Bi-Monthly Focus

Hello
Welcome to each and every member in the Constructing Excellence Club Network.

The importance of clubs to the national and regional organisation has never been greater with the need to deliver increasing change and process improvements particularly for SMEs

As Chair of the Club in the north east I was pleased to take on Andrew Carpenters chairmanship of the Clubs' national joint working group last year, when Andrew became the National Business Development Manager for CE, and later to host national club day in London.

I am pleased that Carl Turner has now picked up the baton for clubs' liaison nationally and I am looking forward to this years club day in Cardiff on October 23rd.

A number of issues have been raised through the year and communications and links with clubs, nationally and regionally continue to improve. Items noted as needing action have been comprehensively addressed and I hope the value of the brand, new quality benchmarks together with an appreciation of clubs' value in the CE structure is helping change throughout our industry.

It is directly valuable to share experience, best practice, events, speakers, funding and other issues within the club network and I hope representation on the national joint working group and club day will continue to grow. I do represent the network on CE Council and, with Carl's assistance, hope to see on going development and influence in the national and regional activity by clubs and their members.

We have over 40 clubs and new ones have been launching regularly. We are visibly successful at promoting and delivering change. I hope we can establish together where priorities should lie and further improve arrangements for and between us all in this growing network.

John S Burns - Chair National Joint Working Group
John is an architect in Tyneside practice Mackellar Architecture Limited.

SW Wales Club

When I was asked to put pen to paper to write up some notes for this edition, I thought what on Earth can I write about? Eventually I thought it might be a good idea to think back to the days when the South West Wales Club was formed and the reasons behind setting it up.

At the time I was utterly fed up with the way that the local construction industry operated and getting more and more frustrated with the way that I was having to work in these conditions. You all know what I'm talking about here, the adversarial, confrontational, claims conscious, slapdash attitudes that prevailed during the time. What really got me angry was the fact that people moaned all the time about this, that and the other yet they never did anything about it.

So I did.

I had heard about the Construction Best Practice Programme and "Googled" it one afternoon and I liked what I was reading. I contacted a friend and colleague of mine, Geoff Wildman, and we discussed this over a pint of beer and the idea of setting up the Swansea club was born. We contacted The Construction Best Practice Programme and we agreed to meet them, where else, but the aptly named Builder Arms pub in Swansea! We met with Sharma and she gave us a full presentation on the benefits of setting up a Club under the watchful eye of a few bemused punters. We were convinced and decided to put our money where our mouths were and set about organising a meeting and launch for the new club. With the help of Sharma, Camargue, a few colleagues and the Welsh Development agency, we managed to gather a few names and invited them along to a launch meeting at the Welsh Development Agency offices in Penllergaer.

We had no idea how many people would turn up as we were sure nothing like this had been done before in this part of the country and we spent a nervous few hours pacing up and down before the doors opened. We needn't have worried. A large crowd turned up from all corners of the construction industry and the mood seemed to be one of nervous optimism. We raced through the speeches, including one by Jeff Perrin at the WDA and then we asked for volunteers to join the initial committee.

We managed to get the commitment of a group of people who were enthusiastic enough to join the committee. This committee then organised and attended a number of highly successful events and helped cement the reputation of the club as an excellent vehicle for learning and networking in south west Wales. The success was based on a simple formula - come along to an event, learn something new, meet some new people and have a bit of fun (and a drink or two!) whilst you're at it.

This formula generally holds true today even though we are now called the South West Wales Constructing Excellence Club and are now part of Constructing Excellence Wales, the ethos is the same. Learn, improve and have fun while you are at it!

There are still many things wrong with our industry but it is getting better. We need more people to get involved and start doing things instead of just talking about it. The more people that get involved, the more new ideas that are generated the more momentum will build up and the better our industry will be. So come on, join your local club and make a difference.

You know it makes sense!

Ian James - Senior Systems Manager for Stradform and SW Wales Committee Member

Creating the Lean Supply Chain

As part of the global lean construction movement, and in association with Construction Skills and Constructing Excellence in the UK The Lean Construction Institute UK presents:

The First Annual LCI-UK Summit: Creating the Lean Supply Chain
8 November
NEC, Birmingham Airport

"The successful application of lean principles delivers consistent savings of up to 30% against a traditional approach."

Benefit from the experiences of UK construction industry lean practitioners Individually, or with representatives from your entire supply chain, find out how to become lean and how to stay lean. Meet and discuss current issues with other UK construction supply chains.

