All Letters articles – Page 96
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Comment
Why we said what we said
In your leader “Rouse … to Simmons” (15 October, page 3), CABE’s views of the proposals for the Royal London Hospital are criticised as “ill-judged” and “ill-timed”.
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Comment
Miscalculation
In the commentary accompanying your top 200 consultants feature (1 October, page 45), you say FaberMaunsell has 16,000 staff following acquisition of Oscar Faber in 2001.
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Comment
Be a record maker
I read with interest the excellent article entitled “Dear site diary” by Andrew Farrer (8 October, page 34).
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Comment
A site issue
Imposing stricter safety regulations on the architect will not make construction safer as they are too far removed from the front line of construction (1 October, page 15).
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Comment
Slums for the future
I wonder how many of your readers spotted that the balconies at Barons Place (8 October, page 39) have been installed upside down.
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Comment
The wrong kind of demand
Nick Lane is right to sound a warning about using winding-up petitions to make debtors cough up (3 September, page 52).
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Comment
Tweaking the act
I have just read Tony Bingham’s article in this week’s Building (8 October, page 54). I am aghast at the indecision of review panel number one – the looking at changes to the Construction Act’s payment rules – which surely must have the sense to recognise injustice and abuse when ...
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Comment
No need to rush
It is most refreshing to read a thoroughly independent and objective analysis of construction management. Ashley Pigott is correct in saying it is for the professional client that builds regularly, and by definition, knows what he wants and does not change his mind (8 October, page 56).Who then advises clients, ...
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Comment
Hackney residents need not fear
Further to your article on 8 October (page 18), entitled “John Laing quits troubled Hackney estate scheme”, while John Laing has withdrawn from the regeneration scheme in Haggerston West & Kingsland, the council and London & Quadrant remain firmly committed to the project. The reason for leaving the scheme that ...
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Comment
… designers need more guidance
Mr Allan is correct; there can be no implication that he had failed to comply with the CDM regulations, as he was found not guilty. The question of what amounts to “adequate information” that designers must include with their design still remains as a knotty problem. Perhaps the professional ...
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Comment
The wrong kind of demand
Nick Lane is right to sound a warning (3 September, page 52) about using winding-up petitions to make debtors cough up. However, his explanation of what the recipient of a statutory demand needs to do is not quite correct as far as a company is concerned. Before issuing a statutory ...
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Comment
My safety record is clean …
Gillian Birkby (24 September, page 72) refers to my prosecution as an “illustration of how designers need to implement the CDM regulations” and of how designers “could avoid accidents by providing more information about hazards”. However I feel sure that she could not have intended to imply that I failed ...
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Comment
Amphibious thinking
Is our industry taking the recent shock announcements of rises in carbon levels, and its potential impact upon global warming, seriously enough? The social and moral responsibility of the construction industry to engage in sustainable construction is two-fold. First, we must take measures to protect, and if possible enhance, the ...
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Comment
Way off
Although I’m a strong advocate of off-site manufacture (OSM), I have to take issue with your Offsite supplement (1 October). OSM will only succeed if it can match the design quality and cost effectiveness of traditional building. Few of the featured projects showed any of John Prescott’s ‘wow’ factor, and ...
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Comment
One-eyed jock
Lord Fraser’s report on Holyrood appears to me to be one-eyed, ignoring as it does the plight of the trade contractors involved. The building may well have cost its owners – the taxpayers – £431m but I surmise the cost to its builders, trade contractors and the professional team is ...
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Comment
Gone with the wind
The objections to on-shore wind farm schemes (24 September, page 70) are classic nimbyism. Would the objectors prefer a nuclear power station on the green fields? At least with wind farms, when they are removed you wouldn’t know they had even been there.
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Comment
On different tracks
I don’t claim to be an expert in construction project management, or indeed public transport, but to attempt to compare the state of the railways with construction, as Paul Morrell does (3 September, page 40), is surely wrong. Railways provide a service to the clients – the passengers – who ...
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Comment
Above financial persuasion
Tony Bingham (24 September, page 70) says that adjudicators should not be given the power to decide on their own jurisdiction as they have a financial interest in the outcome.Come off it, Tony! Arbitrators have the power to decide on their own jurisdiction, and the courts encourage parties to refer ...
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Comment
A tragic legacy
Although it is possible to have sympathy with any small building contractors who are struggling to obtain employer’s liability insurance at the moment, the root cause of this problem is not any great rise in claims, or the compensation culture, as some employers organisations would attempt to suggest.