All Features articles – Page 456
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Features
Costs: Anti-bacterial surfaces
The NHS pays £1bn a year to treat hospital-acquired infections. This may be cut by specifying anti-bacterial surfaces. Peter Mayer of Building LifePlans considers some options …
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FeaturesHealthcare
This week’s Specifier checks up on the world of health, including the best and most cost-effective methods of tackling superbugs, plus products fit for a 21st-century hospital. But first, the story behind Europe’s first ever modular radiotherapy centre for cancer patients, which opens this month in London
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Features
Focus on the regions
More ups and downs across the UK, as activity rockets in the East Midlands but plummets in Northern Ireland and East Anglia, and don’t even look at the West Midlands’ order books …
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Features
Coping with a cold snap
Can output growth continue as weather conditions worsen and demand takes a hit from rising tender prices? Experian Business Strategies runs down the key points of its contractors’ survey
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FeaturesWaiting for Balfour
Ten days ago it all looked so simple: Carillion had pulled off a spectacular deal by agreeing the friendly takeover of Mowlem, its similarly sized rival. Then the UK’s biggest contractor intervened …
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FeaturesThe £6 House
If you think John Prescott’s £60,000 house was a tall order, how would you cope with a budget of £6? Not too badly, if the efforts of the three teams who attended Building’s housebuilding competition in London are anything to go by.
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FeaturesGoodbye, 2005
The year is gone, but not forgotten – or is it? Try our prize quiz to see what you remember …
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FeaturesWhatever happened to …2005
A year can be a long time in construction. From the devastation of the South-east Asian tsumani to the jubilation of the Olympic win, by way of the mindbending confusion of the Building Regulations, Mark Leftly charts the history of the good, bad and the straightforwardly weird
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FeaturesIn the shadow of the heron
Stephen Stone had just taken up the top job at Crest Nicholson when rumours began to circulate that Gerald Ronson’s Heron International was hatching a second takeover bid.
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FeaturesOpen government
It feels like a million miles from the labyrinthine Holyrood. Lord Rogers’ Welsh assembly is all about transparency: in fact, it’s mostly a canopy open to Cardiff Bay
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FeaturesCost model: Mixed-use city-centre schemes
Mixed use is increasingly the name of the game for town-centre developers. But can uses such as retail and residential really mix? Simon Rawlinson of Davis Langdon examines the practicalities and costs of mixed-use city-centre schemes
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FeaturesBreaking amec
In the late 1980s, Amec pioneered the concept of the one-stop shop for construction services. Now, with its French services business up for grabs and the rest of the company set to be split in two and possibly sold, the sharks have started circling …
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FeaturesAfter the wobble
Ahhh, Christmas … Time for old chums to get together, share memories, slap backs, redistribute blame and generally relive their glory days. For this lot, those days were spent designing, building, redesigning and amending the Millennium Bridge. So here’s your chance to eavesdrop on Arup, Foster and Partners, Sir Robert ...
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FeaturesThis season’s trends
It may sound paradoxical, but falling consumer spending is triggering a retail boom, as shop owners employ upgraded design and the latest thinking from the States to stimulate shoppers’ spending reflex.
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FeaturesZaha’s strange logic
It’s the disorientating combination of counter-intuitive form and formal rigour that gives Zaha Hadid’s Wolfsburg Science Centre its architectural kick. Here’s the thinking behind it …