Places are limited to 100.

To book now or for more information visit www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/

Demonstration Projects

Demonstration Projects are live construction projects seeking to innovate or apply an element of best practice that it is hoped will lead to a step-change in performance for the organisations involved. Constructing Excellence works with these leading-edge projects to capture the learning from them and uses that learning to influence change in the industry. Experience tells us that nothing can compare to using lessons from real projects when trying to make the case for change in construction.

Those that have been involved have identified two key benefits from participating in the Programme. Firstly, there are the marketing and profile raising activities that Constructing Excellence can bring. These include case studies, press and newsletter articles and features on the Constructing Excellence website. Secondly, many Demonstration participants find a lot of value in engaging with other Demonstrations to learn and share from one another. We try to facilitate this whenever possible.

We are currently actively looking for new projects to join the Demonstration Programme and would especially welcome information from the Club network on local projects of interest that may be suitable for Demonstration status. In addition, Constructing Excellence can help Clubs find speakers from local Demonstrations of interest or potentially organising a site visit.

If you wish to get involved in the Demonstration Programme or simply would like to find out more please contact Jon de Souza, Constructing Excellence's Demonstration Programme Director at desouzaj@constructingexcellence.org.uk or by phone on 07971-239924.

Items of Interest

• Membership Survey - Reeves Consulting are able to undertake a membership survey that is very detailed and can help you find out the views of your members. For further details please contact Kevin Reeves direct on 01225 350773 or kevinreeves@reevesconsulting.co.uk
• The Specialist Contractors Confederation (SCC) have agreed to give its new members FREE membership to their local Constructing Excellence Club (SCC will pay their membership fee). This will help the club network grow its SME base. When the SCC notify me of a member wishing to join a particular club I will pass their details onto the relevant club and ask them to issue SCC an invoice for their individual membership costs.
• SCC are also in talks with Andrew Carpenter about some joint events around the regions to attract even more members, watch this space...
• Don Ward has stated that he is keen for senior members of CE to be used to speak at club events. If you wish to request any of the following to speak at an event please email me with the topic and rough date required and the request will be passed on. The current available staff and topics are as follows:
  • Don Ward - Strategy, Direction of CE etc & Buildings and Estates Forum
  • Sue Innes / Ben Stubbs - Sustainability
  • Peter Cunningham - KPIs & Construction Clients Group
  • Shelagh Grant - Housing Forum
  • Jon DeSouza - Demonstration Program
  • Tim Embley - Infrastructure
  • Martin Print - KPIs
  • Andrew Carpenter - Membership Benefits.

Black Country Club Trade Fair

Even though it is only three months old, the Black Country Constructing Excellence Club (BCCEC) - one of the most recent of 42 constructing excellence clubs around the country - has realised its ambitious targets on 28th June when it hosted the first trade fair held by any of the regional clubs.



Over 100 delegates attended Walsall Football Club to view the construction solutions on show from the 26 exhibitors, all fitting with the theme of innovation, sustainability and "serving the Black Country", demonstrating how they can help local building businesses make the industry better.

Matt Woodall from Skyblue Solutions was one of the exhibitors at the fair. He said "The trade fair was a very beneficial event for us with an interesting mix of people from all aspects of construction. We have made a number of contacts which we think will lead to new business and build our construction network in the Black Country."

In addition to exhibitors, the fair hosted six Share My Knowledge sessions in which delegates explored new ideas on improving their businesses.

The 2007 UK Construction Industry KPIs are now available on-line at the new KPIzone website

KPIzone takes organisations interested in KPIs and benchmarking through a straight forward step-by-step process to help choose KPIs, and benchmark performance quickly and efficiently.

The 'KPI Builder' feature and Tutorial help organisations to find KPIs from a menu selected from the full range of UK Construction Industry data.

KPIzone is designed to make benchmarking easy by including features to create a customise KPI Handbook, to store and retrieve data and produce and print comprehensive reports of performance results.

For more information go to www.kpizone.com or call the Constructing Excellence helpdesk on 0845 605 55 56.

