The final account

Thursday 11 May

To Dublin for the British Council for Offices annual conference. QS News was determined to sit through as many discursive sessions at the event as we could, and to return to London with some serious issues rather than lewd gossip.

The organisers certainly managed to secure some big names for the bash, including a keynote address from the Irish rugby coach Eddie O'Sullivan, Laing O'Rourke chairman Ray O'Rourke (more on him later) and former close advisor to Tony Blair Geoff Mulgan. Bring on the debate.

Our desire to keep it serious and real was slightly undermined by one of the speakers at the second session we sat in on, entitled ‘The Future: Office buildings 20 years forward'.

Confirming the long-standing stereotype that architects are a bit, well, barmy, Jan Kaplicky stood up to consider what future workplaces will look like. It was therefore a bit of a shock to be faced with a series of photographs depicting twentieth century dictators, from Hitler through to Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao to kick off his speech - Kaplicky added to the surreal affect by barking NEXT after each photo rather than using one of those buttons to click to the subsequent picture.

He then asked a question we had not been expecting to be raised during our time in the Irish capital: "How can we design offices for football hooligans?" For much of his half hour stint the stock phrase used by Kaplicky when faced with a picture of, say, a spider's web, a collection of pebbles or a naked woman, was "Is this the office of the future?"

Kaplicky did bring the audience around by speaking rather eloquently on the state of the world and its influence on buildings. He also got a bit wound up over colour in construction. "For christ's sake let's think (about colour) before we design buildings. It shouldn't cost any more. No QS is going to chop a scheme because it uses a different colour scheme."

One of the first intentional laughs of the afternoon produced by Kaplicky was when he showed a picture of a forthcoming stamp with his firm's Birmingham Selfridge's store. "It's the biggest achievement of my life having the Queen looking at my work."

A brief mention must go to the late night venue we attended afterwards, which bears the unfortunate name of Lillie's Bordello. We stress this is a nightclub rather than a house of ill repute. Apparently none other than rock God and self-proclaimed saviour of the world Bono was present that night, no doubt drawn to a host of construction celebrities - "is this your first BCO" must have been the most common question directed at the legend.

Friday 12 May

The BCO saved one of the best seminars for the end of the conference on a real bugbear for construction - resources. You got a real sense of the crisis the sector is undergoing in relation to supreme balls-up jobs such as Wembley and the Dublin port tunnel. Ray O'Rourke certainly thought he had a solution, focusing on the waste the industry produces through tendering.

O'Rourke also managed to put his size 14s in to the gender debate, siding with the view that women are better making the bacon butties for the blokes on site rather than getting stuck in themselves. Not sure this is going to go down too well in the sector.

Quote of the day

Stanhope director Peter Rogers, introducing Laing O'Rourke chairman Ray O'Rourke during a session at the aforementioned conference - "Ray is chairman of Laing. Er, that's Laing O'Rourke. Maybe he was chairman of Laing, that's why he got it for £1."

Confused of the day

The consulting engineer who woke up on Friday morning a little worse for wear thinking it was Saturday and he had to rush to airport. "It was only when I started packing that I saw I hadn't worn one of my shirts. It then dawned on me it was in fact Friday."