ConstructionWorX DIGITAL
Change of Leadership at the Construction Equipment Association The CEA is pleased to welcome Suneeta Johal as its new Chief Executive. Our candid interview with Suneeta reveals her background, leadership style, vision for the CEA, and more. Louise Carney fired the questions as Suneeta prepared for her new role. Q: I understand you spent nine years at IPSE – the organisation supporting the self-employed and freelancers. What was your role there? A: I first joined the organisation as a research manager within the policy team. My role was to create a research strategy for the association mainly focusing on policy research to influence legislative change, and also member research to really understand the needs of the self-employed and using that to form the commercial strategy of the organisation. I became senior after a couple of years, where the company created a new senior leadership position for me and I became the Head of Research, Education and Training where my role was to further develop and embed the research strategy across the organisation. One of the key things that is really relevant here is I did a research project which looked very closely at members' needs and evaluated the association's product, services and pricing etc. This led to a transformation and a revamp of all products and services, and new branding to better reflect the members that the association represented. On the other side I looked after education and training – building an offering around that for the first time which meant I introduced the university partnership programme membership. It is essentially designed to help support the younger generation coming into the work force and introduce training programmes, also addressing the skills gap - which we all know has become increasingly important over recent years.
18 OCTOBER 2021
With the commercial team I implemented strategies for membership growth and also non-member income generation, so looking at things like sponsorship partnerships. In terms of events, with the pandemic, delivering our award winning conference virtually. All of these strands fit in quite nicely with CEA and the key issues that I think we are going to be facing. Also, construction is the biggest industry in the self-employed market place; we had a lot of members at IPSE who were construction workers, so the construction industry is not completely new to me! Q: With your background in research and commercial development, how best do you think you can use those skills and that experience in the construction equipment industry? A: In terms of research, my background will help me to have a detailed understanding of not just CEA members but the wider industry. The CEA exists for its members and the member should be at the heart of everything that the CEA does - so really understanding the members - what their challenges are and what they need is critical. More specifically my experience in policy research has given me a strong grounding in policy development and how the research feeds into policy and development of relationships with key political contacts. I think this will help in terms of the CEA influencing legitimate change through lobbying and representing the industry on key issues. In terms of my commercial experience, this will enable me to use this insight to deliver services that members and the wider
