speakers and members and who above all keeps me on my toes and ensures we are reaching out to new partners and collaborating across the disciplines and sector .

8. Striving for excellence

We strive for cross disciplinary excellence in construction  advocating collaborative working and digital construction and aim to provide the same excellence for our members with a regular , enjoyable and informative home / network that is inclusive and provides a platform for open knowledge exchange and networking .

We have come a long way in just over a year and look forward to what we may be able to achieve in 2015 with an established supportive board who will drive and direct the centre to provide events and networking and sharing of lessons learnt in projects and from task groups in an open way

If you would like to be more actively involved in the region by becoming a member please do call our team on 0113 8127601. As members you get full access to all of our events and opportunities to promote your organisation and projects via our blogs and social media platforms . We are always looking for case studies and thought pieces by members to share on our national platform and our regional blog – you can write for us , be interviewed by us for a tweet chat or speak at one of our events … There are no barriers to entry – we just want to join up the region and collaborate and form long standing relationships which bring benefits to us all .

 

This success is down to a few peeps :

John LORIMER – for being a supporter of what we do and believing that we could make a success of a now very strong regional centre

 Tom Oulton for tweeting furiously – speaking at events and acting as a CE and BIM ambassador in his role as CIC regional BIM champion

Steph and Will at Addelshaws for supporting and hosting our excellence breakfasts on a monthly basis

Duncan Reed for leading our BIM implementation training and consultancy with construction smes across the uk and for his continued support and dedication to thinkBIM

Thanks to Andrew Arundel for  supporting the development and growth of the regional centre .

Last but not least to the regional professional bodies who continue to work closely with us to ensure we avoid clashes and collaborate where possible – thanks to Mark Conner and Simon Owen at CIBSE , Mark Wilson at CIAT and Fiona Evans at CIOB for their active support .

 

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After I gave a round of CEYH activity in the region Kirsty Oldroyd introduced the EU Funding available for training and skills of construction employees within SMEs in the Sheffield City Region – here is the LRF Construction Oview  . For more information regarding this funding offer please make direct contact :

 

For further information:

Kirsty Oldroyd – LRF Programme Manager Ingeus

Koldroyd@ingeus.co.uk

07785 620823

Ian Price – Skills Broker Ingeus / Account Manager Skills Made Easy

Ian.Price@sheffield.gov.uk

T: (0114) 2296183

M: 07827 236805

 

Showcasing the next generation of construction professionals, the G4C Yorkshire & Humber Awards 2015

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G4C – Generation for Change – was established in 1998 as the junior branch of Constructing Excellence and, following Constructing Excellence’s lead in collaborative best practice, G4C seeks to engage and inspire the next generation of construction professionals across disciplines.  The group holds events and initiatives to provide members with opportunities both for networking and access to the latest innovative thinking to equip them with the necessary skills to drive continual improvement throughout the industry.

G4C Yorkshire & Humber are holding the first annual G4C Awards 2015 in Sheffield. These brand new awards aim to showcase excellence and celebrate the achievements of up and coming young construction professionals in the Yorkshire and Humber region and the companies who support and train the future leaders of the industry.

There are 6 categories to compete for, which will be judged by a panel of local industry leaders and experts:

  • Apprentice of the Year
  • Student of the Year
  • Trainee of the Year
  • New Professional of the Year
  • Commitment to Employee Development
  • G4C Award for Young Achiever

The inaugural G4C Awards winners will be presented with their awards at a special ceremony to be held at 6.00pm on Friday 13 February 2015 at the Mercure St Paul’s Hotel in Sheffield city centre.

If you have any queries about any of the above or just want to discuss the awards further, please contact caroline.key@citb.co.uk

Discounted sponsorship opportunities available at our CEYH Awards 2015 preview event

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Join us as our guest on Wednesday 26th November between 08:00 and 10:00 for an intimate Constructing Excellence breakfast at Addleshaw Goddard LLP, Sovereign House, Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1 1HQ.

At this event we will be announcing the date for our Constructing Excellence Yorkshire & Humber 2015 awards. We will be outlining discounted sponsorship opportunities as well as looking to recruit our judges. The 2014 awards were a great success and we received fantastic feedback from guests, winners, judges and sponsors. Find out more about last year’s event and regional successes in our 2014 winner’s brochure here.

“It was a splendid event which I very much enjoyed. It was great to see such enthusiastic support for the event” Richard Gibson, Gibson Design Consultancy

“m3 had a really positive experience with our invited customers also enjoying the evening. The format of the awards mixed in with the meal worked really well, allowing us to have a good chat” James Oliver from M3, sponsor of the Innovation Award.

