Chairman's Blog

Firstly thank you very much to Ismena and Stuart who covered my blog whilst I was recovering. I was back in to the hot seat last week and spent a day or so playing catch up on both my Hallmark and BIFM roles, on Tuesday I travelled down to Bishops Stortford for my first Board Meeting as Chair, the meeting went very well with great pre work and input from a number of groups enabling the board to make quick but reasoned decisions. The board meeting was followed by an awayday and a half where the board is able to step away and take a look at all the issues facing the Institute as well as reviewing and/or re-stating the medium term strategy where necessary. Unfortunately I was unwell throughout this session but the team covered alot of ground and it was certainly time well spent. I'm not sure whether I came back to work too early or have picked something up but I was particularly poorly throughout. For me Bishops Stortford is quite a long drive back but I was glad to get home on Thursday - there is nothing worse than being ill when you are away from home. Being in BIFM head office last week I noticed a real buzz about the place, it's important that the head office team see and meet regularly with the volunteers like me that make up the board and i've often said the Institute is at it's strongest when the two "groups" work together well.

Next week we have members council in London and I look forward to chairing this for the first time, remember to let the chair of your SIG , Region or Group know if you would like feedback from members council or indeed if there is something you'd like to raise, the council is for you the members! I have also taken the opportunity to meet with a number of members and group chairs whilst I am in the capital. Over the coming weeks I am also attending the Scottish Ball, the HVAC annual lunch and towards the end of September will be at the London Conference. Starting my period as Chair in summer had meant my diary has been relatively quiet but as we ramp up in to the last quarter things look very busy indeed.

Over this weekend I was over on my old stomping ground near Preston visiting Hoghton Tower (www.hoghtontower.co.uk), if you have never been its well worth a visit - you would never imagine its just 5 miles from Preston City Centre. the village where I used to live is very quiet at the moment with a couple of the pubs on the verge of closing down - its a shame to see. However it's exciting times ahead in Preston with a tram route mooted and Preston Guild due in 2012 - if you have never heard of Preston Guild i'll cover it in a later blog. Preston is the UK's newest city and still has a town feel really - its certainly very quiet on a Sunday morning.

I am interested as ever to hear from you, what you thing of the blog, BIFM in general or any questions you may have for me - please feel free to leave a comment or you can follow me on twitter ibroadbent_bifm