How was your summer?

Up and down

A keen pilot, CIOB chief executive Chris Blythe had a hairy moment in July flying in Canada with his son, when the weather took a surprising turn for the worse. He was at 9000 ft above London, Ontario, heading for Niagara Falls, when he spotted some ugly looking clouds ahead. He radioed Toronto and asked permission to deviate to the south. They agreed. Seeing it was no better that way, he asked permission to skirt to the north. “Do what you need to do and call us when you see Niagara Falls,” came the cold-comfort reply. So north he went, ending up near Hamilton before looping down to the Falls in a long, grim and bumpy descent. As the crow flies it should have been a couple of hundred miles. But he was forced into a 560-mile, 4-hour odyssey. They did crash, but thankfully it was onto the bed back at the hotel.

Cracking

The CIOB won the job of running TrustMark, formerly known as Quality Mark, the failed registration scheme devised to kick cowboy builders out of town with strict pre-qualification standards. Despite £10m of public funding and five years of promotion, hardly anyone signed up. But the revamped scheme has wider support and seems to have a fighting chance (see News & Views, page 10). The CIOB was chuffed to win the secretariat’s job, believing it will raise the institute’s profile among the public, which the scheme is set up to protect.

Head to head

Veteran project manager David Trench cast doubt over Ascot’s £185m redevelopment ending on time when he left the scheme by mutual agreement in August, citing tensions with the client and a plan to retire in France. Trench, 63, who oversaw the Millennium Dome and troubleshot at the British Library project, said the client was nervous about finishing on schedule. The client, Ascot Racecourse, admitted it was a challenge, but denied the project was in trouble.

Uprooted

In possibly the weirdest four minutes Birmingham has ever seen, a mini-tornado ripped through the city on 28 July, injuring 19 people and causing an estimated £25m in damage. Experts warn that design codes may need changing if freak weather like this carries on, possibly as a result of global warming.

Gullible

Erstwhile CM editor Rod Sweet is now batting away seagulls at his new home in Conwy, North Wales, site of the famous 13th Century castle built in just four years by Edward I. (Not by him, personally, of course.) Sweet lured everybody into thinking he was resigning in July, got invited to a slap-up farewell BBQ at CIOB headquarters, then decided to stay on as acting editor until Kristina Smith returns from maternity leave in January 2006.