All Features articles – Page 521
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FeaturesArup's giant foaming Chinese puzzle box
Beijing's 2008 Olympic swimming stadium looks like a artifact from a dream: a giant box of glowing blue bubbles in which 17,000 people are concealed. Once you recover from the shock of seeing it, you start to wonder how anyone could possibly work out how to build it.
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FeaturesBasra stories
On the anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Mark Leftly visited UK firms working in the south of the country. He discovered that everyday life for contractors involves death threats, spiralling security costs, kidnapping, shortages of power and water – and a great deal of raw sewage
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FeaturesHere the twister comes
The Thames Barrier, designed to be raised once every five years, is being raised 10 times a year. We will know when we are drowning because there will be a programme about it on television, and it will be repeated three times … Building presents this week's extracts from CABE/RIBA's ...
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FeaturesDanger money
There has been a spate of bomb attacks on British employees in Iraq, and the costs of protection is going through the roof. With the situation rapidly deteriorating, we uncover the harsh reality of working life in the shadow of the gun …
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FeaturesUnited front
Many companies are attracting new workers into the industry by offering training on site. We look at the initiative on one project by social housing contractor United House
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FeaturesOn the ground
The construction of new homes and infrastructure projects is essential if normality is to return to southern Iraq. Building went on patrol with the Royal Artillery to visit to some key construction projects under way around Basra
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Features
Just the job
Training manager Jayne Sloan is responsible for getting construction workers through the NVQ programme. She explains why it is rewarding work
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FeaturesTake school to the kids
Traditionally, training workers to NVQ level has meant adapting to an inflexible college timetable only to have them learning very generalised subjects. But now firms are training staff on site — and it's proving much more efficient
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Features
What's in it for me?
On-site training is ideal for small firms, says Gordon Harris, boss of Advanced Roofing in Derbyshire
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Features
International costs: 2004
Gardiner & Theobald’s 12th annual survey of global construction costs takes a round-the-worldtrip to compare labour rates, building costs, material prices and inflation forecasts
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FeaturesHousing Futures 2024
Our serialisation of Housing Futures 2024, the collection of CABE/RIBA papers on the prospects for British housing, continues with John Callcutt's seven rules of regeneration and Christine Whitehead's three economic scenarios.
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FeaturesPlanes, brains and panels of steel
Those clever architects at Feilden Clegg Bradley didn't take the easy route to their RAF museum pavilion in Hendon. Alex Smith divebombs on the challenges of cladding a semi-circular roof in stainless steel and lining it with tensile fabric
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FeaturesLifetime costs: roofing
Metal prices have gone through the roof – which means the cost of your copper covering is sky-high. So which material is best value? Alex Smith reports, Davis Langdon & Everest crunches the numbers
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FeaturesDream over
For five years, the Peabody Trust has been the standard bearer of progressive housing in Britain, producing ideal homes such as the BedZED development pictured. Now that it has been forced to cut staff and move away from development, are prefabrication and sustainability lost causes?
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FeaturesImperial history
Photographer Julian Anderson spent three years documenting the building of Foster and Partners' sleek Tanaka Business School at Imperial College London. Here's a selection of his pictures.
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Features
Just the job
Noel Butcher, one of the first to go on the RICS foreign internships scheme, talks about his time in Texas
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FeaturesMiranda's way
No doubt you think Miranda Seymour-Smith's a bit quixotic. After all, she wants to get women onto site by banning wet T-shirt jokes. On the other hand, the Queen asks to come to her dos and Peter Rogers is her biggest fan. Still so sure?
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FeaturesNeat trick
We report from Waverley Gate in Edinburgh on how Balfour Beatty is progressing in its attempt to build a spanking new office building inside the shell of a huge Victorian post office. Which is rather like performing a triple axel, while wearing ill-fitting Wellington boots. And driving a tractor. On ...
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