This is the last issue of EMC. Since 1989, United Business Media and the Electrical Contractors’ Association have published the magazine as a joint venture. Now, after 20 years, the two shareholders have amicably decided to go their separate ways

UBM will continue to serve electrical and mechanical contractors and advertisers to the sector through its award-winning weekly magazine and website, ºÚ¶´ÉçÇø and www.building.co.uk, which will include an archive of all the editorial content of EMC since 1999.

The ECA will continue to serve its members, and the wider m&e sector, through its existing website, www.eca.co.uk, and a revamped quarterly printed publication, which will be launched at the Electrical Industry Conference in Tenerife in May 2010.

ECA registered members will also continue to receive the latest industry and association news via its monthly e-newsletter, The Source. Employees of member firms can register to receive The Source via an online form at www.eca.co.uk/applyfornews.

Both UBM and the ECA are very proud to have published EMC for more than two decades. EMC has chronicled huge change in the electrical and mechanical sector in the past 20 years. The joint venture was born just as the construction industry was heading into a severe downturn, which ravaged many businesses, before the Latham and Egan reviews of the mid-to-late 1990s promised (briefly, anyway) a new client-focused future and quicker, cheaper means of settling contractual disputes.

In the past decade, EMC has tracked the commercial boom and profiled the personalities and projects that make this such an innovative sector. Now, in the middle of another recession, contractors continue to adapt, with sustainability issues reshaping businesses large and small.

On behalf of UBM and the ECA, we would like to thank all readers and advertisers for their support over the past 20 years. We hope that EMC has made a positive contribution to the important debates within the industry, and kept professionals informed and entertained. EMC is bowing out, but the industry it serves, and which the ECA continues to represent, will survive the latest recession just as it did the one in the magazine’s early years, and continue to flourish in the 2010s and beyond.

If any reader or advertiser would like to contact UBM, please email Adrian Barrick, chief executive, UBM Built Environment, at adrian.barrick@ubm.com. For all ECA enquiries, please contact Stefan Hay, head of marketing, ECA, at stefan.hay@eca.co.uk.

Andrew Brister, EMC’s editor for the past 12 years, will continue to write about the m&e sector and the wider built environment. He can be contacted at andrewbrister@ymail.com.