Construction Management is the highest circulation construction-based publication serving the UK built environment.
Opinion
Supporting client leadership
Caroline Gumble CIOB
The CIOB’s new president will bring a welcome focus to construction client relationships, writes Caroline Gumble
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Our annual Members’ Forum, just a few weeks ago, was a chance to reflect on the past year and celebrate what we’ve accomplished. I was delighted to report on progress with many of our projects and we’ll be sharing some of those updates with members via our online channels.
This column, however, is forward looking. One of the key elements of Members’ Forum is the handover to a new president – I’d like to welcome Mike Foy OBE as our president for 2021-2022. I’d also like to extend my thanks to Mark Beard for his contribution as president over the last year.
Each president selects a relevant and meaningful theme for their presidential year, to work with CIOB members and colleagues, raising awareness of an issue or focusing on policy work. I am delighted to support Mike Foy’s choice of clients and construction client relationships as the theme for his year as president.
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“Supporting client leadership in our industry is important and the working relationships between contractors and clients are critical”
We have had, for some time, a positive working relationship with the Construction Clients’ Leadership Group (CCLG). Supporting client leadership in our industry is important and the working relationships between contractors and clients are critical.
Mike’s focus on these relationships will help enormously in our ongoing work to bring CIOB closer to client-focused members and construction clients and add to our understanding of their issues.
As a wider issue, a deeper understanding of how to encourage and support client leadership feeds into other important areas. As Mike mentions elsewhere in this issue of CM: “Clients are key to all our big challenges as an industry and an institute.”
The continuing drive to raise quality standards, our ongoing efforts to improve collaborative working in the industry, the push to achieve net zero, encouraging innovation, delivering greater diversity – these are just some of the issues where clients can have an enormous influence and potentially be a force for good.
Strategic client working group
I’m very much looking forward to working with Mike, who will be chairing our strategic client working group, ably supported by CIOB members Jennifer Makkreel, Virginia Borkoski, Gren Tipper, Mike Smith and by CIOB directors Eddie Tuttle and Amy Gough.
I’m also looking forward, now that restrictions are slowly easing, to being able to meet with the working group in person and to more face-to-face meetings with members as we move into the autumn.
The January/February 2026 issue of Construction Management magazine is now available to read in digital format.
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