Opinion – Page 570
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Comment
Ships that pass on the motorway
As a regular passer of the RAC control centres at Bristol and Walsall (30 July, page 34), perhaps someone could enlighten me about the obviously nautical inspiration in the designs. The centre at Bristol screams Noah’s Ark (when not attracting divine thunderbolts, causing the computer system to shut down!) and ...
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Comment
When will you pay me?
The plight of Spectrum, the fit-out contractor that called in the administrators last week, illustrates why passions are running so high on the subject of payment (see news).
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Comment
Divorced from reality
When Whitehall split responsibility for construction between departments, it was obvious things would get messy – but then the industry has always been misunderstood
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Comment
Twitch and its yours
There are many reasons why one side to a dispute might claim that there was no contract, but the courts will do their very best to prove them wrong
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Comment
Take cover
Horbury Building Systems Limited had erected ceilings within in a cinema complex. The ceiling to one of the cinemas collapsed, and the whole complex had been closed for several weeks. Clause 4.1 of the insurance policy said that Hampden Insurance would indemnify Horbury Building Systems “in respect of … ...
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CommentThe Butler test
Adjudicators, like prime ministers, rely on expert evidence to come to decisions. But what if they’re given duff information that reinforces their own bias?
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CommentMultiplex on the spot
The FA may have other things on its mind than the construction of Wembley, but news that the stadium is presently hosting a good old-fashioned firefight between sub and main contractors should give anyone left at Soho Square additional cause for concern.
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Comment
The Holyrood treatment
Cary Grant could have given a valuable lesson in construction procurement to the “client” for the Scottish parliament building (23 July, page 50) – or the client for any large or complex development, come to that.
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Comment
It’s just cement to be
With the introduction of the European Landfill Directive, the UK’s remediation industry must face the fact that it has to find an alternative to a dig-and-dump strategy for contaminated land (16 July, page 14).
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Comment
A fair point
I was reading the article “Beauty is but skin deep …” (18 June, pages 26-28) and noticed that you show a photograph of the Saga headquarters in Folkestone, Kent, to illustrate the leaky windows that it has been cursed with. I would just like to point out that the photograph ...
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Comment
Dear Tony ...
I think the “answer on a postcard” to Tony Bingham’s question of how to gather evidence of site disruptions at the time they occur (16 July, page 52) is to keep a site diary. A well-kept and detailed diary is invaluable to anyone having to prepare or determine claims for ...
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Comment
… or, perhaps, Dear Diary
The answer has to be site diaries maintained by all supervisory staff from trade supervisor upwards. There should be an item in the bill for them, their content specified in the spec and, for programmes using the Society of Construction Law protocol, a withholding of a percentage of the account ...
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Comment
Third time unlucky
This is a successful appeal by the respondent, Kingston Upon Hull City Council, from the decision of the Court of Appeal reported in Legal Briefing No.8 of 2004. The applicant had worked for the respondent local authority as an environmental health officer and had been driven from his job by ...
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Comment
The tyranny of taste
The dead hand of totalitarian modernism should be prised from the shoulders of living architects: it was no more than a style among many others
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Comment
Counting all the costs
In the issue of 16 July, your leader referred to “consistently reduced construction costs”, and Alistair McAlpine commented that “a cheap price and a silver tongue” were generally accepted as “an alternative to expertise”.
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Comment
A binding non-binding decision
Tim Elliott (16 July, page 51) applauds the decision of His Honour Judge Thornton in William Verry Ltd vs North West London Communal Mikrah.
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Comment
Neanderthal Man alive and well
I was rather surprised to read your comment “Neanderthal Man no longer roams the sites of the land, terrorising small contractors with the assistance of fine legal minds” (16 July, page 3). My job for the past 10 years has been to defend my employer (a subcontractor) against precisely that. ...
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Comment
A reader writes: The facts of death
After our interview with the family of Patrick O’Sullivan, who was killed on the Wembley site, a reader gives us his experience of a fatality during a concrete pour