The ability to retrofit is important in all areas of life

The Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) are delighted to be able to remind readers that, for example, we have just added the retrofit-focused Climate Change Adaptation as a new practice area on our HESPR listing of IHBC-‘recognised’ conservation service providers. This is a huge step forward for us, one that has been long on our HESPR (Historic Environment Service Provider Recognition) register’s to-do list, but only now have we managed to push it into play. Not least as Historic England has issued its advice on Adapting Historic Buildings for Energy and Carbon Efficiency (much improved from the draft). Retrofit is both a critical and timely practice area for the IHBC’s networks, and one where we need to make sure the UK and international conservation standards our members work to are recognised and properly supported.

Critically, though, retrofitting is not just about adapting old things in response to new needs. In writing history, even more than in archaeology, we retrofit the information we have to fit the context of both the narrative thread and the publication platform: cautiously and with consideration, certainly, but we retrofit nonetheless.

Retrofitting what we know of history is about, first, investigating and understanding the facts, and then reflecting where adaptation and selection might be needed to secure a sensible narrative, all before we deal with the details in content and style. Unlike conservation retrofit, though, where policy, science, philosophy and practice must shape outcomes, in history there is usually more need for personal judgement.

That is especially relevant as we continue to look at exploring our case for a charter with the Privy Council Office (PCO). The Memorandum we will soon submit to the PCO, in line with the agreement at our last AGM, must crystalise the issues for a nonspecialist audience. As the opening question from the PCO concerns ‘the body’s history’, we must undertake a retrofit, reinterpreting the rich and variegated complexity of the IHBC’s history as we know it into a more accessible understanding of a charter’s relevance to both IHBC and PCO interests.

We must start with a summary introduction to who we are today, and our role as a body with a distinguished history of practice-led development, advocacy and support in specific practice skills in conservation: the individual’s professional competence in interdisciplinary historic-and-built environment conservation. That role underpins our presence today as a credible pan-UK charity and sector-integrated professional body representing a specific discipline, as described some of my other columns. To secure our financial soundness, we hold a stand-alone, for-profit trading arm, IHBC Enterprises, which manages events, networks, services (our Jobs etc services), practice registers (HESPR) and more. Not only do we straddle the diverse disciplines that underpin interdisciplinary conservation, but we also reach across private, charity and public conservation services to maximise sustainable impact.

That rich tapestry of activity is a far cry from the modest thoughts on our predecessor, the Association of Conservation Officers (ACO), voiced in the first issue of Context: ‘to constitute an Association, with the minimum necessary formality – to provide a framework within which all conservation officers might have the opportunity to help each other’. More than 40 years later, how do we make sense of our history for the PCO?

To integrate that contemporary profile with the IHBC’s complex, meandering and occasionally disrupted and disruptive history, our priority is to retrofit our melange of history into a meaningful sequence that is both accessible and comprehensible to the PCO. For myself, in the context of this column, I can see five distinct stages around which our evolution might offer a sense of structure and logic.

1. Origins as a voluntary association and charity (1981–1997) The IHBC was incorporated as a charity and limited company in 1997 out of its predecessor, the ACO, originally established from 1981. The modern charity was designed to operate as the UK’s professional body for all building conservation practitioners and historic environment experts engaged in what came to be described as interdisciplinary conservation practice. It achieved this by extrapolating the holistic practice principles and public interest priorities of the conservation officer – and by extension the ACO – into the wider historic and built environment professional practice standards supported by the charity. The new charity’s ‘objects’ continue, refined, in our updated 2020 constitution.

2. Defining and establishing a unique ‘interdisciplinary’ discipline: the ‘conservation professional’ (1997–2007) The IHBC evolved substantially across the decade after its incorporation as a charity. At first it followed the ACO’s structure, with volunteer-led and thinly spread governance, management and services. But from 2004, with members’ agreement for an uplift in member fees, a paid executive role was created – that of director – which offered substantial new capacity. From 1997, the institute consolidated the constitution’s description of conservation practice skills around a listing of generic practice areas tied to the conservation officer: the IHBC’s ‘Competences’. With the new capacity, work focused first on clarifying and extending its regulation and specification of practice, with the Competences subsumed into a more generic practice model. This defined Areas of Competence – a term used in the original constitution – and aligned them within a formal but Conservation Cycle model and process. This allowed for a more structured and transparent assessment of competence specifically in interdisciplinary conservation practice. As the Conservation Cycle was embedded across the IHBC’s assessment, accreditation, advocacy and services, the institute’s modern role was encapsulated, and formalised, under the strapline: The Home of the Conservation Professional.

3. Planning and growing, with government, sectors and communities (2007–2015) The IHBC’s internal activities turned to establishing the infrastructure required of a modern professional body, marked by a sustainable business model and modern standards of governance. With added capacity represented by a national office, new income streams and business models were developed, managed largely through its trading arm, IHBC Enterprises. Appropriate corporate standards were agreed, aligning members’ historic ambitions to deliver appropriate, conservation-based outcomes with modern governance, all overseen by a recast board and facilitated by executive committees. These changes were consolidated in the IHBC’s first Corporate Plan, for 2007–10, adopted by members in 2007 and crystalised in successor plans. Since 2007, our Corporate Plans have advanced the principles of 2007, with service, educational and public-benefit priorities tied to our charitable objects:

• Helping people
• Helping conservation
• Helping conservation professionals

These objectives have been overwhelmingly supported by members at AGMs since 2007 and underpin our case for a Charter.

4. Reflection and renewal (2015–20) From about 2015, with membership increasing annually and expanding business services – including events, research and advertisements growing – more modernisation was needed. Through an exploratory process titled ‘IHBC+’, the institute initiated and tested alternative structures of governance more appropriate to its then and future standing, scale, complexity and sophistication. These structures included trustees more focused on oversight, more support for committee roles, and more diverse engagement, with wider input from an advisory Council accessible to all members of all categories. Following years of trials and engagement, the IHBC commenced the update of its constitution and, building on extensive consultation across members and UK charity regulators (and navigating the impacts of the pandemic), all culminated in the members’ adoption of a modern constitution – new ‘charter-compliant’ Articles of Association – in December 2020.

5. Consolidation, rejuvenation and charter exploration (from 2020) Lessons from earlier reflections and experiences helped consolidate the ambitions of the institute and its members. New solutions were sought, notably the establishment of a new All Party Parliamentary Group as a more proactive, aligned resource for advocacy. With these and other lessons in hand, the prospective benefits to a charter came into focus.

As in my previous charter-related columns, these musings are personal, so input is always welcome. They are also a retrofit of our history, selectively staged to take full advantage of this special opportunity to ask the PCO if a charter might benefit both the public good and the IHBC.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 181, published in September 2024. It was written by Seán O’Reilly, Director of IHBC.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation

Related articles on Designing Buildings Conservation.

• Conservation.
• Heritage.
• Historic environment.
• IHBC articles.
• IHBC launches climate change hub.
• Institute of Historic Building Conservation.
• IHBC charter petition.
• New HES national centre for traditional building retrofit.
• Retrofit.