New Clubs

A big hearty welcome to the following clubs that have joined the club network over the past 12 months:

Plymouth Club - 4th October 2006
Swindon Club - 9th October 2006
Cornwall Club - 11th October 2006
Thames Gateway Club - 26th October 2006
Black Country Club - Launched 26th April 2007

New clubs on their way:

Derby Constructing Excellence Club

The Derby Constructing Excellence Club is to be launched on Tuesday 25th September 2007 at the Derbyshire County Cricket Ground from 5.00pm until 7.45pm. Guest speakers will be John Burns, National Club Steering Group Chair, and John Cadwallader Chief Executive of Derby CityScape, the company created to oversee, co-ordinate and lead the city's regeneration. For further information and details please contact Stephen Joyce of Gardiner & Theobald on 01332 614317 or email s.joyce@gardiner.com.

Shropshire Club - More details to follow

And Finally...

We are trying to make sure that we are always able to contact the correct people within the club network. Can you please send me your club contact lists to make sure that no club members are left out and remember to keep me updated of any changes.

Part of my role is to travel around all of the regions and visit all of the clubs. The easiest way to do this is to attend either committee meetings or club events. This is only possible if I know dates etc for these meetings. Therefore, I would be grateful if you could add me to your club distribution lists.

Last of all, a big thank you to everyone that has contributed to this, the first issue of Club Link and a request for items for future issues. This magazine is yours, without your input it will not work. If you have anything you think the network would benefit from then please send it to me. Remember, this is a network of clubs set up to promote best practice, if you want to share your information, what's worked or what's not worked etc then this is the place. Also, if you have any ideas of content you would like to see here then please let me know.

About Clubs

If you would like more information about the benefits of being a club member then please click on the link below:

http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/clubs/default.jsp

Carl Turner
Project Manager - Clubs
Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment
Tel: 02920 493322
Mob: 07870 158626
Fax: 02920 493233
Email: carl.turner@constructingexcellence.org.uk
Web: www.constructingexcellence.org.uk

Bay Chambers | West Bute Street | Cardiff Bay | CF10 5BB

 

Past Club Events

Monitoring Progress and Managing Time on Projects, Inconvenient Truth, Reforming the Planning System, Thames Gateway Overview & Micro Business Procurement, NEC Contract, CSCS Cards, Gershon Programme & Demonstration, One day golf tournament, Universally Challenged, Be Valuable, Thames Gateway Project & Training in Construction, 2012 Olympics / OGC, First East

For more details of any of the above events please contact Carl Turner.

Sponsor the Newsletter

If you want to be the sponsor of the next Club Link newsletter contact Carl Turner

• Foreword - John Burns
• Club of the Month - Ian James
• Creating the Lean Supply Chain
• Demonstration Projects
• Items of Interest
• What's New
• KPIzone
• New Clubs
• And Finally
• About Clubs - Carl Turner

National Club Day

This years National Club Day will be held at the Holland House Hotel in Cardiff on 23rd October 2007. The title for this years event is "Demonstrably Better?". Attendance is FREE and is open to all Club Members but you MUST register in advance using the following link to enable us to organise catering etc

Event Details

Sponsorship opportunities are available for the National Club day. If your organisation or any organisation you deal with are interested then please give me a call ASAP.

Constructing Excellence Infrastructure Forum Annual Conference

The Constructing Excellence Infrastructure forum have their Annual Conference on 27th September at the DTi Conference Centre in London.

For further details please click here.

KPI Masterclass Thistle Hotel, Newcastle

The KPI Masterclass provides a simple starting point for those wishing to implement an effective performance measurement system in their organisation. After an introduction to the important principles of benchmarking and performance measurement, delegates work in groups using the UK Construction Industry KPIs to calculate and benchmark performance. Case studies show how KPIs can pinpoint where improvement action is needed.

For more details or to book a place please click here.

The Housing Forum Regional Conferences 2007-08

The regional conferences are attended by a wide selection of your colleagues across the housing supply chain with a common goal of sharing and learning best practice.

If you want to join us in helping to move the housing industry forward in your region, we would urge you to book your place today by clicking here.

2012 Construction Commitments Conference

• 25th September - East of England
• 7th November - East Midlands
• 21st November - Yorkshire & Humber

Strategic Leadership in Construction 3rd Annual Conference

Click here for details

CE Awards

For the first time Constructing Excellence and its regional partners have come together to showcase excellence and reward achievement throughout the industry in the UK as a whole. 5 CE regional partners have now had their award ceremonies, with another taking place soon, and the winners of these regional awards will be entered into the Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment awards that will be taking place in London on the 11th October.

For further details please click here.

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