C O N T E X T 1 2 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 2 33 can use HESPR as an IHBC-compliant resource, as the businesses are required to operate in line with our codes. There have also been substantial improvements in refining our previous operations, not least our infrastructure. The branch connection days have looked at the most urgent issues, including financial management, membership assessment and branch committee structures.They have led to improved processes as well as to new ideas, guidance and tools. For example, just now we are consulting on the press tool so that branches can engage directly with local press more easily. Similarly the development of online booking services and other project infrastructure for key events, such as the annual school, help remove tedious and time-consuming tasks such as managing bookings and payments. This is all a long way from those heady days when volunteers operated in a vacuum, without substantial guidance or support.That my own application for IHBC membership waited a year on a volunteer’s desk before being processed was not atypical, while the diverse approach to affiliate applications – tested as intensely as full member applications in one branch, but largely ignored in another – represented more a waste of resources rather than any failing in standards. Improving support for volunteers has always been a concern for trustees, of course, not least because of their own collective experiences of and insights into it. In any case, a modern professional body could not allow such informality or inconsistency, especially when expanding as speedily as the IHBC. Allied to branch support, outreach beyond our own membership has increased exponentially, again even with the £15 real-term reduction in professional membership costs. I remember one conversation with a heritage civil servant in Scotland who observed that the IHBC’s problem was that no one knew of it. Even then I was able to observe that, having led on consolidating responses to the Heritage Bill in England, and having secured joint support for it from bodies representing some quarter of a million professional memberships, anonymity was no longer a problem for the IHBC in England, and nor would it be an issue for long in Scotland. Having jointly led recent discussions on a proposed Heritage Bill inWales with Cadw, and having been invited to join in professional discussions around the architecture policy in Scotland, we can be confident that the IHBC is no longer the well-meaning also-ran in heritage or planning circles. Yet being asked to the table is only part of the task.What of our wider credibility? Apart from the HMRC’s recognition of the value of the IHBC’s professional support, the IHBC has been specified by the Building Research Establishment as a suitable – indeed exclusive – provider of quality assurance in a key area of its operations.The Planning Inspectorate also sees us as an appropriate – and reasonable – guardian of professional standards for their purposes. So too do the many local authority planning services, heritage charities, architectural and planning practices, and so on, that advertise on our jobs website.They know we provide a cost-effective route to the right professional market – our members – and help them secure transparency in appointments.Though they may not have formally affirmed their recognition of the IHBC’s standards, their presence on our site implicitly recognises our success. To support that new credibility, we also continue to promote the principles underpinning our professional standards. As ICOMOS training principles andWorld Bank models underpin assessment, so too inter-disciplinary, practitioner-based standards underpin our disciplinary regime. And we have just had agreed the highest-level statement of conservation skills, a National Occupational Standard that maps to our membership criteria, to confirm further our progress to centre stage. All this again despite that £15 reduction in real costs for member benefits. More important, while reducing real costs, we have also made huge progress in addressing the crisis that had appeared in the demographics of our membership. Not long after I took up my post in 2004, IHBC council agreed a paper that acknowledged the unsustainability of the institute as it then was: under-resourced and with an aging membership. Possible outcomes were identified, ranging from merger to dissolution. At our most recent council meeting, in June, concerns were raised over the resignation of a number of long-standing members. But instead of buckling under that threat as we might have done, we are consolidating our centrality to both heritage and construction. Since 2004 we have grown substantially, opened our arms to new members and evolved more transparent governance, more structured management, and more user-focused services. Rather than facing a systemic or even fatal crisis, we now confront challenges in the real world with the benefit of a substantial corporate foundation. Regardless of the occasional revival of pockets of internal scepticism not dissimilar to those that greeted the evolution of the IHBC out of the Association of Conservation Officers, or of the rarity of support for the interdisciplinary skills that lie at the heart of our operations, we continue to deliver a substantial professional framework for members, users and the wider sector, and give remarkable value for money. Our current review of governance will underpin the next stage of our development, and we are encouraging all members to bring their best thinking and experience to bear on it. If good news, like our many successes, does not travel fast, that may explain why ‘no news is good news’. But I hope most will agree that our members and volunteers deserve something better than ‘No news’. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk South branch chair and chair of the 2012 Day School, Emilia Hands
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=