Tag Archives: Green Vision

Improving Bid success through construction #CSR

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Is your PQQ or Bid success rate dopping? Are you loosing out to competitors and not sure why? You could do no better than to get along to one of the numerous best practice or knowledge exchange events such as the excellent Green Vision programme from CKE in Leeds.

Last night the focus was on CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, which has moved a million miles away from just doing good, volunteering and charity donation, important though as these are. No, supply chain CSR approaches in the words of Bob Simpson (Walmart/ex ASDA) have to be ‘contemporary’ and demonstrate value to clients.

Bob went on to emphasis how the supply chain has to demonstrate “a point of difference” through CSR, when bidding for work, that includes:

  • Design Problems out (through BIM for example)
  • Improving site efficiency (maximising considerate constructor scores?)
  • Embracing localism
  • Hating waste in all its forms including energy, carbon, transport
  • Exceeding safety standards
  • Taking the initiative. The supply chains are the experts in construction.

Paul Connell E.on consultant reinforced the same message describing how supply chains adding value to E.on to help them deliver their ambitious Cities Programme of collective intelligence, enabling large organisations to engage with individuals on a meaningful level.

Setting the scene, my CSR presentation focused on the changing world of communications and transparency, and the need for construction not only to be solid and reliable but also innovative in CSR. Particularly in the public sector, where the newly minted Social Value Act will require construction to start to really understand and demonstrate the value of CSR approaches.

There is a storify record of the event here.

How contemporay is your CSR approach? Is it helping you demonstrate value to your clients and winning you work? Maybe now is the time to re-evaluate. We are helping many organisations review their CSR, PQQ and Bid approaches.  Do get in touch to discuss.

Lancashire: Green Deal, BIM, Green Building and Social Media events

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Hi, here is a quick update of Lancashire Construction Best Practice Club related events in the NW region over the coming months which may be of interest:

Green Deal: If you have been following the news you will have seen that £3.5m has been released for Green Deal training and news is expected soon from Ed Davey MP on Green Deal for Busineses.

Our timely Introduction to PAS 2030 session is scheduled for the 30th March as part of our Green Deal Initiative, with monthly sessions thereafter. Also CSkills are holding an Employers Advisory Forum on March 28th, at St Helen’s Rugby League Stadium which will feature Green Deal

Bidding: The Association of Interior Specialists (AIS) are hold a A free webinar  Improve your Bids: 13th March 27th March and 17th April

BIM: Unfortuntaley we have had to push the LCBPC BIM event back until June, however, there are a lot of BIM events happening regionally.

There are Events across in Yorkshire on the 15th March looking at BIM impact on Regional SME’s and on 4th April looking at BIM Level 2.

And in Manchester BIM – Software with Tough Choices Workshop 29 March 2012, 08:30 – 11:00 at the and BIM Compete or collaborate? 16th May. You may also find this “What is BIM, and why should we care” item of interest.

Waste: Waste update will be the topic for the LCBPC event. Details to follow.

Green Building: Again there is a lot happening on this theme as you would expect: What is your Green Vision? is a Global TweetChat (online, via twitter using the #GVisChat hashtag) hosted by Green Vision on 20th March 8pm to coincide with Eco Build. In addition Green Vision Leeds 29th March will feature the lessons learnt from the greenest building on earth, live from Vancouver

Green Build Expo Returns to Manchester on 9th /10th May, I will be there with Be2camp on the 9th and talking Social Media on the Green Deal  as part of the Green Deal Debate stage the 10th, and if you are going to EcoBuild, 20-22nd March in London do let us know via twitter @fairsnape + @lcbpc or on the linkedin Lancashire Construction group

Social Media: Su Butcher and myself will be running a Linkedin and Twitter Workshop for built environment professionals in the NW on 8th May.

Finally, Progress in Procurement: the Effectiveness of Frameworks is at the CUBE Manchester 19th March, and the RICS in the NW have a full programme of events on their calendar.

If you know of any events then please do flag them on the Lancashire Construction group linkedin or in comments below and we can share across the club membership.

