After the relative success of our annual dinner in March 2020 we had aimed to have our AGM soon after, but a pandemic has caused us to delay. We were lucky to be able to hold the dinner, and lucky to have no reports of illness – we were all shaking hands like Boris in an ICU.

Since the call to work from home and #stayhome we have had one chapter meeting via zoom and have arranged for our AGM to take place in June, also via zoom.

We have also taken the opportunity to expanded some of our local chapter committees in the lull of furlough. We hope that this can feed through to the RIAS Committees.

We are looking forward to hosting and participating in more CPD events once this current lock-down situation is over.  In the meantime we are turning our focus to Build It Aberdeen – Construction & Property Conference which takes place in November.  As ASA president I have now become the chairperson of the organising committee, although the large amount of work in organisation is done by local events company Mearns & Gill.

A launch webinar was held in early May and the invitation is now open to submit abstracts if people wish to speak at the event. The webinar was very interesting, partly because it gave me an insight into the amount of work and tech that goes into a proper webinar, but also to hear from people across the construction industry about some of their experiences during the pandemic and their thoughts about the future. We had national contractors working in England and Scotland discussing the current differing situations on building sites, innovation enablers and cyclical economy experts, and that was just the launch, the event is shaping up to be really interesting. The organising committee has also expanded with Sandy Halliday and Claire McArthur joint the ranks from different professions.

At the beginning of the pandemic lock down I did a guest spot on a blog for planning consultants Aurora Planning. I talked about my own situation, but also about the future of housing and how the housing market might adapt to address the ability and desire for home working.

https://auroraplanning.co.uk/blog/2020-05-07-theres-no-place-like-home

We have been sharing COVID advice from various sources across the industry via our website and emails with chapter members. We have also been sharing webinar and CPD resources that we come across during this time when we are finding it difficult to organise our own events.