IHBC seeks NewsBlog support service @ c£5000 p.a.

Posted on 08/11/2013 by IHBC NewsBlog

The Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) seeks a conservation specialist to identify, select, research, collate and prepare general news features for the institute’s news service, the IHBC’s NewsBlog, and help us keep our diverse membership up to date in their work and careers, with submissions to be received before 17.00 on 6 December 2013 at admin@ihbc.org.uk.

Context: Conservation is changing rapidly
As the lead professional body for built and historic environment conservation specialists, the IHBC is looking for a support service that will help us expand and develop our work, ensuring that we remain at the forefront in supporting our diverse communities of interest.  These interests include in particular our members, but also the wide range of other users of our services (our suite of web sites has some ¼ million visits a month), as well as the wider public interests that participate in and benefit from our charitable operations.

Background: Whoever helps us with our NewsBlog service will help us achieve even more!
Since the IHBC was established as a professional body in 1997, the organisation has revolutionised its role and standing across all our areas of operation.  In particular, we now have a remarkable web-based infrastructure supporting our wide-ranging activities that include training support, educational programmes, research consultancy, event organisation & information management.  These services have been built up around a rich and valued network of staff and volunteers who work through our national office and Branches, right across our UK operations.

More recently, the IHBC has carved out a specialist service niche that extends across the diverse disciplines that underpin successful conservation, from history and archaeology to management, planning, architecture, and development.  Indeed our Linkedin site has a cross-section of members that maps well to our internal membership profile, with about 60% of members there leading conservation in planning, architecture, construction and development sectors.

At the same time dramatic changes have also swept across the sector, from the destruction of value in the UK’s public conservation services to the dramatic expansion of specialist interest in conservation represented not least by the RIBA’s development of a conservation register.

Since 2007, and with nearly 7000 NewsBlog items in place, the IHBC has been keeping our members and wider sector interests informed of relevant, current issues – including cases, events, policy changes and membership benefits – through our NewsBlogs.  In doing so, we have also created our NewsBlog archive, an important database of information on the sector openly available for research interests.

Now, with new capacity underpinned by even more members and our own expanding services, we have the resources to build on our achievements.  At this stage we want to secure additional capacity to help us continue to improve our NewsBlog service.

Our service needs
The IHBC now seeks a skilled conservation professional or service provider able to support the institute’s work by researching, collating, drafting and helping deliver to our members recent, current and breaking news for the sector, populating and shaping our NewsBlogs and any wider news services that it informs.

The NewsBlog service currently surveys about 25 core digital information sources each week, and another 20 or so as capacity allows, to produce about 15 NewsBlog items carried in a single email alert link to more than 2000 members across the UK and beyond.  That pattern may change as the service evolves, but this is the starting point for the service we seek.

Future content should continue to cover all areas of news services and activity relevant to our membership, with items selected in balanced but proactive and challenging ways.

Approaches to NewsBlogs can include:

We also try to relay the NewsBlog information in a fashion that reflects the priorities of our member needs and the wider sector, but also in a reasonably clear and accessible format that recognises the cost of the service, the technical support available through our consultants, and also the need to catch the eye of particular constituencies of readers, from students in mainstream built environment disciplines to skilled practitioners maintaining their interest in conservation through voluntary work.

Service description
We anticipate that the support offered by the selected service will cover news monitoring for around 50 weeks of each year, with gaps addressed by arrangement and agreement with the IHBC’s national office.

The service itself is expected to prepare proofed texts modified from public or internal sources as appropriate and adjusted to our needs in line with current practice, all in a form that our internal information management resources can cast for re-distribution.

The IHBC’s National office, and/or IHBC Branches, will generate other internal news items as required, as the IHBC will maintain its own internal news management system in partnership with the service.  Consequently the main IHBC internal events, or agreed lead news issues, will remain outside the specific remit of the service provider, in the short term at least.  Clearly all parties will need to work in close partnership to integrate seamlessly in-house news with the wider NewsBlog content.

As there is some flexibility in the precise role the IHBC can play, the details of these roles and operations will be agreed in negotiations when the preferred service provider has been identified.

It is important to appreciate that, as a charity, the institute works closely in partnership with its service providers and consultants, benefiting substantially from efficiencies that mutual trust and respect consistently deliver.  We would expect such practices to serve as a model for the new service sought here.

Application Stage 1: Expressions of interest – Closing at 17.00 on 6 December 2013
To apply for the running of this service please submit a cover letter, a CV or other professional statement of your credentials, and THREE to FIVE draft NewsBlogs that you think demonstrate the range, style and finish that you can bring to this critical membership service for the IHBC.  Applications, in the form of notes of interest, should be emailed to Lydia Porter, IHBC Administrator, at admin@ihbc.org.uk, to adrrive before 17.00 hours on 06 December 2013.

Currently we anticipate responses to applicants to be received by 20 December at the latest.

Application Stage 2: Service testing
If required, a second stage will be initiated.  This will involve selected service providers preparing sample NewsBlogs based on a selection of current stories identified by the IHBC.  Details will be notified to applicants following the conclusion of Stage 1. 

Queries
Queries on issues not covered here or evident in the NewsBlogs may be sent to director@ihbc.org.uk 

Indicative criteria for NewsBlogs service support

  • ·Informed in breadth and depth by UK policy and practice relevant to IHBC’s membership profile
  • ·Knowledge and understanding of the heritage sector
  • ·Capacity to write in accordance with current and evolving NewsBlog practice
  • ·Commitment to developing the NewsBlog service
  • ·Awareness of heritage policy and wider related agendas
  • ·Membership of the IHBC, or other relevant professional body
  • ·Ability to write based on the rapid digestion of information
  • ·Practical ability and business capacity to work to strict weekly deadlines without fail
  • ·Ability to the take the initiative in developing NewsBlog items 

Terms

  • ·Work from agreed location (not IHBC)
  • ·Delivery each year of c.50 weekly clusters of 10-20 items each, (periods of break can be accommodated in discussion with the National Office)
  • ·Monthly invoicing: the rates payable will be on a monthly retention basis and potential consultants should set their rate to not exceed £420 (including VAT where payable) per month.
  • ·The IHBC will review the situation at 6-month intervals, while service providers should ensure they are able to carry out this work for the next year with a view to continuing beyond that.
  • ·Copyright, and all rights in the nature of copyrights in so far as they apply, in the material produced in the performance and during the currency of the contract shall remain with The Institute of Historic Building Conservation. 

For the IHBC’s NewsBlogs see: LINK

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