The final account

This being our last edition we decided to come up with some headlines for stories we wish we’d been able to run during our 20-month existence. Here goes:

Davis Langdon and Gardiner & Theobald to merge

Jowell: ‘No limit to Olympics budget. Money no object’

RICS: ‘We love QSs’

McBains Cooper actually buys someone

Site-seeing in Leeds

Our site-seeing quiz was won by Simon Hunt, director at Myddelton Construction. He correctly spotted the site in question as Bridgewater Place in Leeds.

Food for thought

Mark Pontin from Pontin Associates was the winner of our worthy quest to find great food analogies for construction contracts.

We highlighted a lawyer’s rather bizarre comparison between the NEC contract and a pizza in our last missive. What do you reckon to Paul’s stab at it? “How about ‘Baked Alaska’ for JCT – yellow and warm on the outside and cold as ice inside.” Not bad.

New QS award

Comedian Mark Steel, who presented our QS Awards last week, came up with an interesting idea for a category for our ceremony next year – biggest discrepancy between a QS’ first costing and the final account. We’re not sure it will be a wildly popular one.

Smiling Shipplee

Howard Shipplee, construction director for the Olympic Delivery Authority must be feeling a fair amount of the heat emanating from the furore engulfing the cost of the Games in the past few weeks.

When we door-stopped him at last month’s Thames gateway Forum however, he remained cool as a cucumber. He responded to a string of budget-related questions with a series of “no comments” delivered, we should add, with rather a charming smile. Let’s hope he’s still smiling when the ODA finally reveals the cost in spring.

EC Harris’ jumble sale

EC Harris has moved its London HQ to the new Regent’s Quarter development in King’s Cross. The firm was previously at Lynton Hose, Tavistock Square, for 50 years. ECH held an auction of items from its old premises, raising £3,600 for Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead.