Opinion – Page 563
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CommentOpen mike: Against CABE
CABE’s apparently enlightened opinion that architecture is a force for social good conceals a totalitarian approach to human nature. Luckily, however, it’s wrong
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CommentMean streets
If you want to make a difference to the quality of Britain’s environment, let’s have a crack at our ungenerous, confusing and arbitrary signage
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Shifting earth
This was an appeal by Mowlem against an arbitrator’s award. Mowlem was main contractor on a development of retail premises and had subcontracted the earthworks and associated design and construction of retaining walls to PHI. PHI’s work essentially entailed construction of terracing to form suitably level areas which could when ...
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CommentDon’t panic
The housing market. It’s a national obsession. Doubly so if you work in the construction industry and your memory stretches back to the early 1990s, the big crash and the grisly business of cutting people out of the wreckage of their homes and jobs.
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Time to go …
Jon Rouse The question hanging over much of northern England is: how bad does a neighbourhood have to be before the only thing that can improve it is a bulldozer?
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Don’t twist my words
Open mike: Ashley Pigott’s attack on construction management’s drew on statements made at the Fraser inquiry into Holyrood. Here, the man who made them explains what he meant …
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CommentProblem, solved
Andrew Hemsley - Wrong contract rates are a classic construction conundrum, to which the courts have provided a beautifully simple answer. So everyone should learn it
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CommentSafety deposit
Tony Bingham - The use of trust funds to protect against client insolvency is a very good idea. So why did parliament reject the idea 10 years ago? And is it ready to reconsider?
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Can I interest you in insurance?
Antoinette Jucker - Next year, draconian regulations are going to be imposed on any firm that so much as thinks about arranging insurance. Here’s how the system will work
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A loss of confidence
Be warned: anyone who acts as an expert witness, instructs lawyers or prepares documents in support of claims can no longer take legal privilege for granted
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Amphibious thinking
Is our industry taking the recent shock announcements of rises in carbon levels, and its potential impact upon global warming, seriously enough? The social and moral responsibility of the construction industry to engage in sustainable construction is two-fold. First, we must take measures to protect, and if possible enhance, the ...
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Hackney residents need not fear
Further to your article on 8 October (page 18), entitled “John Laing quits troubled Hackney estate scheme”, while John Laing has withdrawn from the regeneration scheme in Haggerston West & Kingsland, the council and London & Quadrant remain firmly committed to the project. The reason for leaving the scheme that ...
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My safety record is clean …
Gillian Birkby (24 September, page 72) refers to my prosecution as an “illustration of how designers need to implement the CDM regulations” and of how designers “could avoid accidents by providing more information about hazards”. However I feel sure that she could not have intended to imply that I failed ...
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… designers need more guidance
Mr Allan is correct; there can be no implication that he had failed to comply with the CDM regulations, as he was found not guilty. The question of what amounts to “adequate information” that designers must include with their design still remains as a knotty problem. Perhaps the professional ...
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No need to rush
It is most refreshing to read a thoroughly independent and objective analysis of construction management. Ashley Pigott is correct in saying it is for the professional client that builds regularly, and by definition, knows what he wants and does not change his mind (8 October, page 56).Who then advises clients, ...
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The wrong kind of demand
Nick Lane is right to sound a warning (3 September, page 52) about using winding-up petitions to make debtors cough up. However, his explanation of what the recipient of a statutory demand needs to do is not quite correct as far as a company is concerned. Before issuing a statutory ...
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Unfair penalty
NSV carried out work on the instructions of Consafe on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment at a plutonium chemical waste plant at Drigg, in Cumberia. Consafe counter-claimed for liquidated damages. NSV said that liquidated damages could not be levied because they were a penalty. As the judge said, if the ...
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Above financial persuasion
Tony Bingham (24 September, page 70) says that adjudicators should not be given the power to decide on their own jurisdiction as they have a financial interest in the outcome.Come off it, Tony! Arbitrators have the power to decide on their own jurisdiction, and the courts encourage parties to refer ...