 

We also have two funding opportunities for construction organisations in the region, which we would like to discuss with you and help you take advantage of free training & consultancy available.

To book your place, please send your details to ckeevents@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Do you know what BIM is?

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On 18th November around 30 students & construction professionals gathered at Sheffield Hallam University to hear from four well known BIM advocates to introduce BIM and offer advice and guidance from three different perspectives, architect, engineer & contractor. A summary of what was discussed is detailed in the event storify below.

 

Double success for Yorkshire & Humber at this year’s National Constructing Excellence Awards!

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On Friday night around 400 construction professionals gathered at the Tower Hotel in London for the National Constructing Excellence Awards 2014, this year sponsored by The NBS. Our Yorkshire & Humber region was well represented, submitting strong entries across all 12 categories and were rewarded with victories in both the Innovation and Client of the Year categories.

The Innovation category was won by Yorkshire Water & Morgan Sindall Grontmij JV (MGJV) for their “Starting a REVOlution” submission which focused on the ground-breaking Remote Energy Visibility & Optimisation (REVO) control module product. This highly innovative product, developed by Yorkshire Water, uses 18 different control modules to allow for optimal use of energy consumption, generating a demonstrable reduction in energy costs. The judges commented “this project identified a problem facing us all, costly energy consumption. This innovation has the potential to be viable as a commercial product not only to the water industry, but to any energy-intensive industry”.

Our second winner of the night was East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) who triumphed in the Client of the Year category. Nominated by BAM, ERYC won by demonstrating that they are an extremely proactive and collaborative construction client, committed to a culture of partnering through their development of supply chain integration and employment and skills initiatives via the YORbuild framework, the first UK framework to receive CITB National Skills Academy status. They are also the only council to hold Registered Practice Status with the Association of Project Safety and have achieved Investors in People to Gold standard. The judges remarked that the winning client “showed clear consistent leadership and commitment to the core Constructing Excellence principles”.

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Celebration time! Tom Oulton, East Riding of Yorkshire Council

For a full overview of all the night’s winners, please view our CEYH event storify below. CEYH, based at Leeds Beckett University is the regional Constructing Excellence partner for Yorkshire & Humber.

BDE Podcast on Passivhaus with Elrond Burrell & Chris Herring

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We are delighted to be able to share with you the podcast of a unique interview conducted by Mark Wilson from Building Design Expert at our recent Constructing Excellence YH Passivhaus breakfast seminar with Elrond Burrell from Architype Architects and Chris Herring from Green Building Store . This interview explored the entire design & build process of Passivhaus with some interesting insights from our two event speakers.

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Architype Architects are based in Hereford and have a passion for sustainable architecture. Hand in glover with sustainable building design is the need to reduce energy use. Architype have achieved this by adopting the Passivhaus design and building standard; with a growing reputation for use of the standard on a commercial scale with offices and school buildings, in addition to large scale and one off housing projects.

The Green Building Store represents Passivhaus design development from the contracting side of the industry, and their reputation has grown around not only their on site attention to detail with their ability to successfully implement the Passivhaus standard, but their sourcing of products and technology that will meet the rigorous performance requirements that the standard demands.

Constructing Excellence Q&A Session with Richard Lane, UK BIM task group #askTBIM

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On 3rd December, prior to our #GreenBIM conference we are delighted to be hosting a Q & A session with Richard Lane from the UK Government BIM task group. Richard is leading the development of the UK BIM Task Group training strategy and is supporting the implementation of BIM in a number of UK government departments including the Ministry of Defence and the NHS. With 25 years’ experience in IT consulting, project management (ISEB) and training, leading global teams; Richard is a Fellow of the Learning & Performance Institute and a Professional Member of the British Computer Society. He is also Director of Creonova Consulting who provide consulting, program & project management, change management and training services to education, public sector and commercial organisations, specifically focusing on technology and construction sectors.

Richard will be taking questions from the Constructing Excellence members attending the session but we would also like to take this opportunity to invite others to submit their BIM related questions, in particular questions around BIM education, BIM adoption throughout government departments and the government BIM agenda.

To submit your question you can either email it to ckeevents@leedsbeckett.ac.uk or you can tweet your question to @cexcellenceYH using the hashtag #askTBIM

#CEYH2014 SME excellence through digital workflows and behavioural science

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A great turnout of construction professionals gathered at Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Leeds on 29th October for our second CEYH event of autumn focussing on SME excellence in two current hot topics; SME adoption of BIM & Applied Behavioural Science in Health & Safety. CEYH is the Yorkshire & Humber regional hub for Constructing Excellence, committed to providing a structured programme of events sharing knowledge, case studies and best practice which respond to the wider needs of the industry.

