The IHBC stand at the CIOB/National Trust conference, ‘Keys to the Successful Operation of Historic Buildings’, on 3 May, in London’s Somerset House, offered delegates easy access to career and related practice advice from IHBC officers – Director Seán O’Reilly and Support Officer Carla Pianese – and IHBC volunteer and Full Member Rachael Parry, also a member of the IHBC’s new membership forum, ‘Council+’.
IHBC Director Sean O’Reilly, who delivered an opening speech, described the event as ‘a great day for historic buildings as the CIOB, with the National Trust, help mainstream heritage considerations across today’s building operations’.
In his opening speech Seán O’Reilly also noted that;
- The Houses of Parliament restoration is a major opportunity to promote the global and sustainable credentials of ‘Brand UK’ in these Brexit years
- Older buildings are challenging because modern processes ignore their real value:
- The base line in education is focussed on assembly-line approaches to new build, when our building stock profile proves that heritage skills should be at the heart of construction training today, not its ‘accredited’ top-up
- Equally irrational are economic approaches, such VAT on repairs, which adds cost to the sustainable care of the current stock, and ordinary GDP figures, which only hide the economic impact of heritage from government, a fact witnessed also in the government’s current Industrial Strategy paper which ignores environmental and related heritage opportunities.
- Specialist bodies such as the CIOB and the IHBC play critical roles in heritage advocacy as well as the quality assurance of heritage practice standards, and need to keep promoting the value of key tools such as BS 7913, the British Standard on historic building conservation
- Effective conservation is an integrated process that demands understanding of practice models such as the IHBC’s Conservation Cycle and linked Areas of Competence, and the ICOMOS conservation training guidelines to which these map.
View the full agenda
For background see the CIOB website
For more background see the NewsBlogs
