Hansom: Performance tips

Prepare for raucous crowds

News reaches me of a serious catering issue at the British Council for Offices (BCO) annual conference last week. This year the BCO’s bash landed in Madrid, a cultural hub of activity no doubt, but not apparently a city well-prepared for the more bibulous sections of the UK’s construction and property industries. Following a reception in the magnificent Casino de Madrid, delegates returned to the conference hotel, their thirst yet to be sated, to find a small bar with a staff of two. I’m informed that the ensuing scrum was best described as riotous.

Know your audience

The celebratory atmosphere at the launch of Carillion’s annual sustainability report was chilled momentarily by energy minister Greg Barker. Delivering his keynote speech Barker appeared to go off script when he mentioned the “difficult but necessary” changes he had introduced to the solar feed-in tariff in 2011/12, seemingly unaware that those very same changes had led the boss that invited him to lay-off nearly 1,200 staff. Though it was probably unintentional, it didn’t seem terribly sensitive to bring it up. There was a definite moment of awkwardness before Barker’s speech moved onto firmer ground and the atmosphere warmed-up again.

Do your homework

When the Education Funding Agency launched the latest round of the Priority Schools Building Programme earlier this month, it issued information on the cost of the latest batches of schools and whereabouts in the country they would be built. However, eagle-eyed contractors may have noticed that the specific individual schools making up those batches have not, so far, been named. A mole tells me this is because schools have complained to the Department for Education that every time such a list is published in places like, ahem, Building, they get besieged with calls from work-hungry builders trying to pitch their wares. This is despite the fact it isn’t individual schools that do the procurement under the new system. Obviously some contractors need to do some research before steaming in with the hard sell. But one can’t help thinking contractors wouldn’t be so desperate in the first place if it hadn’t taken three years to get to this point in the programme.

Learn the lyrics

The fight against blacklisting in construction took on a new form this week, with the release of a folk song, by singer and songwriter Chris Tymkow, replete with video detailing union protests against construction firms. Not an easy thing to write a catchy folk song about, we would agree, but Tymkow has certainly made a valiant attempt with the following opening lines: “There’s blacklist / Locked behind an office door / At the bottom of a drawer / There’s a
blacklist / Going round from firm to firm / Each one adding names in turn / 3,000 names I saw / But everyday there’s more / Going on the blacklist … There are unions / With honest rank and file support / Always getting done in court / There are unions / Secret unions of employers / Backed by all the laws and lawyers / They won’t let us up in their cranes / But still we’ll lift up all the drains / Hiding these blacklists …”