Four new members from construction and further education have joined the board of the CITB-ConstructionSkills and Council of ConstructionSkills and on the operational side, a new director of Skills Strategy has been appointed.
Tim Peach of Taylor Woodrow, David Cochrane of Robert McAlpine, Peter Cunningham from the Construction Clients Group and Constructing Excellence, and Ian Billyard from Leeds College of Building are the new board members and will serve until 2012.

Their appointments were confirmed by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, as the sponsoring department for CITB-ConstructionSkills/ ConstructionSkills.

Steve Geary, formerly the director for Children and Learners at the Government Office for the East Midlands, now heads up Skills Strategy replacing Sheila Hoile who retired earlier this year.

The directorate acts as the intelligence gathering and trend forecasting arm of ConstructionSkills, as well as having responsibility for developing qualifications frameworks and strategic partnerships.

Steve will draw on his prior experience with work-based higher education programmes in the DfES and developing the Connexions service, which will help ConstructionSkills to take forward the Sector Skills Agreement.

Sir Michael Latham, chairman of ConstructionSkills, said: 'These four new members bring a wealth of experience and contacts to the organisation and I look forward very much to working with them.'