The Building Podcast with Mark Wakeford

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Fraud accounts for 43% of all recorded crime and costs the UK around £1.3Bn each year and this figure continues to climb.  Kate Grove of the National Crime Agency talks through the extensive work of the agency, and the four Ps that they follow to reduce the impact on people and businesses.  Construction and energy sectors are a key target of fraudsters, given the lon...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction skills remain a challenge for the industry.  Construction is recruiting fewer new recruits, and our average age of tradesperson continues to increase.  Where and how is our sector going to find the people with the skills to provide a service?  The Government's solution for England is the ten Construction Technical Excellence Colleges scattered throu...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Community Energy is heralded as the best way to mobilise communities to develop and invest in their own energy schemes, the easiest being wind or solar.  A project starts with the germ of an idea and a group of keen and curious individuals who want to form the nucleus of a diverse team to bring cheaper and secure energy to a community.  Great British Energy is here t...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome GB Energy has been created to drive the renewable energy revolution through out the United Kingdom.  One element of this is the near £1Bn fund for 1,000 community energy schemes to be delivered nationally by 2030.  This fund will generate jobs, investment opportunities and cheaper and more resilient energy generation, where local communities can own and benefit from...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Government is planning for a £200 - £300Bn industry by 2030 and Agnes Wamagui is in the epicentre of this aspiration.  Agnes is the Knowledge Transfer Manager for Robots within Innovate UK, the Government’s agency for funding and promoting the best of British innovation.  She sits at the confluence of Government policy, university research, investors and industry, bo...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Companies often state that people are their biggest and most important asset.  The UK construction industry has the highest suicide rate of any sector, so we might argue that we are not looking after this asset at all well. Couple this with our high percentage of neuro- diverse employees and the latest statute, the Employments Rights Act 2025, employers must raise th...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Solar, supported by battery storage, is the technology of choice to keep civil society functioning close to the front line in war torn Ukraine.  Its decentralised nature makes targeting by the enemy far more difficult, and it allows users to manage when the power is used, keeping essential services in hospitals and schools working.  Without this energy, civil society...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The UK construction market needs an additional 50,000 people to join the sector every year till 2030 if it is to provide the services to which it is contracted or will be contracted.  Many of these people will be expected to join from school, colleges and universities, yet the industry has a communication problem and is competing with other, better equipped and bette...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The solar sector has to deliver competent solar arrays as scale and at pace if it is to achieve the goal of 55GW by 2030 and support the worldwide target of 8TW of generating capacity.  In the UK, Government has stated that it wants everyone to have access to a community energy scheme by 2030, which is a huge target that would support the de-carbonisation of the grid...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Tabassum Hussain talks about the corporate mantra that our employees are our biggest asset is often said, but it is unclear how far companies ought to go to protect these assets.  If a company is to get the best from its staff then they need to be competent and motivated to do their job over a long period.  To achieve this, companies are increasingly supporting the h...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The rate of change that businesses face continues to increase.  Whether this is due to technology from iphone to AI, Covid-19 and the rise of the mental health challenge, wars in Europe and the Middle East, or climate change.  Each issue demanding an intelligent and definitive action from corporate and industry leaders.  One essential solution is innovation, innovati...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Climate change is creating risks for construction clients around the world.  What do we build?  How do we make it resilient?  Where do we build and what are the long-term risks from climate change that I need to take into account?  The same challenges face the banks when they look to see what is fundable and what is not?  Construction companies, dealing with projects...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The Global Solar Council is the worldwide trade body for the solar sector.  It exists to promote solar and battery storage around the world and it has members in every continent that include regional trade bodies, individual corporates and the full range of stakeholders from banks to developers.  All are united to drive the adoption of solar at scale and at pace.  Th...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome When responsible for 56,000 dwellings that are almost exclusively for vulnerable people towards the end of their lives, security and maintenance of building assets becomes a vital service.  Your customers depend upon an effective and affordable service that is understandable and does what it says on the tin!  Simon Berry is the Technical Standards and Specification l...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome We think that construction is a challenging sector to work within.  English China pottery is another level of complexity again, with only a handful of businesses left in place in their cultural homeland of Stoke on Trent.  Susan Rose China is one of those companies, which was started by Susan Rose, who remains as founder and Chief Executive. The podcast explores the...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The United Kingdom is the most nature depleted county within Europe.  Businesses are beginning to realise that there is a symbiotic relationship with nature at a local and national scale and their success is linked to the success of nature within their ecosystem.  The challenge for sectors like construction and energy is the ability to measure their impact on nature...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The key element of a solar array is the solar panel, which is responsible for capturing the sun’s rays and converting them into useable electricity.  These panels are relatively inexpensive, but they are technically very advanced, using complex chemistry and physics to maximise their efficiency and resilience. Oxford PV is the first company worldwide to have develope...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Baroness Sue Campbell of Loughborough has changed sport in the UK.  She has driven change in the school sport through her tenure of the Youth Sports Trust, delivered the most successful Olympic and Paralympic results in London at the 2012 games through her leadership of Sports UK and then turned her magic to women’s football and the responsible director at the Footba...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The solar sector is a relatively new sector that is still creating the infrastructure to ensure the competence of its staff.  Tracey Elliott, a Director of Eden Sustainable Power, chairs the Skills Group of the industry trade body Solar Energy UK and is passionate about the provision of skills and diversity within the sector to ensure the best possible outcome for it...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Solar has some big installation targets to achieve over the coming years.  In a country that has limited space (land) and a growing population with many competing ideas on what this limited space should allow, solar farms were always going to be contentious.  All solar farms have to pass through a planning process, whether this is the Local Planning Authority or the...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The fourth industrial revolution is in full swing as the Age of Intelligence affects our lives in so many ways.  The construction industry is working hard to come to terms with the forecast changes and the uncertainty that swirls around the technology, its potential, its risks and the value that it can bring.  James Garner is the Head of AI and Data for Gleeds, the i...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction sites and those who work in the sector have both changed a great deal over the last thirty years, but the industry still struggles to attract women to fill the much-needed roles, both on site and in the office.  The industry fails to attract the skills it needs and the diversity of thought and approach that will support the changes that every business fa...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Insurance is one of those ubiquitous items that every organisation in the construction industry has and which every client is ultimately funding.  There are only two mandatory covers that are required by law.  The first is employee cover, to ensure that members of staff are insured should they have an accident or fall ill as a result of their work and vehicle insuran...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Dr. Victoria Hills has held high profile roles in a wide variety of differing sectors and organisations.  She left being the CEO at the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) at the end of last year to take up the top job as CEO of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) at the beginning of 2026.  Catch up with her views as she reflects on eight years supporting pla...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction is a people business and it is people who build for people.  The industry needs around 250,000 new recruits by 2030 just to stand still and before any of the large programmes that politicians would love to implement.  Businesses throughout the supply chain state that they are struggling to recruit enough people with the right skills and these skills are...