I attended Constructing Excellence‘s members convention in London yesterday – the first major event for members of the former "Collaborating for the Built Environment" (or BE) organisation since it merged with CE (it is now known as the Building and Estates Forum so at least it retains its BE abbreviation). The event was a joint conference with the Housing Forum (another CE group), and it also marked an even more recent merger: the Construction Clients Group joined CE just a few days ago.
It was an interesting day, with lots of earnest discussion about how CE should expand, move the collaboration agenda forward and continue to represent the views of the more ‘progressive’ businesses within the industry. From some of the debate, it seemed I was not alone in wondering if CE’s expansion might dilute the organisation’s push to improve team integration, etc.
(Amid the calls for collective unity, common change agendas, etc, it was a shame that chairman Peter Rogers used his address to make blatant ‘plug’ for the extranet business of which he is also a director and shareholder – Asite. More than one delegate remarked on this to me afterwards.)
