Construction industry gossip: Through a glass darkly

Through a glass darkly

A pal of mine was recently cycling past Foster’s headquarters in Battersea just before his lordship’s 90th birthday and window cleaners were cleaning all the windows with brushes on giant poles. She asked how long it would take. Two days! My lot take 15 minutes.

No show Fridays

My hack spent the last days of May sunning himself in beautiful Milan. While he was there, he thought he may as well check out the British Council for Offices annual conference, which happened to be passing through.

The sector seems more bullish about its prospects than it has been in recent years, with occupancy levels returning to roughly pre-pandemic levels in the middle of the week. But in conference sessions, speakers admitted they were still having a hard time getting staff to come in on Fridays, with numbers still well down on pre-covid levels.

One delegate put it less delicately later: “If I was a CEO, those figures would make me want to shoot myself in the head.” 

One besuited construction consultant was sighted attempting to kick down the door of his room in the small hours of the morning after the locking mechanism failed 

Run that by me again

Ping! An email pops through about a firm winning a job in the US. It runs thus: “AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. (TSX: ATRL), a world-class engineering services and nuclear company with offices around the world, announces today that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has provided the joint venture of AtkinsRéalis, Westinghouse Government Services LLC and Amentum, – Mission Conversion Services Alliance, LLC (MCSA MSCAlliance.com) – the notice to proceed on the Operations & Site Mission Support Contract (OSMS) at the DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plants. Swift & Staley Inc. and Akima Centerra Integrated Services, LLC are also business Teaming Partners.” Not having the slightest clue what any of this might mean, I turned to Google Translate. But even that failed to come up with anything intelligible.

To baldly go…

Keen cyclist – and Mace chief executive – Jason Millett has been away recently, riding in Provence, including a trip to the famed Mont Ventoux – which has been included in the route of next month’s Tour De France. It’s sometimes known as the bald mountain because of its lack of tree cover towards the top and means that very often cyclists bake as they inch their way to the summit. Millett went up it but says some of his party went up it three times – in a day. Mad dogs and Englishmen etc.

Good GREiiF!

Those who were at UKREiiF this year will know that trying to find a decent hotel room close to the conference in Leeds was about as easy as getting something signed off by the Building Safety Regulator. My hack was regaled with endless tales of woe from attendees staying in less than five-star abodes booked in haste.

A team from Wilkinson Eyre were “unceremoniously” ejected from their windowless room by the landlord on the last day of the conference. One besuited consultant was sighted attempting to kick down the door of his room in the small hours of the morning after the locking mechanism failed, while another attendee in the same bed and breakfast was reduced to prising open his door with a can opener.

So, if you are going to the conference next year, best get booking…

Heads and brick walls 

Speaking of the Building Safety Regulator, delays to gateway 2 and 3 approvals came a close second to stories about accommodation as favoured conversation topics at the conference. One packed-out panel event produced an outpouring of despair as contractors in attendance spoke of waiting for the best part of a year to get responses to their applications while watching their project funding evaporate.

Representatives from the regulator had apparently been invited to speak at the event, but the organisers “didn’t get an answer”. Sound familiar to anyone?

Send any juicy industry gossip to Mr Joseph Aloysius Hansom, who founded Building in 1843, at hansom@building.co.uk