REVIEW AND ANALYSIS 17 DIRECTOR’S UPDATE BUILDING ON RESILIENCE SEÁN O’REILLY, IHBC DIRECTOR IT MAY seem a little ironic, perhaps even caustic, that the substantial progress we’re making as we move beyond the pandemic is underpinned by savings made in lockdown, from travel constraints to training events! For example, our annual schools have benefited from our development of hybrid models following emergency online iterations of the Brighton school in 2020 and ’21, and online and in-person events at Aberdeen (’23) and Swansea (’24). As a result we now have greater financial flexibility and we are confident of potential improvements. More strategically, our post-Covid surplus helped advance longer-term corporate plan objectives, notably exploring how a charter might help us deliver our core objects and member aspirations. As readers of the Director’s Cut in Context will know, analysis of feedback from the charter-linked survey and from member-engagement across 2023 have served more as proxy guidance for our next corporate plan than clarifying chartering concerns. We are not alone in having drawn lessons as well as resources from the huge tragedies around the pandemic, but I think, serendipitously more than operationally perhaps, we have been very well placed to make full use of the opportunities offered across numerous and diverse areas of corporate probity, service and practice. Curiously, perhaps one of the most advantageous aspects of the lockdown for us has been the push to review the resilience of our resource management in the face of unlikely ‘black swan’ risks such as the pandemic. Previously, with funds so low and capacity tight, we held cash reserves. From early 2021, urged on by inflationary impacts and banking threats, we put our arrangements under the spotlight and saw much room for improvement. The first step has been to move reserve funds into more inflation-protected holdings and across different banks. The second will be a 360-degree risk review. EDUCATION AND TRAINING Mindful of the IHBC’s focus on learning support through our branch networks, investment expanded most notably in training, with a focus on career support for members and the appointment of a new education and training lead officer, Angharad Hart. Targeting new, if still scarce, resources is critical here. From the charter discussions as well as with our members, we had become increasingly aware of how much the absence of credible infrastructure for career support is hampering those looking for IHBC accreditation. The process is made more complex by the wide range of career paths and the interdisciplinary nature of historic environment conservation practice. Whether the fault lies with employers, practice leads or government regulators, this failure to accommodate the skills diversity that underpins successful conservation means that the IHBC’s services have a critical role in the future of the built environment. The IHBC’s new and more graded membership categories now extend from unassessed supporter to assessed but unaccredited affiliate, then baseline accreditation as associate and full, and IHBC accreditation as an interdisciplinary built and historic environment professional. These now serve as the best, and I think the only, formal trajectory for careers in a type of specialist conservation practice that not only accords with core ICOMOS guidance but also with the project-focused pragmatics of the World Bank principles. To underpin this refinement, we have new training resources and guidance, from helping supporters secure new affiliate status, to tighter descriptions of our skills areas; the competences that underpin our Areas of Competence. As such, we can now truly serve as a body serving a professional practice. We do not need a charter to tell us that, or a pandemic to highlight how important our work is, but both have helped us better appreciate our core values. Branches and members: IHBC’s volunteer-led branches have been responding to their own challenges, too, as they work hard to adapt their unique range of locally accessible, cost-effective and high-quality CPD to post-pandemic climates and pressures. In this they have been helped by funding allocations and bid opportunities, again sourced in lockdown-led surpluses. Additional structural support has included a dedicated branch support role, which is still evolving to make sure it maximises benefit across our services. Annual schools: The IHBC Swansea School in June 2023 looked at the critical issue of ‘Climate Change and the Historic Environment: Resilience and Performance’ and focused more on the in-person training experience than the structurally blended approach adopted in Aberdeen. Alongside its vital insights, Swansea also offered an invaluable perspective on the strengths and weaknesses inherent in both approaches to blended learning, Seán O’Reilly with annual school delegates at the Penderyn distillery, Swansea
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