Re-structure to give new focus to Strategic Forum

To better address its ongoing workload, whilst maintaining a more strategic overview, the Strategic Forum for Construction has decided to rationalise its structure, with effect from 1 January 2006 .

The membership of the Forum has been reduced to six core organisations, which broadly represent the full spectrum of the industry and its clients whose members will be:
• Construction Clients Group (CCG)
• Construction Confederation (CC)
• Construction Industry Council (CIC)
• Construction Products Association (CPA)
• A joint group of National Specialist Contractors Council & Specialist Engineering
Contractors Group
• A joint group of the Trades Unions
The Forum itself will be split into two distinct groups: an Executive Panel, which will comprise the six Chief Executives nominated by the member groups; and the Strategic Forum which will comprise the Chairmen/Presidents of the six groups together with the CEOs.
The Strategic Forum will meet three times a year and each meeting will be concerned with a theme of strategic significance to the industry and other relevant people will be invited to attend from government and elsewhere. The Forum intends to interact with Government across the full range of Departments. The DTI, as the industry’s sponsor in Government, will be invited to meetings as an observer.
The Executive Panel will take responsibility for monitoring progress in relation to achieving the targets set by Sir John Egan in‘Accelerating Change’ and for overseeing progress in relation to the various sub-groups. It will meet on a regular basis.

The various sub-groups established by the Forum3 to progress particular initiatives will continue to function and will be owned and run by the relevant member body but they will now report to the Executive Panel.

The Secretariat for the Forum will rotate around the CIC, CC and CPA: the CIC, which has held the Secretariat since 2003, will continue in this role until June 2006, at which point responsibility will transfer to the Construction Confederation for a year. The CPA will take over the role in June 2007 for a further year.

The host organisation will nominate the Chairman for the Forum during its term of office. Speaking after the meeting, the outgoing Chairman, Peter Rogers, said:
‘The Strategic Forum has been very effective particularly through its specialist subgroups, and in driving the ‘Headline Targets’, but perhaps the most important issue for the industry continues to be its fragmented nature, and it is hoped that this new structure will engender greater cooperation and make the Forum an exemplar in integration’ . Speaking on behalf of the first host body under the new arrangements, the CIC Chief Executive, Graham Watts (who has been Secretary to the Forum since 2003), said: ‘ We should all be immensely grateful to Peter Rogers for all that he has done over the past three years. The Strategic Forum has diversified immensely over these three years and has quickly developed initiatives for SMEs, in health & safety and sustainability, in relation to logistics and in immediate response to winning the 2012 Olympics. All of this has been in addition to its core work of achieving, measuring and monitoring the Egan targets, which it has done equally well: there has been no dodging the challenges that the industry was set. The organisational changes now agreed spread the resource burden around the key member organisations and should ensure the widest buy-in from the industry representative groups. CIC will make a decision on the new Chairman as quickly as possible’.