The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) used this year’s UK Real Estate Investment & Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) to place skills, professional standards and industry collaboration firmly on the agenda, culminating in a meeting between CIOB chief executive Victoria Hills and Samantha Dixon, the UK minister for building safety.
Hills met Dixon during a roundtable on the future regulation of building professionals hosted by Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) on Thursday, as the institute continued its push to influence policy discussions around competence and the future workforce.
The week began on Monday with a CIOB-hosted event at Leeds Beckett University focused on “Navigating the student to professional transition”. The session was supported by CIOB trustee Hadi Kazemi in his role as academic programme director at the university. CIOB also held a well-attended “Welcome to Leeds & Meet the CIOB” reception for members and industry guests.
On Tuesday, CIOB representatives took part in a packed programme of discussions across the conference.
Hills joined a Mace Consult event examining how to deliver certainty on major infrastructure and capital programmes, before contributing to a Wates Group roundtable on coordinating the public sector project pipeline.
Vice president Saul Humphrey represented CIOB at several sessions during the day, including a breakfast roundtable hosted by BusinessLDN on the role of the London Infrastructure Framework in driving sustainable growth and unlocking development. He also joined a lunchtime roundtable hosted by the Landscape Institute and later appeared on a panel discussing the “National Planning Barometer 2026 – Planning: Reform Meets Reality”.
CIOB president Paul Gandy took part in a roundtable on industrialised construction and the importance of early engagement in delivering scalable public sector projects. Later in the day, Gandy and Ayo Allu, chair of CIOB Client Steering Group, joined a panel discussion on the future of modern methods of construction at an event hosted by RICS.
One of CIOB’s headline events at UKREiiF was its client roundtable, “The Performance Gap”, featuring CIOB head of client development Linda Stevens and focusing on the gap between intended and actual building performance outcomes.
The institute’s presence at the conference concluded on Thursday with Allu chairing a panel discussion on major infrastructure and securing the workforce needed for the future.
