What’s in a name

There is a woeful lack of knowledge among the general public about what being a building services engineer entails. It’s easy to imagine a bright young school-leaver becoming all fired up about becoming an architect, a doctor, even a civil engineer. Picturing them enthusiastically researching the path towards M&E design requires a rather larger leap of the imagination. And even if they did approach a careers adviser, they’d probably be told it involved designing drains and sizing pipes and ducts!

No wonder we are suffering from a serious and worsening skills crisis and a dire shortage of intelligent, creative new entrants.

In my view, our profession suffers from a serious lack of sex appeal and it’s time for a radical rethink. Tinkering at the edges by tweaking our image won’t deliver the step change in the skill base we need to address the challenges that lie ahead.

Let’s start with what we call ourselves: “building services engineers”. A more lacklustre and unappealing descriptor would be hard to conceive. It was clearly invented as a compromise when we gained our Royal Charter and moved on from being the Institution of Heating and Ventilating Engineers (yes, I know that some still view the dropping this name as the end of civilisation).

How does sustainability sound?

I’m proposing that we should rename CIBSE the Sustainable Building Institute (SBI). An alternative might be to call ourselves the Chartered Institute of Building Sustainability Engineers. This would mean we didn’t need to change our logo or acronym.

But the SBI would provide a much more appealing and accurate descriptor of the vitally important role we have in delivering a sustainable built environment. School-leavers and those seeking a mid-career change are much more likely to take a serious look at what our work involves rather than, as often happens, immediately rejecting a career in “building services” with its hugely unappealing connotations.

Our profession suffers from a serious lack of sex appeal and it’s time for a radical rethink

Like many others, I found my way into building services engineering by accident; today’s school-leavers, graduates and mid-career changers are savvier and much more worldly wise. Most do their research on the net and are looking for an inspirational and fulfilling career. Many (particularly the younger ones) want to make a real difference and contribute to the challenge of addressing climate change by helping to deliver a low-carbon future. Very few currently make the connection between building services engineering and saving the planet – any name change must help to establish this link clearly and unambiguously.

I’m in the process of establishing a new sustainable building consultancy. We are successfully recruiting extremely bright, talented and experienced staff. It is a huge disappointment how few of them are CIBSE members, and yet they may have all the credentials for membership.

I hope this rant will serve as a wake-up call for CIBSE; this issue needs open, candid and serious debate. Has the time come to set aside overly sentimental support for an outdated name and consider more radical options to help position us for decades to come at the forefront of delivering a much more sustainable built environment?

Independent market research should be commissioned as a matter of urgency to review this issue – not among our current membership, but among those we wish to recruit into our profession.

We might just discover some rather uncomfortable home truths regarding the profoundly unhelpful image that our name currently conjures up in the minds of those we most need to attract.

Dr David Strong, CIBSE fellow and chief executive of Inbuilt Ltd, can be contacted on 01923 277061, or see www.inbuilt.co.uk