Archive for April, 2007
Know of any bosses blogging in the industry yet?
More free content
Following the lead of Building, Property Week have announced:
“with online publishing across the world moving away from subscription models, we will not be charging you a penny to log on”
“But that’s not all. Property Week’s archive, dating back to 1999, is also fully searchable and available to everyone for free.”
Not really a surprise as [...]
10 years of New Labour
Interesting precis of the past 10 years by Construction Journal here - the message is good, but could do better.
(Labour) has given construction 10 years of steady workload, without the peaks and troughs of previous decades. And on the back of this, everyone in the industry has benefited, with pay increases comfortably above the all-industry [...]
LCC, SBEM, Part L and IES
I’m not at CIBSE conference - instead I am polishing the final draft of the MBA dissertation in anticipation of my upcoming career break (I finished paid employment on Friday) as I depart for distant shores next Monday.
But if I was at CIBSE, I would be quizzing folks on the following press release :
A new [...]
More blogs than you can shake a stick at
I’ve updated my links to the side, adding a few more categories and blogs I’ve found over the past few months. Highlights include:
Rob at no2self found via Hana , I think. He’s an architect (in Birmingham) and his EcoBuild post had me giggling inappropriately at my keyboard.
A young blog (born December [...]
More on EPC’s for houses
The Government wants go further to make it easier for homebuyers to access grants for energy efficiency measures, linking them to new EPCs.
Grants look to be worth about £100 - £300 for homes rated E, F or G. Current estimates for the cost of an EPC are £85 (which the seller, rather [...]
Getting ready for EPC’s
The always excellent TheyWorkForYou has alerted me to these factoids:
Q: how much has been allocated to the Energy Performance Certificates scheme for (a) start-up costs and (b) 2007-08?
A:The Department has allocated some £1.96 million to start-up costs for the Energy Performance Certificates scheme. This money is required to put into place the [...]
Skills shortage
I’ve had many a conversation over the past few months lamenting the lack of engineers available for hire at senior and associate level. These figures from 2004 show that we’re not imagining this shortfall - look at the massive gap in age bracket 40-44:
General concensus is that in the early [...]
A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design
Found via:: WorldChanging, a manifesto from Allan Chochinov of Core 77 (online design magazine). The full 1000 word manifesto is worth a read but the headings are as follows:
Hippocratic before Socratic
Stop making crap
Systems before artifacts
Teach sustainability early
Screws better than glues
Design for impermanence
Balance before talents
Metrics before magic
Climates before [...]
Are we ready for open source engineering?
Launched recently is OpenArchitectureNetwork.org. Although still in beta, the idea is proposing:
“an open-source online space where architects and engineers can share their ideas with organizations and community leaders that are seeking design solutions for coping with the aftermath of natural disasters and political conflict. [...]
