I am going to taIk about passion so anyone who wants to avert their eyes should do so now.
I am sorry but I do not see too much of it - passion, that is - around building services contracting.
I am sure there are some of you who are passionate - but more in your private life than in your commercial one.

Building services are not sexy. Come to think of it, the business does not sound even remotely sexy.

But we need some passion, especially in this business.
Building services contracting is losing out.

The best of the graduates seem to be going elsewhere. (This is a generalisation which by the nature of generalisations does not apply to all).

Mark Andrews, chief executive of NG Bailey, suggests financial institutions are winning the top people, luring them with the expectations of big, bigger (and even bigger) money.
And at the student end, there is also concern.

Maths and physics are possibly the hardest subjects to take to degree level and there are so many more interesting (softer) subjects to concentrate on.

The building services industry has few champions. How many teachers at this level do you know who have worked in the building services
industry? Come to think of it, How many teachers do you know who know anything about building services?

This is one problem.Another is that the pool from which we can take good (not even the best) students seems to be getting smaller.
A report in the Daily Telegraph recently states that fewer than half of school leaves left this year without an acceptable grasp of the basics and the basics seem to mean (as far as I can work it out) to include maths and English.

Results show that 61.5% of teenagers gained five A to C grades in all subjects, a rise of more than 2% over last year.

But, there is a new measure which eliminates pupils who inflate their performance by focusing on 'easier' subjects, which changes things. This shows the proportion of bright pupils falls to 46.5% when English and maths is added. So with our pool seeming to be getting smaller, we need people out there giving it their all to entice the next generation of students.

Hence, the need for building services to be championed by men (and women) of passion.

I was saying as much to Eric Asquith from Shorts Environment and who can wax passionately about building services (he wrote this month's Burning Issue on p19), when we met at London HEVAR.
And Mark Andrews was also talking about it in his Contractor Profile interview.

NG Bailey is doing its bit for recruitment of good students and so, I suspect, are most of the other m&e contractors.

But this is bigger than that. Andrews says he believes it is an industry problem and needs an industry body to take up the torch and run
with it.

I agree. But, in the meantime, there must be some of you out there who feel passionately about their businesses and who feel able to convey that passion to youngsters.

I know for a fact that there are further education teachers out there who would kill for people from our industry with passion to be able to put this over to their kids.
(You can open your eyes now!)

Paul Braithwaite, Editor