Fifty Eighth Meeting of Council

BRE Trust

Fifty eighth meeting of Council

held at

at4:00pm at ICE London on 10th November 2011

Present: / In attendance:
Sir Neville Simms (Chairman) / Mr C Earnshaw
Professor J Burland / Mr D Szyamanski
Mr JCarter / Dr M Wyatt
Mr M Clare (part time) / Mr R Heusch
Dr Liz Goodwin / Mr P Bonfield
Mr M Farrar / Ms C Atkinson (part time)
Mr H Ferguson / Ms C Bott
Sir Ken Knight CBE QFSM / Mr D Penn (secretary)
Mr P Lobban / Mr C Watson (retiring secretary)
Invited Guests (presentation)
Mr T Beckett

Welcome and apologies

Apologies have been received from Les Clark, Richard Gillies, Richard Haryott and James Wates.
Sir Neville Simms welcomed to the meeting David Penn – the new Company Secretary and BRE Trust Secretary – who will take over from Chris Watson after this meeting. Sir Neville thanked Chris Watson for his contribution.

Minutes of the fifty sixthmeeting of Council held on 27 July2011

The minutes were agreed and signed

Report of BRE Trust’s Fifteenth Annual General Meeting

The report was accepted as an accurate record.

Matters arising from the previous minutes

Appointment of Auditors
Five auditor’s firms have come to site and seen BRE’s systems, followed up by meetings with Chris Earnshaw. There will be a ‘beauty parade’ on 15 November following which a recommendation will be made to the audit committee. Sir Neville Simms noted that the decision will rest with BRE Group.
IHS BRE Press – Royalties on Electronic publications
Martin Wyatt reported that following a meeting with IHS on 8 November, they have agreed to submit a proposal to support payment of royalties on electronic downloads, reassured that BRE would not request backdated payments.
Thematic programme
A meeting has been arranged with the Research Committee in mid-December. This will cover points to be learned from the current programme and making a proposition for the next theme around ‘future cities’ together with budgets for the next three years.Paperwork will be sent out before the meeting.
An ambitious programme is proposed – IBM is match funding to £1M and a workshop with them has been held in Cardiff.
Chief Scientist –John Burlandspoke to Jane Sutton, head of communications at RAE, regarding other names he could approach in their network.
Group Board changes
Sir Neville Simms welcomed Peter Bonfield BRE Group Chief Executive designate. Martin Wyatt (currently Executive Chairman) will assume the role of non-Executive Chairman but retains responsibility for pensions, the land and Tri-air. The change is effective from 1st January 2012. Sir Neville noted the rigorous process that Chris Earnshaw and David Szymanski had adopted to appoint the new Chief Executive and define the new roles.
Sir Neville thanked and congratulated Martin Wyatt for the enormous contribution he had made while in charge of BRE Group.
New Trustees
Sir Neville noted that there are currently thirteen Trustees – fourteen is the maximum – meaning that there is a vacancy.Recommendations are requested.
Sir Neville’s and John Burland’s three year term expires at this meeting but both have agreed to continue and they were reappointed by Council for another three year term.
Three Trusteeships expire in August 2012.
Support from other Charitable Trusts
Sir Ken Knight noted that due to current work pressures he would be happy to help in a group of two or three Trustees to find charities that would be willing to support the work of BRE Trust with additional funding but currently would not have thecapacity to take it on alone.
Martin Wyatt agreed to make progress in advance of involving the Trustees.
Format of agenda
The Chairman requested a change in the way the meetings were managed. The Finance Director and the Chief Executive should each produce and deliver a report. In that context the Chairman of the Research Committee and the Chairman of the Publications Committee would deliver their respective reports instead of the Secretary. John Burland and Hugh Ferguson agreed subject to being provided with the relevant paper a minimum of two weeks before the meeting.

BRE Group Chairman’s report

Martin Wyatt reported on BRETrustCouncil (11)19. In these difficult times the subsidiary companies are performing well.The amount of work from Government is better than expected but work from the struggling private sector is less than anticipated – overall the Group is slightly ahead of plan at the moment and hope to be on plan at end of the year.
Staff numbers are increasing in BRE Global – and shrinking in BRE through natural wastage.
Non- government debtor days remain steady at 38.
Progress on site development is suffering as the Local Authority has now delayed a decision following legal advice that it should wait until the new Planning Act becomes law next March. Mark Clare’s advisory team will provide support. A visit from a group of Councillors next week has had to be called off.
The Pension scheme tri-annual valuation as at 30th September 2011 remains much the same. The Pension deficit is more affected by mortality tables than asset value at the moment.

BRE Trust’s Financial Statements 2010/2011

Russell Heusch referred to BRETrustCouncil(11)20. The University Centres of Excellence Chairs and PhDs are on plan. The Research expenditure is behind plan, although the position has slightly recovered since the first quarter. The intention is to spend the allocation by the end of the year.
Despite predictions the interest rates are similar to last year. Gift Aid calculation takes in trading till end of September and is ahead of plan. Specific ‘wash through’ activities such as WRAP and Cornwall do not affect the balance sheet.
The NHBC F contribution is only received at the very end of the financial year. Although the NHBC F external expenditure is higher than plan, internal BRE expenditure is lower, meaning that the overall spend on plan. Peter Bonfield noted that the trend towards external NHBC F expenditure is mostly to support the zero carbon hub. This is a good use of NHBC F funds and he reminded the meeting that Zero Carbon Hub has only a year left.
In the bank for the whole of BRE Group is the cash equivalent of £8M-£9M at the moment.

Report on Audit Committee Meeting

Chris Earnshaw reported outcomes from the Audit Committee meeting. Three items were covered – Finance, Risk Register and Appointment of New Auditors. Regarding Finance, he noted that David Szymanski and himself have the benefit of being on the Group Board and are aware of the financial situation. New Auditors and Risk Register are covered under the appropriate agenda heading.

Research Report

Chris Watson referred to BRETrustCouncil (11)23. The Research Committee will be receiving further project summaries for post-project reviews in the next few days. Outcomes will be reported in conjunction with the Research Committee’s responses.
Martin Wyatt advised that difficulties, political and bureaucratic, were experienced in negotiating IPR with one of the Universities – BRE contract arrangements were ignored. So BRE is being forced to look again at how the arrangements with the Chairs are set up based on a‘statement of principle’ of how to work together. BRE has approached a lawyer (recommended by Arups) who has experience in these relationships.
Liz Goodwin confirmed the work with BRE has gone well this year and that that WRAP and BRE are considering what to do next year.
John Burlandnoted that the Research Committee had been responding to the Responsive Mode Beta applications. The project managers’ responses to the initial comments had been good. He is looking forward to the meeting to discuss the new Thematic Research Programme in December.
Regarding NHBC F proposals, John Burland observed thatproposals for BRE projects to the Advisory Committee stand up well and that written outputs are good. The relationship with NHBC F is good.
Regarding University Chairs - Peter Bonfield noted that Dr Yousaf Khalid, a former BRE Trust PhD student recently awarded his Doctorate, is now working for BRE.
Peter Bonfield visitedCardiff University on 9th Novemberto discuss the newly funded BRE Trust Chair, Yacine Rezgui. He now has 7 staff and 30 PhD students in his group and has strong support fromKaren Holford. He met Phil Jones for lunch. He noted that the centres will cooperate but they are unlikely to form a single unit.

