Feature Meet the international members

Going global

IN JANUARY THE CIOB announced its Strategic Plan, a blueprint for its evolution over the next 10 years. It outlines a radical shake-up designed to align the CIOB more closely with employers and individuals’ needs and open up new routes to membership worldwide. Given that 20% of the Institute’s 46,000 members are based outside the UK — with representation in more than 100 different countries — and the way our globalised economy is encouraging both UK and non-UK professionals to head overseas, a major focus will be on supporting members already working abroad and attracting new foreign talent. So a key reform under the Strategic Plan will be the development of an international qualification to convey to construction clients and employers that the holder is capable of working outside their narrow national context. “The word chartered means something different in different parts of the globe,” CIOB President Alan Crane CBE told CM earlier this year. “We want to introduce something that is instantly recognised around the world.” Details of the qualification are still under discussion, but it is likely that chartered members would sit an extra module to attain the title MCIOB International, or similar. MCIOB status is already seen by applicants in many

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The CIOB has plans to develop an international qualification. Stephen Cousins asked three members from different parts of the world how that would be received abroad.

countries as a link between their experience and qualifications and the international industry, so it’s hoped that a more internationally portable qualification could provide more career opportunities. To find out more about how the existing qualification is viewed and the challenge of developing a new overseas standard, we spoke to three non-UK nationals who are CIOB members. Working in very different environments, each is clear about the benefits of membership, but all three also highlight the unique features of the construction industry where they are working and the difficulty of formulating a single standard to span them all. In Denmark, for example, a client

always employs a dedicated site manager to work alongside the contractor’s site manager and the role of QS doesn’t exist, India suffers from a lack of standardised conditions of contract and inadequate information on material prices, while Korea is a stranger to the concept of transparency. In Singapore, the contractor/client

relationship is also very different, explains Simon Silbernagl, senior consultant at Hill International, who provides legal advice to clients on construction and infrastructure

“In Singapore employers aren’t willing to take a back seat because so much money turns on completion and they take a very active role in managing the finer aspects.”

Simon Silbernagl, Hill International

projects: “Singapore has much larger infrastructure projects than the UK, especially roads and bridges, which places greater emphasis on programme management. In the UK it’s seen as the contractors’ responsibility to manage day- to-day activities, but here employers aren’t willing to take a back seat because so much money turns on completion and they take a very active role in managing the finer aspects of a project,” he says. The CIOB has highlighted China as a

key area of focus for the future, but the problem here is the language barrier. Although the Institute has a high profile among the English-speaking section of the construction industry, a large percentage of professionals fail to benefit from the English-speaking seminars and events organised by the CIOB, says Abdo Kardous ICIOB, who heads up project management for Hill International in China. “The MCIOB qualification is seen as an opportunity to grow within a company as well as abroad, but the CIOB needs to bridge the gap with non-English speakers and show a greater commitment to the Chinese market, by opening branches outside Shanghai and Beijing, for

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