You can get details of club membership here and application form here

#tweetchats … observations + how to

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What is a tweetchat? In my view: a global online brainstorm: a fast paced collection of expert opinion, links, references, questioning, learning but above all sharing around the theme of the chat.

“A tweet chat is a pre-arranged chat that happens on Twitter through tweets that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation” Formal Twitter tweet chats are arranged in advance and occur at set times. They may include a formal agenda with a specific leader or “speaker”, or they might involve a free flowing discussion between all participants.

Dont attempt to make too much sense of it at the time, dive in, chat and share. Make sense of it later (which makes the output and transcripts very important). A brilliant use of twitter!

Having participated in a number of tweetchats over tha last few months #futrchat, #CSRchat and the more frivolous #sugarfreetweets for example, I recently took on the task of oragnising and facilitaing #GVisChat ‘Future of Energy in Buildings’ for Green Vision.

For an inaugural chat it worked well, with thought leaders and seasoned tweeters conversing and sharing with those who made their first tweet during the chat, which has to be a result.

Here then are my thoughts and observations:

Preparation:

  • Choose a hashtag and check it hasnt been used for another chat.
  • Most hashtags end ‘chat’ which has become a notation for tweetchat.Make the hashtag simple and memorable
  • Get the word out there – through twitter but also through related groups, forums both online and real.
  • Get the time and date agreed: Check there are no other big, subject related chats scheduled around the same time: Balance between working day time (9-5) and a global enthusiast though leader chat: It does seem the popular time is 7, 8 or 9 pm UK time for a global input. (and looking at a recent spreadsheet of existing scheduled chats, USA tweeters would appear to be more comfortable with the tweetchat format.)
  • Have instructions you can point to in order to help participants, for eg: How to take part in a tweet chat and How to join up to twitter (you don’t want to exclude those not on twitter who may see the whole twitter thing a bit of a dark mystery)
  • Agree roles – I think there are three, a facilitator, a subject driver and an amplifer See below  (I did all three so it can be done but … wow – it gets busy)
  • Agree Questions in advance, say 5 or 6 but be prepared to change and flex with the direction the chat may take.

Setting up to capture: 

Register the hashtag with  tweetchat.. Tweetchat provides a nice simple format that puts you in the ‘tweetchat room’ for the chosen hashtag and automatically adds the hashtag. Overall though I find tweetdeck easier to use during the chat.

‘Facilitating’ the chat:

  • Introduce topic, and the first question.  The start of the chat was probably the most ‘awkward’: unlike real meetings there are not many signals to pick up on that people are there and ready to go so you have to dive in. I had a sense of I was waiting for tweeters and they for me to kick off.
  • Welcome – be sure to welcome people as they enter the chat, that is make their first hashtaged contribution
  • Let twitter know the chat is running
  • Feed in the questions – the skill would appear to be in introducing next question at the right time, not too soon or too late – keep the fast pace going…
  • Amplify good points (ie RT and add to)
  • Praise good points being made, thank people for links (as you would in a real world brainstorm)
  • Challenge, question, throw in off the wall out there concepts to widen the discussion (eg future of energy chat led to possibility of building on the moon)
  • Give time checks, especially towards the close  – the 60mins flies past rather swiftly!
  • Watch for contributions from people forgetting or not using the hashtag and RT them so they get into the mix. (and remind people to use the # and Q and A numbering)

During the chat I used tweetdeck so I could have a DM channel open for closed communication with other hosts and a timeline to watch for related tweets from friends who forgot the hashtag!

Post Chat

Use a service such as the brilliant Tweetbinder to capture the tweets as well as statistics on the tweetchat.

Drop the tweets into Storify to create a transcript

Use the tweets and links to craft an interview sytle article for publication on blogs or elsewhere

Thanks:  These are my observations and lessons learnt from organising a tweetchat for the first time. I do hope they help and encourage you to get involved in a chat and to facilitate, they are great fun, generate a real buzz and to me prove the potential business and learning power of twitter is yet to be fully realised

I am indebted to Cindy @Urbanverse, a great friend and seasoned tweetchat expert for help and guidance