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He's not too bad at commanding the column inches either. He's been in the news lately for slamming government clients and the HSE.

So I am expecting something pretty stirring when I ask Busby about his goals for the presidential year. I am sorely disappointed. "More of the same," says Busby, admitting that it is hardly a rallying cry. It's less exciting than outgoing president Stuart Henderson's S Club 7-style motto: "Look out, look up, look good."

What has happened to the tub-thumping ex-chairman of the Major Contractor's Group? Has the serious mantle of the CIOB already started to weigh him down?

If there was a theme to emerge from the interview it was education: the value of the CIOB qualification, and the institute's duty to change the industry through it. Worthy, yes. Newsworthy, no.

Perhaps Busby's caution is down to his position as a relative newcomer to the institute. He said he thought hard before accepting his honorary membership five years ago, conscious that despite over 30 years in the industry, he is an accountant by trade. When asked to be president he said: "Why me?"

This sounds too modest, coming from a man with his achievements, but I believe him. His reputation is for telling it like it is. "With Colin Busby, what you see is what you get. He's always the same, whoever he's talking to," one member of his staff tells me.

Busby is known for his caution in business. The best lesson life has taught him, he says, is "always look on the downside". He is measured in the way he talks, speaking slowly and deliberately in an Essex accent, sometimes with long preambles to what he is about to say. This, I assume, is down to years of practice with the press and financial analysts. Smiles are rare. He frowns in concentration.

"More of the same" is not quite as insipid as it sounds. Busby says that it is a call for the institute to maintain the pace of change it has picked up over the past three years. He praises chief executive Chris Blythe, whom he credits with turning "quite an old-fashioned, stodgy institution" into one that is "lively" and "commercially aware", but he cautions: "The institute has to change in order to keep up with the industry. It needs to embrace that change and, more than that, it needs to be there driving change. Institutions have a reputation for being barriers to change. It's very important that the CIOB should not be seen as that."

Institutions have a reputation as being barriers to change. It is crucial the CIOB is not seen like that

Colin Busby

Busby and Kier are well-respected. When Busby led a management buyout of what was then Beazer Construction from the Hanson Group in 1992, employees were given the chance to buy shares. Some sold up and made money when the firm floated in 1996. Others are still share-holders. It's a feel-good fable for construction.

Kier is known for treating its staff well. It was one of only three construction firms in the Sunday Times' '100 best companies to work for', along with Interior and Mace.

Since 1992, profits have increased year-on-year, steered by Busby's careful hand. Today Kier Group is a 拢1.4bn turnover company. It is also a collection of diverse businesses, from facilities management firm Caxton to national concerns like Kier Rail, regional construction and housing companies.

There have been a lot of changes since Busby joined W&C French (which merged with Kier which became Beazer which became Beazer Construction) as an accountant in 1969. But for Busby, the biggest transformation in construction has come in the last five years.

He places his company at the vanguard of a brave new industry: "We've been moving change rather than being dragged along. We embraced partnering before it was a buzzword as it made sense to the regional businesses."

But Kier's regional businesses still do traditional contracts because that's what some clients want. And herein lies a message for the CIOB, says Busby: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

"The institute must provide continuity of education standards but must also bring in new standards to cope with changes.

"We are one of the primary institutions that educate people. We have to make sure we provide the people who have the right tools."

More designations? The key point is to protect the quality of the CIOB qualification, which is improving year on year

He turns every question back to education. Will he be continuing his crusade to simplify PFI procurement? That's not a core issue for the CIOB, he answers, except that it must address how best to educate young people to manage PFI contracts. Should the CIOB be taking a lead on health and safety? The CIOB's role is to contribute to changing industry culture through educating people on issues of health and safety.

Perhaps surprisingly for the president of an institution of professionals, Busby believes that the CIOB should lobby government to introduce more apprenticeships or other training routes for tradespeople. He thinks that the next potential generation of chippies and plasterers are getting a raw deal under current government policy and wants the CIOB to get that message across.

"The view of the government is that you have got to get everybody to university. What happens to those who don't go to university? There has to be something that gives the people who don't go to university some self-esteem, something to go for."

All Busby's comments really come back to the same thing. He wants to overcome the perception that construction is not a professional business. He says that a third of Kier's monthly paid staff have a degree or equivalent qualification. "That's not typical of what people think of the construction industry."

Raising the profile of the CIOB is definitely on his agenda. "We have put a little bit aside to try and do that this year," he says. Just being who he is will help. Journalists already know his name. Kier is second only to Bovis Lend Lease in terms of work won in the past 12 months, according to information provider Glennigan.

But how can he, with a huge business to run, afford the time to be CIOB president, a role he says will eat up two days a week? That was his reaction too, he says, when he was first asked. But the CIOB's two-year run-up period has given him some time to prepare.

He's got more free time since handing over the CEO role at Kier to John Dodds in May. Now Busby is just chairman. The move, as well as being part of the planned succession for the group, freed Busby up for the CIOB: "If I hadn't been able to devote a lot more time to the job of CIOB president, I would feel that I had failed and nobody wants to be a failure. More importantly, the institution deserves better than that."

Towards the end of the interview, we have the only straight-talking-Busby moment, when he says in the presence of his head of PR: "It's a wonderful industry. It gives people responsibility, enables them to work on their initiative, I think, at a much earlier stage than other industries. The problem is it's got crap PR."