Megan McCormick chats to CMA judges about their career highlights and what makes them tick
David Ing – Managing Director, Fabrick
David Ing is the managing director of Fabrick, an award winning marketing agency for the built environment. He is also host of YouTube channel, Fabrick Talks and a trustee at the charity, We Build the Future UK
In your YouTube channel Fabrick Talks, who has been your most interesting guest and why?
Fabrick Talks was a great opportunity for us to showcase our extensive connections within the built environment and to cement ourselves as thought leaders. Through our deep-rooted industry knowledge and understanding (37 years), we were able to influence and lead key conversations that mattered.
We reached out to numerous industry leaders with a wide background in terms of roles and influencers. They were all interesting to talk to – from Mark Farmer of Cast who spoke about the future of offsite, to Dr Gavin Dunn, Chief Executive of CABE, who discussed regulatory changes to Part L and The Future Homes Standard, to Will Arnold, Head of Climate Action at the Institution of Structural Engineers, who chatted about the future of carbon regulations and proposal for Approved Document Z.
However, the one guest talk that really inspired me, and could have gone on for hours if we hadn’t had been on a strict schedule, was with Martin Townsend, Director for Centre of Excellence for Sustainability at BSI. Martin has had a fascinating career, working for organisations including Defra, the Environment Agency and BRE. He has become my go-to person for all things sustainability – he is vastly knowledgeable and aways manages to give me sound advice and guidance.
You chose to start a spin-off called Fabrick Kids Talk. What is a piece of advice you could give to future generations?
Fabrick Kids Talk was great fun and allowed us to inspire the younger generation to get involved and take a stand on sustainability. We were able to show the Fabrick kids what their parents did for a living, and as a result, some of the kids who took part now have their own YouTube channels that are doing very well! So, my advice to future generations is to speak up, embrace change and be open to opportunities. The construction industry isn’t always the first industry of choice when young people are looking at career paths yet it offers endless opportunities and a career for life. Fabrick Kids Talk showed us at Fabrick how passionate the younger generation can be and how they can quickly gain confidence when developing new skills.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of your job so far?
It’s difficult to pinpoint one rewarding moment as there has been so many. Seeing the agency grow from three people when I joined, to the 25+ we have now has made me very proud. How we managed to navigate the changing Covid landscape and come out with all of the staff together, all clients still retained and the highest levels of new business enquiries was definitely a stand out moment.
In terms of client work, seeing our first TV ad creative for MEDITE SMARTPLY air on Sky Sports was one, delivering a three-month tour of builders’ merchants and architects for an insulation manufacturer was another. I would also add that is it very rewarding seeing junior members of our team learn and progress and earn promotions within the agency. I’m not getting any younger so I know I need to create a team who can take the business on in years to come.
However, I would probably say achieving a KPI set by contractor J Murphy Group. They appointed Fabrick to manage their PR and a side remark from the Marketing Director was ‘get me a front cover’ of a major trade publication – he had a framed front cover of Construction News featuring their work at the Olympic sites that his predecessors had secured and he wanted his own cover on the wall.
Within three months we managed to secure him a front cover of Construction News and NCE. Both covers followed site visits with the Fabrick team and journalists from the magazines. I was present at visits to both sites and I remember them well – well you don’t often forget taking a journalist to the very front of a tunnel boring machine that was creating a new railway tunnel wider than the Channel Tunnel. The other visit was to a railway embankment reinstatement – it had slipped in bad weather and closed the line. The reinstatement was a major earthworks project working 24/7. The site was so muddy that a senior member of Network Rail has lost his boots in the mud – he had to be pulled out and never got his boots back.
As much as I love digital, I still get a kick out of seeing print coverage and I believe there is a place for site visits and getting your boots dirty – and hanging on to them!
What work does charity We Build the Future UK undertake and what is your main goal for them as a trustee?
We Build the Future is a construction and built environment sector charity. We raise funds to improve prevention, detection and treatment of cancer and support industry workers dealing with the impact of the disease. It’s the only construction industry charity dedicated to cancer.
The charity is in its infancy but we have big plans. We launched a Sun-safe campaign earlier this year with plans to get information boards onto construction sites to help provide sun awareness. We also have a team entering this year’s London to Brighton cycle ride to raise money for the charity.
As a trustee I’m tasked – along with the other volunteer trustees – with managing the day-to-day running of the charity, such as making sure we have achievable goals, we have a strategy for raising money and ensuring monies raised are donated responsibly. With my marketing background, my efforts tend to be focused on the communications side – promoting our campaigns, raising awareness of the charity and encouraging construction businesses to support and get involved.
What has been the most memorable part of your career, having worked for companies across the world?
I’ve been at Fabrick for over 25 years so there has been many memorable moments in my career. I have been lucky to travel the world as part of our client activities including Dubai, Malaysia, USA and India. These places always stick in my mind (although leaving my passport in the back of a taxi in Kuala Lumpur was a low point).
I remember getting a phone call from a client one afternoon advising they had been acquired. They were a consultancy working across highways, rail and property and had been purchased by Amey. As a result, our work with that client ceased, but rather than this being a negative outcome, we received a letter from our client’s chairman a few weeks later thanking us for our efforts, as one reason Amey had acquired the business was that, in their words ‘they understood for the first time what the company did.’ The chairman accredited this to the hard work we had delivered over the previous years raising our client’s profile within their key sectors. So, although we lost a client, the reason we lost them was because of a job well done – maybe too well done!
