All Features articles – Page 573
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Features
Checklist: Drainage regulations
The new Part H drainage regulations is a great document that encourages specifiers to design more sustainable drainage systems associate and public health engineer at Arup. Here's his step-by-step guide to help you comply with requirements
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FeaturesThe specials
In a world of mass-production, the Matthews family has turned to specialisation for their survival, producing handmade bricks and using craft skills that prove traditional technologies can thrive in a modern economy.
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Features
Local lowdown
Continuing our regular regional series, Robert Smith of Hays Montrose puts the job market in the central belt of Scotland under the microscope
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FeaturesOne cube or two?
Continuing its annual design showcase, Hyde Park’s Serpentine Gallery has commissioned this stunning tea house, which knocks a mathematical algorithm into shape
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Features
Five office gadgets to buy online
Get organised with Memo Mouse. With a slot for written messages and the capability to record voice messages, it looks cute and will help you meet all those deadlines. Available for £19.99, from www.gobazaar.co.ukBecome more popular with a Massaging Pen. Also a great little stress beater, this gizmo writes like ...
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Features
Crash Barrier
If there's one thing that will bring the runaway housing market screeching to a halt, it's a sudden loss of confidence in the City. So, asks Gordon Jon Thompson, how can the listed housebuilders convince investors that the wheels are not about to come off?
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FeaturesAppointments
HousebuildersLaing Homes has promoted Sarah Bailey (left) to managing director of the North Home Counties branch, making her the first female MD in the housebuilder's 150-year history. She joined the company as sales and marketing director in 1999. Also at Laing Homes, Sue Marjason, previously a cabin crew attendant at ...
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FeaturesNaked ambition
Peter Stringfellow has made a mint from the industry, and now former contractor John Gray is on a mission to take his chain of lap dancing clubs to the regions. Matthew Richards asked the Californian entrepreneur about how design is key to the clubs' money-making potential
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Features
Where will it all end?
Enron's collapse should encourage construction firms to ask themselves a few hard questions
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Features
Fire alarm
Almost 20 years after a devastating World in Action exposé, the timber frame industry is back under the microscope. This time, government-backed research has found that poor workmanship is exposing occupants of timber frame buildings to potentially fatal fire risks.
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Features
Top 100 Contractors and Housebuilders 2002
Welcome to Building’s annual league of the top 100 contractors and housebuilders in the UK. The tables clearly show another great year for construction, with total turnover, pre-tax profit and margins all breaking records.
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FeaturesMetal Michelangelo
Bill Tustin is a huge Sid James-soundalike with the mind of an angel and the beard of a gnome who can build and price structures as complex as the London Eye in his head while making clothing out of the bowels of journalists. Marcus Fairs spends a happy afternoon being ...
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Features
Lead Times
The lead times for this quarter are continuing to decline, reports Mace, thanks to better relations with the supply chain and decreasing pressure on design offices. And overleaf Gardiner & Theobald reveals a positive outlook for curtain walling companies – despite the tougher standards of the new Part L
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FeaturesA taste of its own medicine
HM Treasury has given the PFI the ultimate endorsement – by using it to transform its own Whitehall property. And by awarding the job to a premier league project team, it has proved that a public–private partnership doesn't have to mean cheapskate design
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FeaturesSink or swim: DQI on test at Darlaston Pool
As The DQI building appraisal system uses similar criteria to those used in Building's "Building revisited" series, Building decided to return the complement. Here the DQI is itself appraised in one of its pilot projects, a post-occupancy appraisal providing feedback from a recently completed building. This is the award-winning Darlaston ...
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Features
Delivery boy
Project delivery manager Rob Phillips talks about his role with fit-out contractor Vivid Interior and why it could be the start of a new industry career path
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FeaturesAppointments
ContractorsRichard Baldwin has joined the board at Geoffrey Osbourne as a non-executive director.David Johnson, previously of Shepherd Building Group, has been appointed managing director at Foremans.HousebuildersMarcus Keys (left) has been appointed business improvement manager at affordable housing provider Lovell.ConsultantsInterior architect MCM has appointed John Carroll, previously a director a Pricewaterhouse ...
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FeaturesHow to Account for taste
Can you give a building marks for design quality? The Construction Industry Council says yes, and has devised a system to do it. Martin Spring explains this 'design quality indicator' and assesses how well it sums up Hodder Associates' Walsall swimming pool.
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Features
20 ways to make tall buildings safer
This week, exactly 10 months after the collapse of the World Trade Centre, the Institution of Structural Engineers has published guidance that it hopes will mean a disaster of 11 September proportions will never happen again. Its recommendations on how to help buildings withstand a terrorist attack will affect existing ...
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Features'You had the contents of two 110-storey buildings in a pile'
When the World Trade Centre towers collapsed on 11 September 2001, the world was devastated – and then demanded to know how it had happened. So Chicago-based skyscraper expert William Baker was sent on a reconnaissance mission to ground zero, to assist in the clear-up operation and report back. Here ...