Publications report

Chris Watson referred to BRECouncil (11)24.
Hugh Ferguson commented that since the last report there had been an improvement in the number of outputs in relation to the numbers of publications funded.
He noted that the publications committee undergo two cycles of activity – selecting publications for trust funding –and reviewing output. The committee met prior to this meeting to review a random example of six BRE Trust publications. The overall finding was encouraging with a marked improvement since last year. The summaries were better, targeted and more concise. BRE Connect had been promoted more consistently.
In particular the committee were impressed by ‘Ventilation for Healthy Buildings’ which was exceptionally good, well thought out and persuasive.Another publication, not named at the meeting, was exceptionally bad. Hugh Ferguson had looked at other BRE Trust publications and was satisfied that the ‘random’ choice was representative, and while not perfect there has been a great improvement in quality overall.
A checklist is being prepared with12 points with a summary of factors to assist with pre-assessments.
Hugh Ferguson noted that there is scope for more collaborative marketing with IHS – identify the ‘big hitters’ and prioritise people to write to them, cover new publications with a press release on a weekly or monthly basis –arrange a launch event and ‘make a bit of a hullabaloo’. There ought to be more press coverage of some of the BRE reports. Liz Goodwin noted the need to prioritise – and the benefit of not pushing all the time.
Hugh Ferguson stated that there was a difficulty with branding publications – the user knows the BRE brand,and the distinction between BRE Global and BRE is confusing. Clare Bott advised that soonall publications will carry the new BRE brand style.
A workshop will be arranged with IHS to discuss future vehicles for publication such as APPS. There is a need to be a bit more adventurous on how we deliver with IHS. If IHS are not willing to publish material in new formats then it is open for BRE to do this themselves.

BRE Trust Risk Register

Chris Earnshaw noted that the BRE Trust Risk Register had been discussed in detail at the Audit Committee Meeting. The BRE Group Risk Register preceded the Trust Register and has been through several iterations – the Trust Risk Register is at an earlier stage.
Important changes to structure have been proposed and the following headings added:
Overarching governance
Risk on reputation and brand – (David Penn is to investigate this)
Financial responsibility
Some of the risks should be owned by the respective Chairs of the BRE Trust (sub-) committees. The register is to be aligned with the Trustee Handbook and terms of reference of the sub-committees.
Consideration is to be given to placing the Trust within the BS EN ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems framework.
Chris Earnshaw requested that if the Trustees have any comments on potential sources of risk please send them to David Penn to be picked up in the next iteration.
The Bribery Act 2010 is to be picked up under ‘Law and Regulations’. And further clarity is needed on ‘public good’.

BRE Fellows

A list of names of potential BRE Fellows was circulated. All those who have been approached showed enthusiasm for the role and the fact it was unpaid did not appear to be an issue. The need to identify a Chair for this group was noted.
Sir Neville Simms noted the importance of defining how it is going to be managed, the budget, the structure, timings of meetings, methods of interaction and roles right from the start. John Burland will write a report – noting that it is important to give the Fellows a job to do to help focus and ensure good feedback.
[Carol Atkinson joined the meeting – Mark Clare left the meeting]

Report on Innovation Parks

Pete Bonfield gave a presentation on the national and international spread of Innovation Parks based on the model developed by BRE. A copy of the presentation is attached to the minutes.

Presentation on Security Glass

Terence Beckett gave a presentation on the recently completed BRE Global project on the inability of ‘safety’ glass to resist various forms of attack. This demonstrated that existing standards fell well short of requirements and has lead to the drafting of a new standard.

Meeting dates for 2012

First meeting – Thursday, 1 March 2012 – 10:00 am at BRE Garston
Second Meeting – Thursday, 3 May 2012 – 10:00 am at BRE Garston
Third Meeting and AGM –Wednesday, 25 July 2012 – 10:00 am at BRE Garston
Fourth Meeting and annual dinner – Wednesday, 7 November – 4:00pm and dinner afterwards (Venue to be confirmed)

Any Other Business

Martin Wyatt advised that it would be the 10th Anniversary of BRE Trust in April 2012. It was agreed that it would be appropriate to arrange a function to mark the occasion.
It was noted that the Research Manager is retiring and that Chris Watson would be assuming part of that role together with other responsibilities.
Peter Bonfield referred to the letter and summary attached to the papers that BRE had received from the Institution of Civil Engineers thanking BRE Trust for their support for their Create Support Schools Initiative which had been success.
Sir Neville Simms noted that this was Martin Wyatt’s last BRE Trust meeting in his current role and that Peter Bonfield would be in his place at the next meeting of Council. / ACTION
Action:Trustees
Action: Martin Wyatt
Action:John Burland, Hugh Ferguson, Peter Bonfield, Russell Heusch and Secretary

There being no further business – the meeting was closed

Sir Neville Simms