Non-serviced industry

There appears to be a reluctance in creating an interface between the members of the institute and the general public. It is reported in Rod Sweet's article (Cover story, CM, January 2004) that Chris Blythe will be spending £350,000 on profile-raising initiatives. Let's hope that one of these will include a means of communicating with the public. After all it is with the population at large where most of us earn our living. Raise the public awareness of the institute's members' services with the general population and you raise the institute's profile.

Whether you like it or not, the Institute is in competition with other similar bodies and we must match the services offered to the members and the public alike. Those other bodies give the public and their members' services what the CIOB, sadly, does not.

Log onto the Federation of Master Builders website and there, on the left hand side of the page, is a link, 'find a builder'. You get redirected to a short form where you type in your postcode and select a trade (such as general builder), press submit and you get a list of a dozen or so general builders local to you. Brilliant.

Now go to the CIOB website and try to find a Chartered Building Company in your area. A link on the left sends you to a downloadable PDF document that tells you to have a word with the Local Authority planning department who may or may not have a list of local contractors. Whoops! There goes another project for a member of the CIOB.

Now let's have a look at the Chartered Building Consultancy Scheme. Say I am Mr Joe Public and I need a surveyor. What are the alternatives? CIOB or the RICS? I won't go through the CIOB website because there is no way of finding a surveyor there, either. The RICS? On the opening page there is a link. Follow it, fill in your postcode and – hey presto – there's a list of surveyors in your area.

As a firm of surveyors we get about nine referrals from the RICS each quarter. A year's membership of the Chartered Building Consultancy has netted our firm two coffee mugs, six place mats and a woolly hat.