Tomorrow’s people

Alex de Rijke

While some architects feel marginalised by the uptake of MMC and the myriad new products which clip together to form roofs, walls, stairs... whatever, others are busy designing smart new buildings with catalogue components and off-the-shelf products. Alex de Rijke and his practice dRMM – falls into the second category.

Despite a penchant for flicking through product pages for inspiration, de Rijke and his architectural renegades are not cold-hearted CAD monkeys designing the kind of cookie-cutter dross that MMC often inspires. Rather they are genuine, technology-embracing modernists actively getting to grips with today’s construction environment and, using this approach, have already created one of the best buildings to emerge in the UK for some time – Kingsdale School in south London.

It features the largest “variable skin etfe” light-controlling roof in the world, and has been rightly hailed as a technical and architectural wonder.

Other strings to de Rijke’s practice bow include the Naked House, a solid timber design that plays with the possibilities of computer-controlled cutting technology and engineered, laminated timber, and the modular “grasshouse”, his take on urban housing that incorporates a sloping turf roof garden.

Sir Nicholas Stern

Once it was Latham, then it was Egan, now it is Stern, the latest name to cast a shadow across the industry thanks to a government-sponsored report, the 700-page climate change study, The Stern Review.

Released last autumn, it gained global media coverage thanks in part to its direct, no-nonsense tone. It reads: “Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.”

With the pan-industrial report highlighting the construction sector as a repeat offender addicted to bullying the environment, expect to hear the author’s name bandied about in both site hut compound and office HQ as managers and directors struggle with the advice the aptly-named economist provides in his report.

As you’d expect, Stern concludes with a fiscal, rather than scientific, solution suggesting an investment of 1% of global GDP is required to offset climate change damage. The alternative is a recession worth up to 20% of global GDP. Prescriptions include environmental taxes.

By the end of the year, however, you will either be cursing or praising Stern’s advice, as firms realign to accommodate more sustainable practice.

Joanna Davis

In an industry where there are still far too few women, Joanna Davis shows that it can be done. Mother of two young children, 34-year-old Davis is an award-winning project manager who is setting the agenda in public sector procurement. Last year she won one of four Constructing Excellence awards.

Davis works for the Vehicle Operator Services Agency (VOSA), overseeing its estate modernisation programme and managing its build team. She is currently working her way through the upgrade of 91 heavy goods vehicle test stations, overseeing about £12m worth of jobs each year.

Davis decided to do things differently when she was in charge and so established framework agreements. “The traditional approach will get you a building, it will get you something,” she says, but adds: “It won’t get you the quality. It will get you grief at the end. If you work collaboratively, the actual finished product is 100 times better and there’s no aggravation.”

Davis was one of the first people to use the BE Collaborative form of contract, an emaciated document of 21 pages. She particularly likes the fact that people rather than companies are named in the document.

She compares her role to that of a mum presiding over a family. “If you can get a bit of sibling rivalry going, they all want to do well to please their mum.”

Mummy has set some tough targets for lead contractor Britcom and lead consultant Craddy Pitchers Davidson. The contractor must reduce construction waste by 50% over the four-year framework and the consultant has to halve whole life costs. In VOSA’s units you will find passive stack ventilation, energy efficient lighting, and two even have wind turbines.

Another of Davis’s ploys is to talk to the workers and get her consultants to do likewise. This has led to changes in designs. Concrete labourers suggested ways to make the formwork easier, the cladding firm asked if bracing could be moved to improve a corner detail and the dryliners introduced British Gypsum’s Soundshield to replace the specified multiboard, cutting costs by 80%.

Davis started after school as a trainee architectural technician, doing an ONC on day release, then an HNC. Then she switched to surveying, spending five years in the estate department at the University of Bristol before moving to VOSA as head surveyor.

Gary Sullivan

“When you go into combat, all the planning in the world can’t prepare you. No plan survives the first contact with the enemy.” So it is in war, and also in construction according to Gary Sullivan, managing director of Wilson James.

Sullivan should know. He spent six years in the parachute regiment and knows what it is to be on the end of good – and not-so-good – logistics planning. “Construction is different to other industries. There are so many variables, so many unknowns. You could have an incident in the city which closes all the roads so the site runs to a standstill.”

For almost 20 years Sullivan has been trying to convince the construction industry to follow the army’s lead in its handling of logistics. Since he set up Wilson James with his business partner Mark Dobson in the early 1990s, they’ve had many success stories, from the DTI building in Victoria with Mace, Mid City Place in Holborn with Bovis Lend Lease to BAA’s Heathrow consolidation centre, but still takers have been limited. Now, finally, his time may have come.

A Transport for London report due out early this year will show the effect that Wilson James’ Bermondsey consolidation centre is having on London’s environment and on project efficiency. (See CM, May 2006 “Vital Logistics” article for background on the centre). The centre achieves 97% efficiency in getting the right materials to the right place at the right time. This compares to 30% for a control project. A separate study by BSRIA will show that productivity is up by 47%.

Politically the gem is in traffic reduction: vehicle movements are reduced by more than 80% in the city centre and carbon dioxide emissions are down 2.5 tonnes. This could appeal to local authorities with several developments coming up, perhaps becoming part of the planning process. It’s certainly a way of reducing construction’s negative impact on the environment.

Sullivan came to construction by accident. In 1988 he was working as a bodyguard when a colleague put him in touch with Stanhope and Bovis. His first job with them in Ludgate in London’s City was in security but he soon got interested in how construction sites work – or rather how they don’t.