All articles by Colin Harding
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CommentSecuring our future – how to fix the pension system
The UK pension systems is broken – expensive and benefiting only the largest companies and public sector employees. Colin Harding suggests how to change that
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CommentHow to take on the world
An integrated design process could help pave the way for the UK to power its global export drive after Brexit, writes Colin Harding
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CommentQuality management or risk dumping?
Recommendations from a report into achieving quality on building sites more than three decades old are still relevant today. Is the industry failing to learn from the past?
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CommentIt was 30 years ago today …
Colin Harding wrote his first column for Building three decades ago, outlining a plan to shift the British parliament to the north of England
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CommentIs an integrated EU an oxymoron?
The EU is a fount of silly, restrictive and ineffective regulation
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CommentPensions: Cleaning up our toxic legacy
Construction accounts for £34.4bn of the UK’s final salary pension deficit. How can the government restore confidence in workplace schemes?
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CommentThe whole hog
At last we have a government adviser calling for integration to save costs. For it to work, we need unadulterated integration of the whole design and construction team
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CommentIntegrated design and construction: Divided we fall
Our industry is fragmented between those who do the real work on site and those who live off its adversarial culture. Integrating the two factions is our only hope
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CommentBrown’s chance for redemption
As chancellor, Gordon Brown mismanaged our pensions for 10 years. Now he must back them up with the same guarantees that he extended to bank savings
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CommentThe end of the spend
The boom in vanity projects is over. Design can no longer rule. Instead, Colin Harding asks if construction and its clients are finally ready to learn the lessons Sir John Egan taught in 1998
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CommentThrow us a lifeline, not more red tape
Small construction businesses are one of the few sectors that can save the economy from sinking without trace. So why, asks Colin Harding, is HM Revenue and Customs doing its utmost to make sure they go down with the ship?
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CommentDo you remember the last time?
From the depths of the last recession came Egan, Latham and the seeds of a truly integrated industry. This time around, we must not let that message fall by the wayside, says Colin Harding
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CommentPromises, promises
The Olympic project will be built by small businesses, so let’s have some genuine ‘construction commitments’ to allow them to get on with the job
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CommentThe solution
For the past 50 years we’ve fretted and failed to find a way to make the most of prefabrication. Now we’ve cracked it, thanks to China, the humble shipping container and a way to make the most of both of them
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CommentGet stuck in
HOK Sport’s Olympic Stadium Vol-au-vent is merely the hors d’oeuvre. We’re about to tuck in to a rich feast of design excellence at reasonable cost. It’s a victory for common sense
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CommentPublic enemy
The government and its army of regulators and supervisors are gradually separating the best firms in the industry from public sector work. Both parties will suffer
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CommentThe Prince of Wails
Colin Harding has been writing his column for 20 years now. Looking back over that time, the single most significant event was probably Prince Charles’ attack on architects, and the howls of protest that followed it …
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CommentTalking lizards
Consultant QSs are on a mission to convince us that they are the client’s best protection against the greedy reptiles in the contracting sector. In fact, the reverse is the case …
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