Last week’s formal launch in London of SkillsPlanner (see previous post) has prompted a lot of industry discussion and a flurry of interest in participating in the project, while also recognising the challenges lying ahead.

• “The event was excellent and generated a very positive message.” — Jacquie McDonnell, Bexley College
• An excellent event, and everybody seemed so upbeat about the future. We are heavily involved in ensuring the project’s success … a great tool /mechanism for us to understand and meet the needs of an ever-expanding construction sector.” — Tony Hyland, Department of Work and Pensions
• “It is a pleasure to be part of a process and technology that thrives on collaboration. We have a lot of work to do to break down barriers and get people to realise that open data is the only way to go.” — Caroline Blackman, Laing O’Rourke
• “I think everyone was impressed with the quality of industry and academic support for the project – it certainly looks ‘quality assured’. The turnout was very impressive as well.” — Kevin O’Connor, Durkan
• “It was a really good evening, very informative, and also interesting to see the breadth of organisations involved. Looking forward to continuing the partnership on development. — Kath Moore, Women into Construction

Update (8 March 2016) – Ben Pritchard from construction management consultancy Invennt attended the launch event (along with colleague Tim Fitch), and has written a blog post –
Skillsplanner – open data meets the skills shortage – about the project. Ben and I are also active in Constructing Excellence which has been discussing wider use of Open Data in the sector.