Paul at ExtranetEvolution carries the news that Constructing Excellence is to restructure, maybe even downsize to focus on delivering value to membership.

Constructing Excellence has announced an organisational restructure to enable a sharper focus on its core business of delivering value to its membership.

Over the last two years, Constructing Excellence has moved from its original Government grant funding to the leading industry membership body devoted to industry improvement. Throughout this transition period it has also won commercially-funded work and other government commissions. Following a review of the mission and objectives of the organisation, the Board of Constructing Excellence agreed that a clearer focus on membership was needed and that the emphasis of future work must be on our core business of performance measurement and knowledge sharing.

Chairman Bob White said: “At CE, we are committed to improving industry performance through working with our members who come from the entire built environment supply chain including clients. We have become increasingly aware during our transition period that performance measurement and demonstration is the vital ingredient to further industry improvement. However, it would be fair to say that, in our transition from government grant funding, some of the diversification into commercial areas such as ad hoc commissions or consultancy has proved an obstacle to focusing on our core mission.”

Don Ward, Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence, added: “The starting point for our members is a conviction that integration and collaborative working is the foundation for industry change. Measurement and demonstration are how we best add value in this regard, and the restructure will enable us to deliver these better.”

Like Paul I have been involved with Constructing Excellence from Design Build Foundation, Movement for Innovation and BE. Circumstances (not having an employer anymore to pay my time for involvement) mean my involvement is limited to the Collaborative Working Champions group and the local Lancashire Best Practice Club.  I do sense though that the initial aims – based soundly on the Egan report, may have run their day and been lost in a now wider scope of CE, and as Don says – time to refocus on the key themes of collaboration and integration, themes that are essential to the success of all industry initiatives – including sustainability.

We will have to await what the changes will bring – but hope for a stronger CE, a CE to support the grass roots of the industry, to move forward to address the challenges of the the next ten years.

Which ties in nicely with the survey for your views on the next ten years – rethinking constructing ten years after