Hansom: Bitter pills

Missing the gravy train

Now that Crossrail has awarded its major contracts to a variety of American firms, one interesting question is what happens to the rather impressive teams of people assembled by the losing British teams. To take one example, Laing O’Rourke lured two big hitters to its team: the massively experienced Charlie Ball from Network Rail, and Carl Devlin, BAA’s project leader at Heathrow Terminal 5. And not on miserly salaries, either, so we hear. Of course, the firm says the pair will be involved in plenty of other projects – in the current environment you certainly can’t afford to have senior people twiddling their thumbs – but some gossips are wondering if there’ll be enough for them to do. “There’ll be blood on the carpet, mark my words,” said one source …

But what do you really think?

In architectural circles, criticising your rivals’ buildings is simply not done. Thank God, then, for the world wide web, which is doing it for them. A new blog, badbritisharchitecture.blogspot.com, written by the anonymous “Ghost of Nairn”, is making waves among designers thanks to its less-than-flattering reviews of developments by architects such as Assael, EPR and HKR. However, for some reason the author reserves most of his/her bile for Archial, the company formerly known as SMC – might the author be a victim of the design conglomerate’s somewhat chequered commercial history?

What's for pudding?

I hear that Michael Thirkettle, the boss of McBains Cooper, had an interesting experience in the Algarve recently. Apparently a newly made Portuguese chum invited him to dinner with some friends. The problem was the main course, which was sheep’s head. As the English guest of honour he felt obliged to tuck in with feigned gusto. In fact he was so convincing that when he finished, he was given an encore plate of brains and eyeballs. Thirkettle thanked him and began gamely choking down his seconds. After a while he looked across to find that his Portuguese friend wasn’t eating any. “Aren’t you having any?” “No, it makes me feel sick,” he replied.

McBrains jokes to the usual address, please.

We was robbed

Much controversy during the music round of Building Design Partnership’s construction pub quiz last week. There was no doubt about what structure was named in the classic track that was played, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” but who was that singing an unusual cover of the well-known song? It turned out to be Percy Sledge, much to the bafflement of most. But there was general outrage when, during scoring, those who had written “Otis Redding” were awarded the two points because “he sang it originally”. Building would like it to be known that, had fairness and natural justice prevailed, it might have achieved a better position than third. Not that we’re bitter, of course …

Streets of London

We know architects are always after extra fees, but we’ve come across some who deserve at least a little bit of your money. Four young staff members from YRM Architects will be among those lining up to run this year’s London Marathon. “Team YRM” will be pounding the streets for homeless charity Alone in London, and a peek at their fundraising page shows they have already solicited £1,400 in donations from colleagues at Price & Myers, Aon, PIP Electrics, Cyrill Sweett and Gardiner & Theobald, among others. You too can join the distinguished list of sponsors and help vulnerable young homeless people at www.justgiving.com/yrmarchitects.