Show double act comes to town

I still remember the old knees and balls of the feet crying out in pain for Interbuild to stop. It was a big show with lots of stands and long, shoe-leather-burning corridors.

There was a sizeable timber presence too. In fact, at one point it had its own zone, with TRADA at its hub running a seminar theatre.

How things have changed and how quickly. In 2004 Interbuild pulled in 50,000 people and 1,200 stands and in 2007 attendance still topped 40,000. This year the now multi-headed exhibition reported 17,000 visitors, with 12,000 of them going to the core sections; BEST (Built Environment Solutions & Technologies) and the Infrastructure Show.

Exhibitors say it wasn’t a bad event and there was still a good timber showing. At the same time there wasn’t the impact of old.

Inevitably the construction collapse has hit the show and the rebranding probably needs some bedding in. But there’s undoubtedly something more to it than that – and that something is probably mainly Ecobuild.

The London exhibition’s growth and development has been the mirror image of Interbuild’s contraction. In 2005 it was a conference at the QEII Centre, attracting 550 delegates. It had an exhibition too, but that comprised a modest 40-or-so stands in a mezzanine area. A year later it moved to Earls Court and attracted 200 exhibitors and over 6,000 visitors. In 2007 the figures jumped to 300 and 12,000 and this year, in the teeth of the crunch, it reached attendance of 41,000 and 850 stands which, with sharers, gave a total of over 1,000 exhibitors.

In 2011 Ecobuild relocates to ExCeL in Docklands and some people forecast a hiccup – not the organisers though. They’re boosting stand space 40% to 65,000m² to accommodate a forecast 1,300 exhibitors and 50,000 visitors.

All along, the new show has been slickly organised and marketed, but the key to its success has been the way it has locked on to the all-conquering theme of 21st century construction – sustainability.

I’m not a big fan of management speak, but you couldn’t sum it up better than an exhibitor at last year’s show. “Ecobuild,” he said, “just picked up the green ball and ran with it.”

Sustainability isn’t just setting the construction agenda, it is the agenda. In fact, nobody builds a non-sustainable building anymore because, even if they do, they don’t let on. That’s where Ecobuild and its exhibitors are so successfully, to put it bluntly, cashing in.

And, of course, that’s where timber, as the sustainable building material can capitalise too. In fact, it already has. Timber’s presence at Ecobuild has grown year on year and it’s on display in all forms: raw material, joinery, timber frame, cladding, wood fibre insulation.

Next year we will also have Timber Expo at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena, which TTJ and Timber & Sustainable Building are enthusiastically backing as media partners – and this week James Latham plc and Grainger Sawmills Ltd also signed up as silver and gold sponsors respectively. Principally organised by TRADA, this also has the opportunity to build on the ground broken by Ecobuild. It’s at the other end of the year (September 27 and 28) and can take what the latter has done to plug wood into the wider sustainable construction arena and give it even more focus, width and depth. The two can then work as two complementary halves of the same whole – how good would that be for wood?

But where this leaves the former Interbuild remains to be seen. TRADA was still there this year, but ironically one of its focuses was promoting Timber Expo!