The Newsletter of the Conservation Accreditation Register for Engineers – CARE – features the IHBC alongside RIBA, AABC and CARE as the primary conservation accreditation schemes for built environment professionals.
In the current Newsletter CARE editor Jon Avent covers the principal accreditation schemes operated for professionally qualified individuals working in the built heritage sector – RIBA, AABC, CARE, and IHBC. He notes that the IHBC scheme ‘is different to the accreditation schemes operated by the principal professions of Architecture, Engineering and Surveying’, and that ‘it does provide a significant membership and skills base which is recognised across a wide range of built heritage professionals.’
The IHBC’s scheme has an inter-disciplinary competence underpinned by ICOMOS standards and the World Bank’s environmental project management model. The IHBC’s quality assurance of its professional membership standards is recognised by bodies as diverse as the Planning Inspectorate and BRE.
IHBC Director Sean O’Reilly writes of the IHBC’s scheme: ‘If applicants do not demonstrate competence in their primary discipline, they cannot satisfy the demands of IHBC accreditation…’
‘Unlike other professional bodies, the IHBC does not re-accredit members, but operates a disciplinary process tied to a Code of Conduct that provides a continual monitoring of conservation standards in accredited members.’
‘Like others systems, the IHBC does not accredit businesses, but it does ‘recognise’ them through a quality-assurance listing called HESPR. The services these businesses provide are tied to the IHBC standards through employees who are also IHBC accredited members.’
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