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In this chapter, the authors define the new business term, future-proofing, and apply it to knowledge preservation and curation. The fundamental principles of future-proofing and the challenges and mechanics are discussed. These challenges are discussed in developing future-proofed knowledge preservation, and a curation strategy is identified. The authors identify four challenges to future-proofing a knowledge preservation and curation strategy – availability, visibility, accessibility, and consumability of knowledge assets. Ultimately, the greatest challenge to future-proofing these strategies lies in the channels we use to create, transmit, share, and store knowledge assets. At a minimum, the chapter speaks to the critical importance of future-proofing the preservation of knowledge assets, so there is a possibility of curation at some point in a known or unknown future.

Outlines the barriers to efficient, strategic and future-proofed succession plans, centered on a case study example of Telefónica.

Draws on information provided by the company's UK and Europe talent manager.

Describes the journey taken by Telefónica to build a succession plan that is both relevant now and adaptable to future demands, including key advice for HR specialist and resourcing teams.

Shows that current succession plans are not working as effectively as they might. A fresh approach to the process can lead to HR developing a plan that is future proof, addresses the emerging talent market and is a true reflection of the current workforce.

Emphasizes the importance of effective talent management in a constantly evolving business world.

Provides a useful case-study example of successful talent management and the main issues that a future-proof plan ought to consider.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate “best practice” building strategies and sustainability‐oriented techniques and tools used to assess the energy performance of housing developments. The objective is to propose guidelines that can integrate futures thinking into the selection of energy‐related design responses, such as materials, building components and energy systems, from the early project stages.

An interdisciplinary approach is adopted with the inclusion of social, economic and environmental aspects of the energy supply and demand. A multiple case study approach is employed, which focuses on the residential sector of European mixed‐use developments that represent sustainable communities of “best practice”.

The investigation of “best practice” housing developments reveals that the majority of design responses cover mainstream environmental design strategies. Energy efficiency measures are still the “low hanging fruit” towards meeting the sustainability objectives. In addition, established sustainability‐oriented techniques and tools used focus mostly on projections of almost certain facts rather than explorations of a portfolio of plausible futures.

The paper represents a shift away from the short‐term mindset that still dominates design and construction practices. It provides an overview of building strategies and decision‐support techniques and tools for improving and incentivising sustainable energy solutions over the long term.

Records and archives professionals around the globe have been grappling for some time with the challenge of preserving technology‐dependent records. A variety of approaches and solutions have been developed, many of which are working effectively now. The State Records Authority of New South Wales (State Records) has developed a range of strategies, rules and tools on this issue for its own jurisdiction – Government organisations in the State of New South Wales, Australia. The latest product developed by State Records is a set of online guidelines titled, “Future proof: ensuring the accessibility of equipment/technology dependent records”. In this article, the background to the development of the guidelines is discussed, and the strategies they contain are described. Some considerations for the management of technology‐dependent State archives are also outlined.

COVID-19 was officially declared as a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 11th March 2020, before the UK was put into lockdown on the 23rd March 2020. Organisations had to reconsider their policies and procedures to allow their businesses to continue. This paper aims to focus on the effects of COVID-19 that the UK construction sector has had to undertake to enable businesses while employees had to adhere to COVID-19 lockdown rules. In addition, how the sector can positively continue once normality has returned within the industry. In doing so, this paper understands the historical issues within the construction sector and has had an effect during COVID-19.

A qualitative research methodology approach was taken to help obtain live information. In total, 19 semi-structured interviews from 15 organisations related to the construction sector were conducted to collect data. This information was evaluated using thematic analysis to arrive at the results, inferences and recommendations to the sector.

This research has revealed that companies have had to adopt a three-stage process to overcome a new dimensional challenge of COVID-19. These include: 1. Making quick decisions during the first stage of the pandemic. 2. Producing new policies and procedures to restart businesses enabling staff to return to the workplace safely. 3. Implementing methods to future-proof organisations against any potential pandemics. To help organisations future-proof their business five C’s are recommended.

This paper provides a rich insight into the understanding and awareness of the effects of COVID-19 and the changes that the construction sector has had to undertake to adhere to the lockdown rules while remaining productive. This research contributes towards informing policymakers on some of the lessons learned during the management of the COVID-19 pandemic from a construction sector perspective.

