I have been asked a lot recently on how my business name came about:

Fairsnape is a hill in the Forest of Bowland Fells, and was visible from my office window at the time I set up the business. (It hasn’t moved, we have, half a mile or so down the road). I wanted a name that wasn’t just tied to consultancy in construction, but one that could be flexible, grow with my interests in for example the outdoors and sustainability, as well as business improvement support.

And that has worked well.

But there is more significance in the name. Fairsnape is a minor hill at 510m with superb views, south across the Lancashire plains, north east, the Yorkshire Dales and north west to the Lake District. The later being inspirational to move on and explore greater ranges, from the Lakes to Scotland to the Alps to the Himalayas, as we did many years ago.

And so it is with sustainability. I delight in helping organisations climb that first hill, away from the flatlands of environmental management, and then on towards greater and bigger achievements. Something of Ray Andersons Mount Sustainability here I guess.

But, having discovered mindfulness of late, it is of course very fine to sit, contemplate and refresh, wherever you are on route, be it a mountain or a sustainability journey and not always to rush on to something new.  In the words of Nan Shepherd in her inspirational Living Mountain book on the Cairngorms  ‘I sat and listened to the waterfall until I didn’t hear it any more”  An approach we can learn from for a new sustainable construction thinking.