The new Built Environment Futures Assembly aims to bring together diverse voices from across industry, government, professional bodies and education to address the sector’s most pressing challenges, writes Ashley Wheaton, vice chancellor of the University of the Built Environment
I recently had the privilege of giving a presentation at His Majesty’s King’s Foundation event at Hatfield House. The discussion focused on the government’s plan to create 12 new towns, exploring successful examples of human-centred design and sustainable urbanism from around the world.
The ambition to deliver a dozen new towns and the accompanying infrastructure is, unquestionably, considerable. But with the right conditions in place, I believe it is also achievable and, importantly, could deliver some exceptional outcomes.
Reflecting on these ambitious plans and what they will entail, I have been struck by the obvious opportunity for those working across the built environment industry to come together more effectively for that vision to become a reality.
This is already being seen through the collaborative approach and good work of the Construction Skills Mission Board in working across government, industry and education to ensure the much-needed development of the skills and capabilities necessary to deliver.
The built environment has an understandable history of operating across its longstanding and somewhat uniquely defined professional disciplines – planners, architects, constructors, designers, engineers and surveyors. If we could find a way to come even closer together with a genuine sense of shared purpose, we could better unlock the sector’s huge potential to help build places and communities which improve society, drive new economic opportunities, assist in achieving net zero and improve public health.
As we contemplate the development of the new towns and consider the proven benefits of a place-building approach, there is a real opportunity to take a more joined-up approach – one that focuses less on individual parts and more on the whole, with the greater good at its core.
Such an approach might lead to improved outcomes, through opportunities for shared practices, faster innovation, increased technology adoption, greater productivity, improved safety and, arguably, higher quality.
Equally, it could have a hugely positive knock-on impact on the supply of much-needed skills through showing a more joined-up, purpose-driven industry to potential recruits who would be more aware of the wonderful and diverse range of roles and opportunities available across our industry. This, in turn, would help industry to secure and retain the much-needed talent so essential for its future.
The professions involved in shaping our built environment – those planners, developers, contractors, surveyors, designers, and architects – will surely need to adapt if they are to truly meet society’s evolving needs, and as such we must create the conditions that enable them to work in closer unison.
Built Environment Futures Assembly
With this in mind, the University of the Built Environment has launched the employer-led Built Environment Futures Assembly (BEFA), a new forum designed to work directly with industry to help envision the future of professional capacity, capabilities and competency.
BEFA’s chair Mark Farmer is a familiar figure to many and was appointed by successive governments to lead major reviews into the sector: Modernise or Die (published 2016) and Transforming the Construction Workforce, the latest review of Industry Training Boards (published 2025).
BEFA will encourage knowledge sharing, learning and innovation by championing five key areas: education and future skills; professionalism; equality, diversity and inclusion; sustainability; and place-making.
Such a holistic focus differentiates BEFA from other industry initiatives. It will operate as a cooperative partnership, one where all those involved have a voice in shaping its agenda, resulting in activities that are demand-led and where outcomes and benefits are shared across the sector.
The emphasis of this exercise will be on partnership. Through the work of the assembly, we aim to drive industry-led initiatives and actions which will help organisations to implement future working practices without reinventing the wheel.
BEFA isn’t a silver-bullet solution. But initiatives like it are a step towards helping the built environment sector to maximise its ability to best deliver on its, and society’s, objectives.
We invite those working across the built environment to collaborate with us, with the University of the Built Environment and with BEFA to help the built environment deliver the well-designed homes, the infrastructure and the places we all want to see and, crucially, need.
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