All Leader articles – Page 28
-
CommentOFT investigation: It’s wrong – but how wrong?
The recession has weakened regional contractors to the point that a fine set at the ‘lenient’ level of 2% of turnover may force many to close down
-
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
-
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?
-
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
-
CommentPartnerships for Schools: How to get our fingers burnt
It may be more the season for barbecues than bonfires, but the trail of lighter fuel moved a bit closer to one of the most influential quangos in construction this week.
-
CommentAnyone for a free lunch?
Do clients want to dump frameworks so they can sit back and watch contractors desperate for work fight it out like dogs?
-
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
-
CommentThe government's greenprint
The government has spent far too long cooking up ever more ambitious carbon targets without doing anything much to meet them
-
CommentTurning navvies into staff
Will we look back at the summer of 2009 as a defining moment in construction?
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
CommentPower without responsibility
“This meddling member of the royal family is a black stain on our democracy,” wrote one reader of Building’s website
-
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
-
CommentSometimes a great notion...
They say great ideas have three phases: first, they’re ludicrous, then they’re wrong and finally they’re obvious
-
CommentWhy nobody wants to buy
Tumbling fees, dwindling workloads and payment periods stretching beyond the horizon
-
CommentWe should listen to the cynics
We’ve heard a lot in the past week or so about people who follow the letter of the rules but not their spirit. Rather too much, in fact
-
CommentArchitects, take a bow
Prince Charles didn’t say he’d employ Lord Foster to make over Highgrove – that would really have been a great way to make up with the modernists
-
CommentThe prince and the profession
So is he about to aim another missile at the architectural profession? Or will he finally offer it an olive branch?
-
CommentWe need better politicians
Surely efficiency savings have to be made by working with the supply chain: after all, the government has been saying just this for 10 years