All Features articles – Page 662
-
Features
The cost of a holiday
The Working Time Regulations cause difficulties for companies that engage workers whose pay or hours fluctuate. On what basis do you work out their holiday pay?
-
Features
Cost study: Holiday Inn Express
The client wanted a budget hotel built for a fixed price with minimum risk. Thanks to the innovative use of a special purpose vehicle company, it was able to start operating the new Holiday Inn Express at Wellingborough after just 30 weeks on site
-
Features
Experimenting with drugs
Pharmaceuticals projects are ridiculously attractive: rapidly growing, secure, high-margin work immune to the ups and downs of the business cycle. The only catch is that they’re a “bloody nightmare” to get.
-
Features
The producers from hell
The Beeb got two feminists and a couple of builders to live together for a week, then filmed the ensuing scrap. But did they, in addition, do what they could to make sure it was as nasty as possible?
-
Features
Just the job
The Chinese project manager helping Ove Arup build business in Asia tells Elaine Knutt what brought him to Manchester.
-
Features
Rough justice
A quality mark scheme with a consumer complaint element will hit cowboy builders hard. Alas, it will do the same to legitimate outfits.
-
Features
PFI procurement
Building’s series of articles on different procurement routes continues with procurement for private finance initiative projects.
-
Features
The trouble with set-off
Construction firms have shown little reticence in using set-off provisions in contracts as a way of promoting positive cash flow. Adjudicators, like the courts, should be on the lookout for this iniquitous practice.
-
Features
1999 architects' fees survey
Architects' charges are closer to physiotherapists' than solicitors'. A new study by Mirza and Nacey Research shows that fees are inching up, but after seven years spent qualifying, is an average of £55 an hour a fair rate?
-
Features
Appointments
Contractor Birse Construction has appointed Martin Peat managing director, building. He will also join the Birse board. Housebuilder Ronnie Jacobs , previously with Persimmon Homes Scotland, has joined Miller Homes as regional director for west Scotland. Consultants Michael Albright , previously chairman and chief executive of Centex ...
-
Features
Spotlight on brickwork
Lead times Although lead times are now steady at six weeks, rising enquiry and workload levels are expected to boost them in the autumn. Brickwork contractors report little difficulty in procuring materials, but cite the lack of qualified operatives as the critical factor in determining lead times. As ...
-
Features
Together in electric dreams
IT Construction Best Practice promises to acquaint the small contractor with modern technology. Is this the advice that they've been waiting for, or is the FMB right in pointing to weaknesses in its approach?
-
Features
Lead times
Workload is healthy as we approach the millennium, but as Mace's update shows, lead times are mostly unaffected. compiled by Mace and Gardiner & Theobald
-
Features
The strength of Sampson
Claire Sampson, production director on the Millennium Dome, is a cool operator. Which is just as well, as she's co-ordinating the backstage elements for the whole shebang
-
Features
Have your say
The Institute of Personnel and Development's Angela Baron on 360° feedback, the system that gets everyone talking.
-
Features
How did it go £26m over budget?
The main reason Laing lost so much money on the redevelopment of Cardiff Arms Park was that it guaranteed a maximum price on a design that was undergoing change. The original design had masts raking out at 45° at the four corners of the stadium, but a row between Millennium ...
-
Features
Alun Michael
As "prime minister" of Wales, Alun Michael holds the purse strings for development in the country. But will the man once called "Tony Blair's poodle" boost or curtail it?
-
Features
Cost study: National Energy Centre in Milton Keynes
Low-energy buildings usually mean high capital costs. But not the National Energy Centre in Milton Keynes; it was built for nearly £200/m2 below the average unit cost for headquarters buildings. Compiled by Weston Williamson, Ove Arup & Partners, and Davis Langdon & Everest
-
Features
Spectacular comeback
A £26m cost overrun, a redesign and a row have wreaked havoc at the flagship venue for the Rugby World Cup. But they are all behind it now – just two weeks before the first match.