2016 represented a year that the NZIOB reached a new level of maturity as we took the opportunity to leverage off our 30+ year history and unique ‘broad-church’ membership base, to widen the lens of what we are looking to achieve as the institute of Building.
It has become clear that our diverse membership base would like us to speak and act not only for them, but to speak and act for the wider construction industry also. Consequently, over this past year, we have been very active as an industry leader:
- We collaborated with Careers NZ to showcase the construction industry to careers advisers in a manner that hasn’t been done before.
- We were tasked by the BIM Acceleration Committee to take leadership of the Bim101-an insight seminars that saw 890 construction practitioners register for an event that we kept free.
- We worked with BRANZ and CCANZ to grow the prestigious ‘ArchEng’ Student Design Competition to include Construction Management students. The result is ‘ArchEngBuild’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x32cLZ9cu8).
2016 was also a year of planning on two ambitious projects that will be realised in 2017. They are:
- STEM in Spades, which will build on the NZIOB/Careers NZ Industry Big Day Out (IBDO) - Construction events, to further promote the construction sector to our youth.
- ‘Constructing our World’ (www.constructingourworld.com). The inaugural Asia Pacific Construction Conference that paints a picture of possibility for the construction industry. See stories 3 and 4 below.
2017 will also see the NZIOB Charitable Trust award two $10,000 scholarships that will lead to the advancing of research and innovation in the construction sector - see next story.
Throughout 2017 the NZIOB will continue to grow its role in promoting this wonderful industry of ours, and to foster construction innovation development and adoption.