The first was love. Long before any of this, my daughter and I would curl up on the sofa with popcorn and chocolate and watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, cheering as families broke down in tears at the reveal of their transformed home. I had no idea those evenings were giving me my first glimpse of the built environment, through her eyes as much as mine.
The second was conducting Section 162A inspections. For more than twenty-five years, as an Ofsted inspector, I checked school buildings for material defects so that children could learn somewhere safe. I asked questions, checked compliance, evaluated performance against standards, reported what I found, and made recommendations.
I verified competence and audited policies against daily practice.
I checked that leaders could achieve the organisation's goals and objectives. Then I reviewed the evidence, layer by layer, to understand who was contributing to the organisation's growth and development. I identified where ownership was strong and where improvement was required.
I never thought that work was preparing me to enter the grand rooms of the built environment. But the question never changed: can leaders evidence capability before risk becomes a compliance breach?
The third tool came later, and it stung more. I watched my daughter struggle to secure her first job, despite graduating with a 2:1 from a Russell Group university. I would never forget seeing watched her sob on receipt of a rejection email on a train journey to Birmingham on receipt of yet another 'rejected email' That was the moment something that I decided that I must change this narrative. The capability was there. But the outdated traditional hiring system couldn't see it. After all her CV is only a snapshot. It creates a blind spot because there is no proof of what she could do.
This prompted the question 'what if employers had strong evidence to work with?'
That response to that question became 6Cs. We exist to make capability visible, so overlooked talent gets a fairer chance to demonstrate their capability, whilst employers make well-informed hiring and workforce decisions, with evidence of capability.
That's the same cycle the Industry Competence Committee now requires of every organisation managing competence under the Building Safety Act: establish the standard, monitor it, deal honestly with failure, audit, and review. Most construction organisations are being asked to build that cycle from scratch. I've been running it for a quarter of a century, in rooms with just as much at stake: patient safety, child protection, professional standards.
From Assumed Capability to Evidenced Capability.™