Sandi Rhys Jones OBE is a Fellow and President of the Chartered Institute of Building. She is a chartered construction manager and businesswoman with many years of experience running her strategic management and marketing consultancy in the construction, engineering and property sectors. Clients included contractors, clients, consultants, suppliers, representative organisations and local and national government, both in the UK and abroad. An experienced non-executive director, she has served on the boards of public, private and not for profit organisations.

An advocate of the importance of the built environment to society, she has participated in many government/industry committees and performance initiatives since the definitive Latham Review, including chairing a working group of its implementation arm the Construction Industry Board and working with groups such as Constructing Excellence, The Housing Forum and the Movement for Innovation. She believes that improving health, safety and wellbeing is a key element of the culture change required in construction and has used her CIOB Presidential theme of ‘collaboration with challenge’ to find ways of addressing this, including launching the #PPEthatfits campaign.

Sandi has worked with businesses, professional institutions and universities over many years to develop good practice programmes, particularly in relation to recruitment and retention issues, communications and management and has developed mentoring and coaching schemes, practical toolkits and training seminars. As an employer, she recognises the importance of balancing business imperative with staff development and has experience of sustaining a business through difficult times, including recruiting and retaining people and the challenges of doing so for a small business as well as for large, complex organisations. After successfully completing the MSc in Construction law & Arbitration at King’s College London she became an accrediated mediator, and applies the principles to manage conflict in day to day business, rather than simply as a dispute resolution tool.

A long-time champion for women and other under represented groups in construction, she has been recognised for her work with an OBE, Honorary Doctorates from the University of Westminster, University College of Estate Management and Sheffield Hallam University and various industry awards, including the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 from Design & Build magazine. Sandi is a Fellow of the Women’s Engineering Society, a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and an associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.