The newly-launched Built Environment Exchange programme (beX) is on a mission to change construction culture. It offers students in later years the chance to develop skills and build networks through paid industry placements.
Let’s face it, construction has stagnated in terms of productivity. Before the recession, it was sheltered by the health of the economy but now there is a skills crisis.
The Farmer Report highlighted the sector’s fragmented leadership and dysfunctional training and recruitment processes. Culturally there is also a lack of trust and a need for more collaboration. It’s time to do things differently. We need to get serious about attracting the next generation of built environment talent to the construction sector and give them the education and skills they need to make a positive impact.
In order to change culture and improve productivity we need to think more widely about the skills required by the next generation.
We need to attract top talent to a career in the built environment and we need to ensure that this talent is working collaboratively with industry as early as possible in the process, not just upon graduation. We need to ensure that education and industry engagement is integrated in order to drive meaningful change. Construction also needs to become more sustainable.
In Europe construction accounts for about half of all our extracted materials and energy consumption and about a third of our water consumption. The sector also generates about one-third of all waste and is associated with environmental pressures that arise at different stages of a building’s life cycle, from the manufacture of construction products right the way through to how buildings perform once in use.
Timber is a truly sustainable construction material, it captures carbon as it grows and when used in the built environment via offsite systems it can deliver social, economic and environmental benefits while being architecturally inspiring. To achieve this we need to ensure that all of the professional disciplines understand the merits of timber as a building material and the modern construction delivery techniques.
My solution to this problem is the Built Environment Exchange (beX). I have spent the last 12 months tirelessly piloting this programme at Edinburgh Napier University. On November 14 we formally launched the programme at Code Base in Edinburgh – a tech start-up incubator. The event was made possible with support from our partners, the Entrepreneurial Scotland Saltire Foundation, the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC), Design Engineer and Construct (DEC) and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), plus a selection of our international university partners The programme enables top talent from a range of subject areas to have built environment internship positions to learn context, followed by MSc scholarship funding and ultimately industry led research projects.
I believe this threefold approach – alongside opportunities to develop leadership, mentoring and entrepreneurial thinking skills – will create the next generation of commercially aware and technically astute built environment graduates. These graduates will also value timber as a material and think laterally about how to deliver the built environment more efficiently.
At the launch we heard early success stories from those who have engaged with beX through the pilot process. Their work is already making a difference to the sector as they begin to champion change.
