In these challenging times as never before, the construction industry must demonstrate its commitment to new ideas, new thinking and new working practices - whatever the drivers and wherever they may originate.
This was the key message delivered by president Sue Sharp during the first B&ES President's Luncheon to be held since the name of the organisation changed, in March of this year, from HVCA to the Building & Engineering Services Association.

'It is important to emphasise that our decision to re-brand was just one element in a re-positioning programme designed to ensure that the Association remains relevant and 'fit for purpose' in the years and decades to come,' Mrs Sharp told her audience at the City of London headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company.

The programme, she added, included key elements such as:

* refreshing the Association's member services package in line with the developing marketplace;
* enhancing its influence with Government and other key stakeholders;
* cementing existing relationships with other industry organisations that share its goals, aspirations and values; and
* providing a 'natural home' for all building engineering services specialists.

'But our initiatives, aims and objectives must also be viewed in the wider context of an industry, a nation and a planet for which change is the only constant - and in which the rate of change is infinitely greater than ever before in our history,' said the president - adding that 'what we did yesterday is no longer good enough'.

Of course, it was no secret that her Association had long recognised the need for a single organisation to represent the wider building engineering services sector - and Mrs Sharp was 'in no doubt that B&ES is ideally placed to be that organisation'.

She did not, however, mean to suggest that B&ES planned 'to encroach on territory traditionally occupied by organisations with whom we already have well-established and well-developed relationships'.

'Indeed, I mean exactly the opposite - for it is our stated intention to forge new relationships, and renew existing alliances, with all like-minded organisations, and so ensure that the voice of the industry as a whole is heard loud and clear on the key issues of the day,' the president insisted.

Nor was attention to be focused on building engineering services alone.

'Our founding - and still very active - membership of the Specialist Engineering Contractors' Group provides us with access to the pan-industry Strategic Forum for Construction, and so to the Heseltine Review of the UK public sector.

'Our formal links with the Construction Products Association allow us to network, and to identify common ground, with the powerful manufacturing lobby.

'And our affiliation to the UK Contractors' Group gives us the opportunity for high-level discussion with the main contractors who continue to hold the key to so many business opportunities for the specialist.'

Such relationships were allowing B&ES to commit to the review, restructure and reform that were essential to the implementation of the Government's far-reaching Construction Strategy, which contained a great many recommendations for which building engineering services had been lobbying for decades, said Mrs Sharp.

And she quoted the famous American industrialist Henry Ford to the effect that 'coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success'.

She concluded: 'I look forward, in the weeks and months to come, to working together with all parties to the construction process - for the greater good of our businesses, our sector and our industry.'