With less than three months to go before the biggest joint Ecobuild and Futurebuild to date, B&E finds its event director in sparkling mood as she lifts the lid on the show's success.

AMIDST the glitz and the glamour of this year’s joint Ecobuild and Futurebuild event Moira Edwards, the show’s director, will be sitting down in Earl’s Court II getting her buzz from a whole year’s work.

“We have to work very hard to keep up with the market and keep its currency,” she says. “But it’s very rewarding.”

The show officially launched in May 2005 after International Business Events (IBE) transformed it from a conference attached to its urban regeneration show, Cityscape, to a standalone mainstream
building event.

In 2005, it was held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, drawing crowds of between 1,500 and 2,000. Edwards is anticipating 20,000 visitors to spill through the doors of
Earls Court in February.

Green agenda
During IBE’s research for the event between 2004 and 2005, the company uncovered a small but very enthusiastic community with a huge interest in green building.

“At that stage the majority of the audience was from the architectural community,” she says. “The difference between then and now is that the sustainability agenda is galloping along. In 2004 you
could probably say architects were leading the charge. But what we’ve seen in the last year or two is the main contractors getting more and more involved."

Edwards says that the sustainability agenda is constantly embracing a boarder church. Amongst the anticipated visitors in February are developers, landlords and the property community. “We still get a very significant chunk of it from the architecture community,” she says. “Typically it’s between 23% and 25% of our audience.”

Central themes
Next year’s show is wrapped around the themes of zero carbon, water management and renewable energy. Edwards says impending green legislation, like the Code for Sustainable Homes, is the driver of
the show’s agenda. “It is absolutely the issue of the moment,” she breezes.

Amongst the show’s main features in 2008 includes the unveiling of Zedfactory’s zero carbon house. Anticipated to reach Level 6 of the code, Edwards says it will give visitors the chance to see the reality of gold standard green design. “Obviously those people interested in zero carbon housing will want to see how it’s done, get up close and see what it feels like.”

The show is also peppered with conferences and seminars that include more than 100 individual sessions delivered by 500 speakers that include the like of Janet Street Porter and Boris Johnson.

“Janet Street Porter and Boris Johnson might be the headline grabbers,” she says dryly, “but there are 498 speakers of huge substance who are at the absolute top of their game.”

She says that opinionated speakers like Johnson and Street Porter are more than appropriate for the event. “We want people to stand up and be controversial,” she enthuses, “but not in a trivial way. We have an enormous amount of substance to the information programme and I think that’s important to recognise.”

Next year the show will run at the end of February. Was it a conscious decision to move the event away from Interbuild, which falls in October?

“I don’t think there is an event quite like Ecobuild,” Edwards claims. “Obviously we need to be
responsible about where we position ourselves in the calendar but we don’t have any kind of sense that there is another Ecobuild we’re competing against.

“Interbuild is a big event serving the sector in a broader sense and is an event for general builders. Ecobuild is an event that attracts the specifying community – so they’re very different audiences.”

And with that Edwards returns to her plans for what will be the biggest Ecobuild to date. “What I really like about what we do is that it’s very fresh,” she says. “Every year it is different because we are serving such a fast moving sector. I love the positive vibe.”

The joint Ecobuild and Futurebuild event takes place at Earls Court, London, on 26 to 28 February.