The construction industry represents most of every country’s finances and vital to continued economic growth and activities, especially in developing countries. The impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-2 disease (COVID19) on the government’s income resulted in the expectation of many public projects being cancelled or delayed providing little opportunity for the emergence of new public projects. This study collated a global qualitative perspective (survey interviews) on the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and the positive and negative impacts for future-proofing the construction sector.

In total, 76 respondents from five continents excluding South America responded to the online open-ended structured questionnaire. Data collected were analysed through artificial inteligence analytics tool – Zoho analytics.

The themes indicating the positive impact obtained from the interview were overhead cost reduction, remote working environment, focus on health and safety, improved productivity and sustainability goals while the themes signifying the negative impact were low business turnover, delays in construction payment and output, difficulties working from home and job losses. Supply chain management, construction project management improvement, concentration on health and safety and effective virtual working environment were collated as themes on lessons learned.

The major findings of this study emphasise on the need to improve the occupational health and safety and onsite safety measures for future proofing of the construction industry.

The findings from the analyses made clear the imperativeness of the built environment research, with a focus on novel framework and strategies for future proofing the construction industry.

How might the profession of child protection social work be “future proofed”, i.e. remain intact and of value beyond its present existence? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a discussion/“think piece” paper, in which the author argues that foregrounding the art and science of helping relationships is a way forward. Recognising and promoting the centrality of helping relationships is the direction in which the author believes (or is it hopes?) social work should head, because “more of the same” is not, in the author’s view, possible to sustain for much longer. Treading the well-worn but pot-holed path of box-ticking, endless risk assessment and perfunctory statutory visiting is likely to lead to continuing problems retaining social workers and, for those who do stay, increased burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma, each of which interrupts or delays the development of working alliances with family members.

Growing reliance on thresholds and checklists to assess risk has served to increase referrals. As a result, social workers spend much of their time on triaging and filtering rather than working with the children and families that most need help and protection. Further, it is not what is in the practitioner’s toolkit that matters: rather, it is a defined set of personal skills and qualities that tips the balance to achieve lasting change. Thus, in order to “future proof” social work, we would do well to deepen our understanding of how helping relationships can lead to lasting change. Supporting social workers in this work is not just the responsibility of individual practitioners and their professional bodies, action also needs to be taken at governmental and managerial levels.

This is a discussion/“think piece”.

Although trends such as digitisation, demographic change and flexibilisation of work have been recognised by many human resource (HR) practitioners, this viewpoint paper argues that future-orientation in the HR sector could benefit from making use of the foresight perspective. Foresight is understood as the systematic, method-guided analysis and discussion of possible future developments. The goal is to build future-robust structures in organisations at an early stage and to identify emerging skill needs. This paper aims to make HR professionals aware of the potential of foresight for their strategic activities.

Introducing the approach of strategic foresight to the field of HR, this study derives the argumentation from a discussion of literature and practitioners’ experiences.

So far, foresight in companies has mainly been conducted by strategy and innovation units, with HR and organisational development playing a subordinate role. However, foresight can contribute to gaining a competitive advantage and proactively shape future success factors in the organisation.

The authors advise practitioners to begin implementing strategic foresight within HR departments and organisational development to build future-proof organisations.

This paper introduces strategic foresight to the field of HR and points to a lack of integration between potentially existing foresight activities and people and culture considerations for the future.

The Queensland Government Libraries Consortium can claim to be one of Australia's more successful special library consortia in recent years, with a stable core membership of 14 library services, and combined savings to the Queensland Government of over A$1M in the 2002‐2003 financial year. This paper identifies critical success factors for the consortium to date, and looks to present and future challenges at a time when no organisation can afford to take continued existence, let alone success, for granted. In 2002, consortium members began looking strategically at how their organisation should be working to future‐proof services, and expertise. This process of internal review is still very much a work in progress, and continues to pose as many questions as it answers. It has, however, focused the attention on four issues of critical concern to the consortium: corporate governance, size, scope of functions, and recognition. Solutions implemented to date may serve as useful case studies for other consortia.