All articles by Elaine Knutt – Page 3
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Features
The outsider
Bill Tallis was not the obvious choice to head the Major Contractors Group, in that he had never worked in construction. So, what does the new director have in store?
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Features
Catching the train
When budgets are tight and the going gets tough, training is often the first thing to go. But undertrained staff are a liability for any company, and an investment in targeted training can bring huge productivity improvements.
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Features
Beverley Hughes
Construction may be only one of the junior minister's responsibilities, but her message is that the industry is vital to Labour's wider agenda.
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Features
Building for fun
Leisure firms will spend more than £2.5bn on construction this year, and 10 top clients at Building’s IBM-sponsored procurement conference spelled out what firms have to do to get it.
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Features
Could do better
The UK’s first PFI school, the Sir John Colfox in Dorset, is a big hit with staff and pupils. It’s just a shame that the architecture is so uninspiring.
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Features
Action man
Electrician Pete Dyer left Croydon to join a group expedition to Mongolia – which is a long way to go to organise the construction of a clinic out of straw.
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Features
Drama queen
This is the story of how solicitor Yang-May Ooi suddenly saw that the workaday world of construction power, conflict, corruption could be transformed into the plot of a hit novel
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Features
Should all compliance be forgot …
New year 2000 promises to be the biggest celebration for, well, 2000 years, but spare a thought (and a lump of coal) for the industry's IT managers. Will they spend the night soberly watching over their networks, or are they confident enough to party with the rest of us?
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Features
Keith Miller
Privately owned Miller Group came to public notice with a protracted battle to buy Cala. That bid failed but the firm has a lot of hungry money. So how did a privately owned, family firm come by all that cash?
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Features
Golden girl
Although she’s in her 80s, Mollie Parsons found herself roped into project managing the refurbishment of a Cornish village hall, complete with the full horrors of dealing with funders, bureaucrats and builders.
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Features
Moonbase Walsall
The surreal lunar landscape may look like something out of Space 1999, but it is actually a roof of somewhere far more down to earth – a bus station in Walsall.
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Features
High noon?
Nick Raynsford is now faced with the crucial decision on how tough to make the quality mark, the centrepiece of his anti-cowboy plan. What factors will he be taking into account?
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Features
Smashing the cartels
The Competition Act, which comes into force next March, is intended to tackle construction conspiracy theories and discourage firms from price-fixing. The penalties are high for those that don’t comply.
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Features
Councils forced into Egan era
From April 2000, local authorities will be asked to abandon compulsory competitive tendering for best-value procurement. But will they?
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Features
Growth industry
The latest fad is to design yourself a garden, but Dan Pearson, one man at the forefront of this revolution, reckons construction has much to gain by building landscaping into the plans first, not last
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Features
Have you got what it takes?
Are your projects models of best practice others could learn from? Egan called for firms to nominate their innovative schemes as demonstration projects. Here are four that made the grade.
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Features
Office development, Watford
True perfection or as near to it as imperfect construction professionals can get is the ambitious goal at the Radius project, a 5000 m 2 speculative office development in Watford. Developer Guardian Properties, architect Hurley Robertson Associates, consulting engineer WSP and contractor Wates have set ...
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Features
Science building, Bristol University
Bristol University s new, £12m Synthetic Chemistry Building embodies much of the construction industry s post-Latham, post-Egan gospel. Two-stage tendering, a non-adversarial contract, off-site fabrication and value engineering may not be ground-breaking in themselves. But, taken together, they represent a large part of the construction industry s New Testament. ...
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Features
Wessex Water, Bath
A client committed to reducing environmental impact, an architect known for low-energy design and a construction manager anxious to test green construction techniques form the team behind one of the most ambitious of the projects. The £22m operations centre for 550 Wessex Water staff, under way on a rare ...