Award winning author and journalist Peter Apps will open this year’s Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) Annual Conference in London on 17 October.
Apps is one of the UK’s best-known writers currently covering the highly controversial topics of building safety and social housing. Over a 10-year career at the specialist magazine Inside Housing, he has won numerous awards for his news and analysis of the country’s affordable housing crisis.
He was one of the few commentators to raise concerns about combustible cladding and high-rise buildings before the Grenfell Tower fire, and his reporting in the aftermath of the disaster shone light on the likely causes of the blaze.
This reporting culminated in his acclaimed book, Show Me The Bodies, which won the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Apps will open the BESA Conference at the Brewery, London on Thursday, 17 October, and his keynote talk will be followed by a range of topical and technical debates including one on the Building Safety Act, which came into force because of Grenfell, and another focused on retrofitting social housing to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) for health and wellbeing.
The one-day conference, which is sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric, will set out to: ‘Inspire a better building engineering services industry for a safe, sustainable, and efficient future’.
Registration is available here and the content is designed to appeal to a broad range of industry professionals, young engineers, manufacturers, specifiers, and procurers of building services projects.
The Association will be showcasing its ‘Play it Safe’ Guide that helps all supply chain members identify their specific roles and responsibilities under the new building safety regime. This will be supported by a detailed legal and commercial update highlighting the likely additional contractual risks associated with the Act and providing practical guidance on avoiding potential legal pitfalls.
There will be an enhanced focus on skills during the 2024 conference, again with a view to ensuring all BESA members and others across the building services landscape have access to the appropriate training. There will be sessions covering the support and advice available to contractors about how to provide evidence of their skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours (SKEB) in tune with the new culture around building safety and performance.
A dedicated ‘Skills Zone’ will introduce employers to a comprehensive suite of training services and recruitment support along with guidance on how to identify and address skills shortages. BESA is engaged in a major exercise to identify and map skills and competence requirements and will be sharing its findings with delegates.
Net Zero will be another key topic also with a strong focus on ensuring the industry has the right breadth of skills and experience to meet the unprecedented challenge of retrofitting and refurbishing the UK’s existing 30 million buildings to meet climate change goals.
Having a suitably diverse and fleet footed workforce came over as the main preoccupation of building engineering employers at last year’s BESA Conference, so the Association’s young engineers – represented by its growing NextGen Network – will take a prominent role. They will lead several sessions with a particular emphasis on emerging technologies and the need for more industry mentoring.
The BESA Annual Conference 2024 includes an exhibition area and will be followed that evening by the BESA Industry Awards dinner, which is also sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric.
Registration is available here and for more details about the event, along with exhibition and sponsorship opportunities, please contact: Charlie.pierpoint@theBESA.com