18 May Sustainability and new technologies predicted to rise in importance post-COVID-19 at first Surrey Club virtual event
The Constructing Excellence Surrey Club (CESC) held their first virtual event on Thursday 14 May with futurologist Heather Bewers. An apt topic for the current time, Heather took delegates through a fascinating presentation titled “And not or” about the potential futures for the construction sector. (See end of article to watch the event back in full).
With in-person meetings impossible, and networking more challenging in a stay-home world, the CESC committee decided to take the club’s activity online – with virtual events and a new monthly e-newsletter being produced. The e-newsletters will share members’ updates and thought leadership pieces, articles about construction projects in Surrey and industry news.
Topics covered during the wide-ranging and thought-provoking webinar stretched from infrastructure to offices, and from the future of the high street to avatars and life on Mars!
Some interesting results from polls run during the session included that more than 75% of those watching believed we would see widespread use of new technologies in construction sooner after COVID-19 than before. When discussing sustainability, delegates predicted a shift in attitude towards sustainability credentials with these factors becoming more important post-COVID-19 than they had been in planning schemes in the past.
Concluding the session, Heather talked about the opportunity post-COVID-19 for the sector, and society at large, to think about whether we want to return to ‘normal’ or take the opportunity to adapt and change, perhaps based on lessons learnt during this time. Coming back to the ‘And not or’ theme, she left the audience with ‘some ANDs to think about’ namely:
- Long term investment AND agility and adaptability
- Regeneration AND profitability
- Efficiency AND resilience
- Business as usual AND radical innovation
- Distance AND proximity
- Security/safety AND fun.
She explained: “The ANDs are difficult – they so often look like options, either/or choices. Going forward there are so many areas where these must be AND – the question is the right balance between them”.
With more than 70 digital delegates registered and a highly engaged audience with interaction, questions from the audience and several live polls, the webinar was a huge success.