Speakers

Fellow and current President of the Chartered Institute of Building, Sandi Rhys Jones OBE has many years' experience in management and marketing in the construction, engineering and property sectors, working in the UK and internationally. Her clients include contractors, consultants, developers, suppliers, lawyers, representative organisations and local and national government, ranging in size from niche consultancies to large enterprises. An advocate for construction and its contribution to society ' housing, workplaces, infrastructure - Sandi brings her experience both as employer and non-executive director to help organisations find innovative ways of improving performance, including staff recruitment and retention, business development, culture change and stakeholder communications. She has been involved with many government/industry performance improvement programmes for the construction and engineering sectors. Sandi has knowledge of procurement, contracts and dispute resolution and has a reputation for identifying key issues, expressing complex matters in a straightforward way and building consensus between parties. Sandi worked with FIDIC (the International Federation of Consulting Engineers) for many years, to produce its international conditions of contract for engineering projects and producing guidelines on environmental issues, professional liability and ethics. She also worked with the British Property Federation in the drafting and production of its Manual for the Design and Construction of Buildings, and as managing editor on a joint venture between Reading University and industry clarifying construction management, including a model contract. After completing an MSc in Construction Law & Arbitration at King's College London, Sandi became an accredited mediator, applying these skills to conflict management and teambuilding. Sandi has worked with higher and further education bodies to improve diversity and inclusion in engineering and construction, including the universities of Manchester, Salford and Sheffield Hallam. She is a lecturer at Imperial College Business School and also lectured for several years on the Inter Disciplinary Design for Built Environment postgraduate course at Cambridge. She has also worked with organisations running training and accreditation schemes including the National House Builders Federation, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Construction Industry Training Board. For ten years she chaired a charity providing construction trade training for women, including developing an innovative programme helping them move from training into work. For six years she led a roadshow at a challenging and diverse secondary school in South London, demonstrating the variety of ways in which young people can enter construction and engineering and highlighting the opportunities and role models for women. Sandi was appointed OBE for her work in promoting women in construction. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building, a Fellow of the Women's Engineering Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. She has an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University for her work in supporting women in non-traditional roles. As a chartered construction manager and self confessed compulsive builder, she has also developed her experience at a personal level through restoring three crumbling period houses and the development and completion of a home and an office building bought off plan ' confirming her belief that those working in construction should remember that they are clients too.