From left: Amy Gough, Caroline Gumble, Charles Hay, Michael Yam (former CIOB trustee) and Andrew Sill
Through the experiences and learning of our membership, the institute can play a role in bringing communities together.
The new decade is already off to a flying start. Many of you will know from my social media that the CIOB’s director of membership Amy Gough and I travelled to Malaysia in December.
We were fortunate to spend time with members, supporters and industry experts, visit Universiti Teknologi MARA, one of our accredited universities, and meet the British Commissioner for Malaysia, His Excellency Charles Hay MVO, and Andrew Sill, chair of the British Malaysian Chamber of Commerce.
My reflections following the trip are a deep respect for the commitment, passion and insight of the CIOB community and stakeholders who really engaged with us on our strategy for the region.
As CEO, it was important for me to see through the lens of our international membership, to understand the many lessons there are to learn and the opportunities. The lessons and experiences within our membership that can be shared need a platform – I believe the CIOB can play a role in bringing communities together, so those conversations take place and learning is shared.
The New Year is a good time to reflect not just on what I learned last year about our community but on how we implement many of the things that have been talked about and flagged as priorities. To that end, I’m pleased to say that among the many things we have planned for this year are:
- Spreading the word about the new service we now offer via our Benevolent Fund. The CIOB’s Benevolent Fund has teamed up with Anxiety UK to deliver a specialised programme of support for members and their families to help those living with anxiety and stress. This service is open to all our members, across the world.
- The Construction Manager of the Year Awards (CMYA) are now open for entry and will be until 20 March. We have reviewed the structure of CMYA and I’m excited about the changes we’re putting in place to open up this year’s competition. There’s more information on the CMYA website: cmya.co.uk.
- We’ll be launching our report, The Real Face of Construction, setting out how much our industry is worth to the UK economy. We’ll use this research to make the case to policymakers and parliamentarians and ensure that construction remains high on the political agenda.
I want to thank all the members and stakeholders who have helped CIOB – and continue to help – by, for example, raising the profile of our work or giving us feedback.
These things we work together to create will serve our sector and support those who support all of us by creating the built environment around us.
Caroline Gumble is CEO of the CIOB
CIOB revamps social media strategy
The CIOB is to create presences on LinkedIn for all of its local operations and step away from local Twitter and Facebook accounts, following an in-depth review of its social media presence.
The study found that members view Facebook as a personal channel, Twitter for broadcasting news, and LinkedIn as a channel for engaging professionals about their work.
CIOB’s associate director marketing and digital Kate MacBeth said: “This part of the research is backed up by our data which also shows very low growth in Facebook and Twitter and poor levels of engagement, despite the effort.”
Explaining the strategy to create local LinkedIn accounts and move away from Twitter and Facebook, she said: “That will do two things, firstly it will place our effort in the most effective channel and secondly it will reduce our landscape to make it more obvious to new followers how they can connect with us. We will still have the main CIOB Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts.”
