The Building Podcast with Mark Wakeford
Mark Wakeford is a Director of the National Federation of Builders, Strategy Director of the Global Solar Council and Chair of the West Midlands Solar Taskforce. He has run a large regional building contractor and now chairs Evoenergy, one of the UK's foremost renewable companies, bringing low carbon solutions to corporate Britain.
Mark talks to leading experts from across the construction sector to discuss issues facing the built environment. He explores various challenges with his guests, who offer solutions, information and ideas that listeners can apply to their own situations, be it in a company, on a project or studying at college.
The Building Podcast aims to provide 'CPD on the go'. Supporting the sector with easily digestible ideas to support a rapidly changing industry!
Episodes
127 episodes
Construction Skills - Government is trying to help - Get involved to secure your legacy and the future of your business
Construction skills remain a challenge for the industry. Construction is recruiting fewer new recruits, and our average age of tradesperson continues to increase. Where and how is our sector going to find the people with the skills ...
Decentralised and Democratised Energy - How to get your Community Energy scheme off the ground and onto site
Community Energy is heralded as the best way to mobilise communities to develop and invest in their own energy schemes, the easiest being wind or solar. A project starts with the germ of an idea and a group of keen and curious individuals...
GB Energy – Driving an energy revolution through community energy schemes
GB Energy has been created to drive the renewable energy revolution through out the United Kingdom. One element of this is the near £1Bn fund for 1,000 community energy schemes to be delivered nationally by 2030. This fund will gene...
Construction Robots – How to be part of a £300Bn industry by 2030 – Fact or Fiction?
Government is planning for a £200 - £300Bn industry by 2030 and Agnes Wamagui is in the epicentre of this aspiration. Agnes is the Knowledge Transfer Manager for Robots within Innovate UK, the Government’s agency for funding and promoting...
Protecting Your Greatest Asset: Why Safeguarding matters to us all
Companies often state that people are their biggest and most important asset. The UK construction industry has the highest suicide rate of any sector, so we might argue that we are not looking after this asset at all well. Couple this wit...
Solar for the Support of Civil Society
Solar, supported by battery storage, is the technology of choice to keep civil society functioning close to the front line in war torn Ukraine. Its decentralised nature makes targeting by the enemy far more difficult, and it allows users ...
One solution to the skills crisis - Tackle it early in schools with real construction examples
The UK construction market needs an additional 50,000 people to join the sector every year till 2030 if it is to provide the services to which it is contracted or will be contracted. Many of these people will be expected to join from scho...
Mark talks to Dean Hill - The Big Solar Co-op Ltd
The solar sector has to deliver competent solar arrays as scale and at pace if it is to achieve the goal of 55GW by 2030 and support the worldwide target of 8TW of generating capacity. In the UK, Government has stated that it wants everyo...
Employee Health - A crucial element for any successful business
Tabassum Hussain talks about the corporate mantra that our employees are our biggest asset is often said, but it is unclear how far companies ought to go to protect these assets. If a company is to get the best from its staff then they ne...
Mark talks to Dr Olga Kozlova - Oxford University
The rate of change that businesses face continues to increase. Whether this is due to technology from iphone to AI, Covid-19 and the rise of the mental health challenge, wars in Europe and the Middle East, or climate change. Each is...
Mark talks to Kamil Kluza - Climate X
Climate change is creating risks for construction clients around the world. What do we build? How do we make it resilient? Where do we build and what are the long-term risks from climate change that I need to take into account...
Mark talks to Rakesh Maharaj - Global Solar Council
The Global Solar Council is the worldwide trade body for the solar sector. It exists to promote solar and battery storage around the world and it has members in every continent that include regional trade bodies, individual corporates and...
Mark talks to Simon Berry - Anchor
When responsible for 56,000 dwellings that are almost exclusively for vulnerable people towards the end of their lives, security and maintenance of building assets becomes a vital service. Your customers depend upon an effective and affor...
Mark talks to Susan Rose - Susan Rose China
We think that construction is a challenging sector to work within. English China pottery is another level of complexity again, with only a handful of businesses left in place in their cultural homeland of Stoke on Trent. Susan Rose ...
Mark talks to Sebastian Leape - NatCap
The United Kingdom is the most nature depleted county within Europe. Businesses are beginning to realise that there is a symbiotic relationship with nature at a local and national scale and their success is linked to the success of nature...
Mark talks to Laura Miranda Perez - Oxford PV
The key element of a solar array is the solar panel, which is responsible for capturing the sun’s rays and converting them into useable electricity. These panels are relatively inexpensive, but they are technically very advanced, using co...
Mark talks to Baroness Sue Campbell
Baroness Sue Campbell of Loughborough has changed sport in the UK. She has driven change in the school sport through her tenure of the Youth Sports Trust, delivered the most successful Olympic and Paralympic results in London at the 2012 ...
Mark talks to Tracey Elliott - Eden Sustainable Power
The solar sector is a relatively new sector that is still creating the infrastructure to ensure the competence of its staff. Tracey Elliott, a Director of Eden Sustainable Power, chairs the Skills Group of the industry trade body Solar En...
Mark talks to Jackie Copley - CPRE
Solar has some big installation targets to achieve over the coming years. In a country that has limited space (land) and a growing population with many competing ideas on what this limited space should allow, solar farms were always going...
Mark talks to James Garner - Gleeds
The fourth industrial revolution is in full swing as the Age of Intelligence affects our lives in so many ways. The construction industry is working hard to come to terms with the forecast changes and the uncertainty that swirls around th...
Mark talks to Renée Preston - Gallaway Construction
Construction sites and those who work in the sector have both changed a great deal over the last thirty years, but the industry still struggles to attract women to fill the much-needed roles, both on site and in the office. The industry f...
Mark talks to Richard Brannigan and Robin Smith - The Bletchley Group
Insurance is one of those ubiquitous items that every organisation in the construction industry has and which every client is ultimately funding. There are only two mandatory covers that are required by law. The first is employee co...
Mark talks to Dr Victoria Hills - CIOB
Dr. Victoria Hills has held high profile roles in a wide variety of differing sectors and organisations. She left being the CEO at the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) at the end of last year to take up the top job as CEO of the Chart...
Resilience, self-belief and opportunity – transforms lives beyond conviction.
Construction is a people business and it is people who build for people. The industry needs around 250,000 new recruits by 2030 just to stand still and before any of the large programmes that politicians would love to implement. Bus...
Mark talks to Chris Denyer - Aspire Bidding
Procurement is a common theme running through all companies involved in the construction sector. Everyone has to win work one way or the other and whilst the procurement process will vary from client to client, the objectives are broadly ...