Our chair for Wednesday’s event was James Gill, BIM technician at Cubicle Centre. Cubicle Centre were the deserving recipients of the SME & Best of the Best awards at this year’s CEYH awards for their determination to become one of the first “bim ready” manufacturers in the UK and the increase business being so has brought them.

Our first speaker for the event was Duncan Reed, Digital Construction Process Manager at Tekla UK & ThinkBIM ambassador, who presented on the CITB funded BIM training that ThinkBIM has been delivering around the region to SMEs. He started by highlighting the issue that at present we have no real indication of BIM level 2 adoption in the UK, pointing out that the NBS National BIM report attracts around 1300 respondents, a tiny percentage of the estimated 2million people who work in the construction industry. The CITB funded training delivered by ThinkBIM goes some way to addressing this with the sessions highlighting key issues faced by SMEs & identifying solutions to overcome them. So far ThinkBIM has delivered 26 workshops over 117 companies to 359 delegates.

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As well as outlining the aims of the CITB sessions, i.e. what is BIM? what tools are available e.t.c. pointing out that not all BIM software is new software (even excel is a useful BIM tool!), Duncan also went on to discuss some of the perceived barriers to BIM that attendees at the training sessions had raised and gave examples of how companies had overcome them, using two recent case studies, Premier Interlink & F Parkinson. At this point Duncan also mentioned the TSB Innovate initiative who award funding to small businesses to help them implement new technologies within their businesses. Further details can be found on the Innovate website here . Both Premier Interlink & F Parkinson have made use of the scheme receiving £5000 vouchers to help implement BIM throughout their operations with ThinkBIM’s advice.

Duncan concluded his presentation with some key tips on how organisations can start with BIM, the most important one being that companies have to decide a BIM strategy & objective for their own organisation first i.e. you can’t do someone else’s BIM. Once a strategy has been defined you are then in a position to look at what you need to make it happen and take it from there.

Following that we welcomed Claire Fryer, Senior Behavioural Management Consultant at Costain who presented on delivering behavioural health & safety training using accelerated learning techniques. Claire outlined some of the principles behind the science using some interesting examples from our everyday behaviours. Her example of how we alter our driving dependent on whether there is police car around certainly resonated with some members of our audience! Claire went on to describe the “Antecedents – Behaviours – Consequences” behavioural model used by Costain and how it is our understanding of the consequences which impact on our behaviours.

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Claire then went on to illustrate some real examples of putting the model into practice; one particular case study being strategies taken to overcome a high percentage of slips, trips and falls recorded on a project. Some other key points she raised included the importance of focusing on one small problem to fix at a time, gathering specific data (using observation & the ABC model outlined above) and the importance of communication with workers i.e. asking them what they need in order to be able to adhere to health & safety principles and then working jointly towards it.

Claire concluded the presentation by outlining how there is huge scope for businesses to benefit from applied behavioural science throughout their entire operations, not just health & safety. It can be used to improve quality performance, delivery performance, even improving the processing of invoices. As long as you can understand why people behave the way they do within their working environments, then you can begin to use behavioural techniques to modify them. Claire’s final point was to reiterate that we shouldn’t just rely on email to get people to do what we want, we need to get out, talk to people and understand the consequences which drive behaviour, before we try to change it.

Following Claire’s presentation, the assembled audience were invited to ask questions, a summary of which are outlined below:

Are there any other alternate sources of funding for BIM training outside the CITB?

Duncan Reed (DR) TSB Innovation Vouchers are available to anybody. ThinkBIM can help organisations with their submissions for funding. Contact Claire on c.bowles@leedsbeckett.ac.uk to find out more.

What are the examples of how you have resolved some of the issues with getting clients involved in the model?

(DR) Involving the end users to make sure they are engaged in the design process so they can visualise the space they will be working in i.e. teachers & their classrooms.

Has ThinkBIM done anything with professional associations as well as companies direct?

We would like the professional bodies . We do find trade associations are doing a lot of work, providing advice, support & courses to help educate their member on BIM and how they can develop it within their businesses. We would like to see the same level of interest from the professional bodies which would ultimately then ensure it is included in university courses.

Duncan what are the key consequences of not doing in BIM? Thinking about the ABC model Claire talked about in terms of behavioural science & culture change?

(DF) The government’s 2025 construction strategy asks for massive improvements throughout the operation in costs efficiencies, health & safety standards e.t.c. Not doing BIM would make it very hard for companies to meet this target.

For Costain, how do you deal with the SME supply chain that come on site?

(CF) Many of our supply chain join our Supply Chain Academy where they have an introductory session on the principles involved. We also involve them early in projects, bringing them on to site, inviting them into meetings and training sessions so they can work on any arising issues with the existing team, and this is working really well.