Turning the tables

Get out of my Facebook

Mace has found that the biggest obstacle to productivity is not stroppy clients or bolshie subbies, but the modern scourge that is Facebook. The firm’s younger members are so addicted to the networking site that management has banned its use during working hours. Fuming Mace youngsters can take inspiration from law firm Allen & Overy, whose employees overturned their bosses’ ban on the grounds that Facebook was a professional networking tool. As a user myself, I couldn’t disagree!

Oi, Tony! Over here, son

As we know from that appearance on the Back to the Floor series, Tony Pidgley won’t turn his nose up at a bit of graft, even though the 59 year old is worth more than £100m.

He arrived 90 minutes early for the launch of the Superdensity report last Wednesday morning and, upon discovering that all the chairs for the audience hadn’t been set out, he decided to get stuck in and carry over the last 10 himself …

Credit: Scott Garrett

Perfect for martinis, though

If you’re lucky enough to be staying in Manchester’s Hilton hotel at the Beetham Tower – or just going for a snifter in the 23rd-floor bar – you may notice a small copse of olive trees lining the lobby. They’re cast-offs from architect Ian Simpson’s personal penthouse at the top of the building. He had them imported specially, but ordered too many. I’m sure he gets his sums checked for proper clients, though …

Digby’s party favours

Building columnist Sir Digby Jones – now styled Lord Jones of Birmingham after his simultaneous elevation to the government and the peerage – has revealed that he met Conservative leader David Cameron to ask him to back a bid to become mayor of London. Cameron said he would, but only if Digby joined the Tories. Jones

said he would never join a political party, and that was that. Clearly, that hasn’t stopped him getting a job with one … in fact, I hear that ministers have coined a nickname for their outspoken co-worker – Comrade Digby.

By their hats shall ye know them

Architects come up with some strange ways to sell their concepts to clients, but Bennetts Associates might have capped them all. When the firm started up 20 years ago, it had difficulties persuading its first big client to put curved roofs on its building. After weeks of making models, the weary negotiating team came to a meeting wearing rejected models on their heads. It worked, and the curved roofs were adopted. Expect to see Zaha Hadid in an aquatic headpiece any day now.

Back to basics

Looks like the Tories may be reverting to type on the housing front. Michael Gove called for a relaxation of the party’s anti-greenfield development line. But that may change now he’s been replaced by Grant Shapps, whose website proudly trumpets his opposition to the 10,000 homes that the government wants to see built in his Welwyn and Hatfield constituency.

The big dippers

I hear that engineers at Whitbybird are taking extreme measures to fund a project that they designed. The job is a simple library in Waterloo, for which seven staff members will shortly try to raise £25,000 by swimming the English channel. If only all engineers were so dedicated to their projects. Of course, there’s a good reason they’re going to all that trouble – the building is destined for Waterloo in Sierra Leone. If you’d like to sponsor them, call Paul Steen on 020-7631 5291.