All articles by Denise Chevin – Page 3
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Comment
Thank you, Sir Stuart Lipton
Cast your mind back 10 years, if you can. Compulsory competitive tendering was a way of life in the public sector. Design-and-build hospitals resembled a lot of site cabins bolted together; developers threw up office blocks that had the charm and civic presence of a shopping precinct. The role of ...
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CommentThank you, Sir Stuart Lipton
Lipton won the intellectual argument that good design wasn’t a luxury limited to an arts project backed by a patron with more money than sense
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CommentBack to schools: Building in a recession
Question one. How can we keep spending billions on school building while struggling with the biggest crisis in our public finances since the war?
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Comment
Back to schools: building in a recession
Question one. How can we keep spending billions on school building while struggling with the biggest crisis in our public finances since the war? Not easy, is it? Even a grade A* economics student would struggle with this one.Not many of us are putting our hands up and offering ...
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Comment
On the receiving end
“I would think very hard about working in Dubai again. It has done us a lot of damage.” So says David Marks, the co-founder of architect Marks Barfield. Anyone reading about what happened to him after his client in the emirate quietly stopped paying its bills will find it easy ...
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CommentPayments in Dubai: On the receiving end
Veterans of the Middle East will tell you that the region doesn’t play by the same rules as, say, Europe or North America
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Comment
Small steps
“She’s so good she should have been a bloke.” That was the comment from the chief executive of one of the industry’s largest companies after a meeting a super-smart analyst. It was a throwaway remark, but it’s redolent of the culture that survives in an industry that is still overwhelming ...
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CommentDiversity in construction: Small steps
Ensuring the workforce reflects society (and therefore its clients) is a complex long-term project that needs to be tackled at all levels
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Comment
Turning navvies into staff
In parts, the industry still resembles the one depicted in McAlpine’s Fusiliers. Can it be turned into one that is truly professional – where workers all pay tax and where it’s no more acceptable for someone to be killed than it is in a well-run factory?One reason for thinking it ...
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CommentTurning navvies into staff
Will we look back at the summer of 2009 as a defining moment in construction?
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CommentOur predicament
Both parties admit that the axe will have to fall on public spending soon, although politicians have been too squeamish to describe this in detail
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Comment
What can you get for £1.5bn?
Hard to say how many votes it will win him, but Gordon Brown’s £1.5bn contribution to the Homes and Communities Agency deserves a few cheers from the construction industry. The money is intended to deliver 20,000 affordable homes and build the infrastructure to stimulate another 10,000 private ones. The government ...
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CommentWhat can you get for £1.5bn?
Hard to say how many votes it will win him, but Gordon Brown’s £1.5bn contribution to the Homes and Communities Agency deserves a few cheers from the construction industry.
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Comment
Is partnering dead?
“It took 12 years to put together and 12 weeks to dismantle.” That was one of the more wry comments on BAA’s decision to turn its back on framework agreements for a good chunk of its work.The decision was taken by Steven Morgan, the man brought in by the airport ...
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CommentIs partnering dead?
“It took 12 years to put together and 12 weeks to dismantle.” That was one of the more wry comments on BAA’s decision to turn its back on framework agreements for a good chunk of its work
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Comment
Power without responsibility
"This meddling member of the royal family is a black stain on our democracy," wrote one reader of Building's website.Others described Lord Rogers' scheme as "a herringbone pattern of repetitive blocks with no sense of place" and his defence of it as "tantamount to treason".Never has the death of a ...
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CommentPower without responsibility
“This meddling member of the royal family is a black stain on our democracy,” wrote one reader of Building’s website
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CommentOne last big push
Pat McFadden, Lord Mandelson’s deputy in the Commons and a Cabinet attendee, has acknowledged that construction’s representation in Whitehall is a joke, and that a chief construction officer is needed