More Comment – Page 475
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CommentHansom: Sporting life
Some unusual sports are cropping up across the industry, including in-office thought tennis, architectural gymnastics, extreme biking and Olympic-level prevarication. Go team!
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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?
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CommentDesigner egotism: Delusions of adequacy
Architects who listen to their ‘inner voice’ and not the client produce bad buildings. It’s the deadly sin of designer egotism, says Robert Adam, and it makes us strangers in our homes
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Wonders & Blunders
Bel Mooney can see the point of contemporary architecture when she looks at Calatrava’s Milwaukee pavilion – whereas a Bath hotel just shows up the mistakes of the modern age
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Ignore those saying new construction orders are on the rise
I feel sure there will be someone penning near euphoric words about the 18% rise in orders in the second quarter, which is the opening line of the statistical bulletin released today.Ignore it.The new orders figures bounce about like a drugged kangaroo at a rave party, only it's tougher to ...
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ConstructionSkills' three-card trick
Has anybody out in the real world actually spotted the three-card trick that the CITB is pulling on the industry that is taxed by government to pay its staff wages?We all pay a building-industry-only tax. The only two sure things in life are death and taxes, and since in the ...
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RICS: Housing market remains fragile, despite recent improvement
The message from the latest update on the housing market from the surveyors' body RICS is that while the market may have found a clearing it is not out of the woods yet.There has been a torrent of better news on the housing market with both the Nationwide and the ...
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The blame game
Here we go again. This week has seen a fresh round of HBOS-bashing after Lloyds revealed a £13.4bn hit due to bad loans – 80% of which came from HBOS.Most of that 80% would have been the responsibility/fault of former head of corporate banking Peter Cummings, the man no journalist ...
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Supporting innovation in a downturn
Help is at hand for those firms looking to capitalise when market conditions improve. For eco inventors in the East of England, BRE has set up an enterprise hub to offer advice to innovative SMEs on bringing sustainable technologies to market. Meanwhile in Wales British Gas is opening a centre ...
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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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CIPS talk of optimism is baffling
The CIPS appeared to be putting a rather positive spin on its July figures for construction activity on the back of a slowdown in the pace of decline and swelling optimism among its respondents.The press release reads: "Optimism about future activity levels in twelve months' time continued to increase in ...
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Now is the time to protect the specialist
Much of my time as the owner manager of an architectural mouldings contractor is spent with clients and architects helping them realise their dreams.We are always expected to do this for free. When I first entered the industry in the early eighties we would get fully-designed finishes that required us ...
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Why contractors can't help suicidal bidding when the workload turns down
The most concerning issue now facing construction as it dives deeper into recession is that of firms taking on work at less than cost.This is not sustainable business behaviour.More than falling workloads, falling prices defined the chaos that ravaged the industry during the recession of the 1990s.Worryingly, there are the ...
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CommentBuilding buys a pint … for Trident Building Consultancy
“So what do you want to talk about then?”
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A question of honour
Chris Cole, chief executive of WSP, was careful not to be drawn on the thorny subject of bad debt in the Middle East, as he announced the engineer’s half-year results this weekWhen asked about his talks with UAE developers and the possibility of fee cuts, he wisely offered a “no ...
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CommentHansom: The butterfly effect
The law of unintended consequences demonstrates its power, as the simplest of actions dooms nasal cells, the reputation of architects, two counties and millions upon millions of aphids
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A game of risk
Housing minister John Healey says the government is looking at a different kind of housebuilding model (17 July, page 12), “less development-based, and almost contractual”, which is designed to overcome “housebuilders’ reliance on the development land market”
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Forget the umbrellas
The government would be better off not tying all educational projects up in massive, cumbersome framework packages
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CommentHelp the aged
Regarding the news that Part L may or will force historic buildings to be energy efficient (24 July, page 38), I am a director of estates for a university and therefore have to deal with the dilemmas of conserving listed buildings while complying with the burgeoning legislation from the eco-warriors ...