NFB Events - Face to Face v Virtual

National Federation of Builders

2 min read05 June 2020

COVID-19 impacted every sector and everyone in the UK and across the world. Sporting events, concerts and all social contact was stopped or minimised. The National Federation of Builders event programme was no exception. Events planned needed to be postponed or the way they were delivered to members changed.

The COVID-19 crisis meant that NFB looked at alternative ways to deliver events to members and the strategy of member events for the future. The introduction of webinars has been a huge success and means members can access the valuable information and not have to travel, saving both time and money.

Face to face meeting and networking will always be important though and the NFB event strategy is to create a mixture of the two. Key events where we want to continue going forwards as face to face include the Construction Summit, Heritage Conference, Regional Contactors Forum, Large Contractors Forum and the Construction Awards of Excellence where it is important to network and have that personal interaction.

Webinars and using technology more for doing business has now become a part of the new norm and webinars will be utilised for the benefit of members.

Richard Beresford, Chief Executive commented ‘Like many of you, we at the NFB have had to recalibrate our work during the lockdown period and also like you, we’re now adjusting to the new normal. By looking at continuing to deliver membership services during lockdown provided the opportunity to look at how we can make improvements and changes to our event programme. By using a combination of face to face and virtual events means we can deliver a more effective and efficient programme of updates, industry leading advice while maintaining the important aspect of meeting in person’.

As part of the event strategy we needed to change event dates, face to face events have been moved and the dates are: