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Changing the face of our industry, one breakfast at a time
When someone says to you, “There’s no such thing as a good M&E consultant”, it’s tempting to immediately push back against that opinion, especially when you are an M&E consultant, and a proud one! But over my many years in private practice I’ve heard that comment numerous times and began to question why such a perception persisted and how it might be changed?
This is a journey we’ve been on at TACE for the last 15 years and I believe we’ve made significant progress. We recognised that negative perception was out of step with reality (after all, there were many M&E consultants doing first rate work) but as an industry we clearly haven’t portrayed our brand in an effective way.
In our opinion that’s largely down to the way we (the M&E sector) communicate with other construction professionals. We’ve been narrowly focused on our technical sphere and haven’t always made it easy for other sectors to appreciate what we do and how it helps them achieve their goals. That requires a Big Picture approach and a wider skill set.
To address this, we made some initial changes at TACE which affected our people. We:
- Sponsored our engineers through a BSc and many to Masters degree level
- Shared profit to all members of staff
- Retained staff through above-market level salaries
- Provided a share purchase scheme.
This helped us build a team of highly qualified, motivated and loyal engineers, but we wanted to do more. We decided to develop our future leaders, the people who would drive this industry forward into the 21st century.
Part of the answer was to bring external trainers into the company but we felt we wanted to share those learnings with others – hence the launch of our Leadership Breakfast Club.
“The Breakfast Club (sponsored by TACE) has been set up as a leadership programme to assist you in your career development. We offer to share our experiences with you with opportunities to attend private seminars with business and industry experts, as well as develop your business relationships. The aim is to provide you with the extra skills and knowledge that will assist you in your career progression.”
At our inaugural event in June we were delighted to welcome networking guru Will Kintish as our first speaker. Our next session (on 27th September) will feature communications expert Andrew Thorp, who will explain how we can tell a powerful and unique story about our business.
For more information on the Breakfast Club and for details of upcoming events please email Jo Mageean .