New vice president: let’s talk about clients

Paul Nash FCIOB, the Institute’s new vice president and a director of Turner & Townsend, has promised to bring a “client’s perspective” to the CIOB, acknowledging their need for new approaches and new thinking in a fast-changing world.

He draws this world view from his role as a T&T director in the London office specialising in the commercial developer and corporate occupier sector, packaging the firm’s services to offer clients the outcomes they need.

“I come to the role with a slightly different perspective, I spend a lot of time with clients, providing independent professional advice,” Nash told CM. “So I’m passionate about the way the industry engages with clients, and how well we as an industry understand what clients want. As the saying goes, we might be selling drill bits, when they want holes.

“There’s a tendency to see what we do as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. It’s about engaging with clients, and feeding that back into the education process – at the moment there’s quite a technical emphasis.”

He also believes the industry needs to respond to the underlying shifts taking place in our globalised economy, where finance, products and personnel are increasingly drawn from outside the UK.

“The danger is that we don’t recognise that the world has changed and the way people work and the nature of employment has changed. We’ve got a number of traditional solutions that will need to be adapted because the world is changing. Your materials may come from overseas, your project manager may well come from India, and your project finance may come from China.”  

Nash’s 32-year career began when he joined contractor Fairclough at 18 as an indentured management trainee. While working for contractor HBG, which was later acquired by BAM, he was then encouraged to take a masters degree in project management.

Already a CIOB Trustee, Nash was inaugurated as vice-president at the Annual General Meeting in Qatar. He will serve as president from June 2016, following the 2015/16 presidency of Chris Chivers FCIOB.

From his client-focused view, Nash also believes that the industry needs to provide more reliable data and evidence on the benefits of BIM, particularly as it’s arriving in an industry where cultures and practices were established decades ago. 

“BIM has the potential to completely change the way we deliver projects and work as teams, but where’s the evidence? I think it’s right to ask these questions, and say to the industry, ‘we can’t assume the benefits of BIM are self-evident’. If I’m sitting with a client who’s got to invest quite a lot, then at the moment we don’t have very much data or evidence to call on.”

Nash also backed the CIOB’s current initiative to engage more closely with MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.

“It’s important that we become more engaged, and have more of a voice at government level to inform that policy making. Sometimes, I think we have more success at that overseas, for instance in Qatar. We need to become the body that government wants to engage with on policy issues.”