Skills for a Sustainable Skyline

At Merchant Land we encourage all staff to find things that are interesting and purposeful with a built environment focus; and to use this as a way to contribute time to issues facing the industry and communities we serve. We also see real benefit, as an SME, to ensure our staff get involved with teamwork and collaboration with other professionals beyond our organisation.

I have recently joined one of the Working Groups for the City of London’s Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce. This is a really important time to look at recruitment into the industry, encouraging a diverse and engaged younger generation into the sector and to develop the green skills needed now and in the short, mid and long term future. My Working Group is looking at the business case for employers to invest in green skills and is being chaired by Hannah Vickers of Mace and Benjamin O’Connor of the NLA. I am hoping as someone operating in the SME sector I can help make sure that smaller SME construction companies and professional firms are able to contribute to the surveys and interview work we will be undertaking to gather evidence as stage one.

It’s also a great opportunity to collaborate with people my day role – heading up an SME property company – wouldn’t necessarily involve. Which always helps you think about different ways of potentially doing things by drawing some of the things other types of organisations are deploying.