Elemental

I’m a big fan of Charles Handy and his Hollywood model as I have mentioned before here, here and here.

A post from Paul on team working and BIM caught my eye recently:

…but I find that some of the issues relating to adoption of BIM are simply an extension of the issues faced in adopting any kind of collaborative approach. This usually boils down to an assertion that successful collaboration only 20% technology, the other 80% is all about people and process.

This, I think, applies equally to BIM. And others echo my thoughts. … in respect of the need to build teams, to get people out of their old-style silo approaches and embrace an integrated, collaborative approach. He seeks to encourage:

• Trust (commitment that we were all working together)
• Enthusiasm (that this was an exciting group of people to work with, and that it was a good project)
• Appreciation (of the various skills that everyone brought to the project)
• Mutual respect (often based upon previous project experiences)

The workshop process he advocates sounds very similar to the approaches employed on numerous UK projects undertaken on a “partnering” basis since the 1994 Latham Report. He also favours the co-location of teams.

This was closely followed by a post from Dave Pollard on Gen Y and a preferred style of working:

An interesting side-effect of this that I’ve observed in organizations with many young people is that, to Gen Y’ers, the ‘costs’ of compliance with ineffective constraints (processes, restrictions on software access, and rules) quickly exceed the value (job security), so they are finding workarounds that bypass these constraints and set up ‘markets’ for other ways of doing things (use of processes that they’ve imported from friends’ organizations or from previous experience, or use of free commercial software tools). The use of these unapproved ‘insecure’ processes and tools has set the stage in many organizations for a culture war between the older, command-and-control style of senior management and the new, peer-to-peer, workaround-based style of Gen Y’ers, powered mainly by social networking. As Shirky puts it (and Dave Snowden has illustrated in many case studies) “employees do better at sharing information with one another directly than when they go through official channels.” It enables them to do their jobs more effectively, and for many employees (especially the young) that’s more important than doing what they’re told. The result is an epic battle for control of what goes on in the organization, and in fact for control of the organization.

The move towards a new way of working seems inevitable to me in the next ten years (I’m being cautious with my timescales here). The ‘perfect storm’ of an increasingly disaffected workforce, a recession (which so far seems to have spawned many freelancers through choice or need) and the growth of the tools necessary to work in this ‘new’ collaborative way has enormous potential.

What does this mean for the industry? For clients, it brings both benefit and risk. This way of working will be cheaper for the client but less ‘legitimate’ than dealing with large consultancies. For instance, does the client have a contract with each and every consultant or is there a better way to broker such work?

And what does this mean for the large consultancies? Are they going to have to compete with the world of freelancing? What impact will this have?

The key, and current sticking point, as Dave Pollard alludes to, is the marketplace or brokerage network for managing relationships and legal matters. LinkedIn is a start but it’s not quite there yet. Does anyone know of anything which exists currently?

admin Opinion

These are my links for May 20th through May 21st:

• The Best Business Model in the World – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org – "Yet, the best business model in the world is also the simplest: make stuff that's insanely great. Stuff that's insanely great does what Prezi does — amazes, enriches, and inspires. That kind of stuff doesn't need a hard sell, a new market, or a convoluted product range. It just needs to be."
• How to Save the World – Another fascinating and brilliant article from Dave Pollard on complexity and scenario planning. He references both Dave Snowden and Euan Semple. A must read.
• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Switch to renewable energy? If only it were that simple – Another excellent review of Without Hot Air, this time by Tim Harford: "Dealing with climate change will need many small decisions to be made differently. The government cannot micromanage these. This is why a carbon price, whether set through taxes or emissions permits, is needed. It is not so much a nudge as a shove in the right direction."
• Roger K. Lewis – A Perfect Recipe for Boring Buildings – washingtonpost.com – Short, succinct piece on why buildings built to regulations are boring rather than beautiful. Quality of design and beauty cannot be legislated.
• A secretive bully-boy quango – Building Design – Glancey has a particularly violent go at CABE: "My own experience with Cabe — a quango too far, I believed, when Chris Smith, the former culture secretary, outlined the idea of it to me some years ago — is of a secretive, bully-boy body in cahoots with architects, developers and local authorities. Cabe’s report on the proposed Tesco for my Suffolk town — until now the happily independent Hadleigh, voted against by the overwhelming majority of the town council, the chamber of commerce and local people, and designed to replace age-old allotments and precious wildlife habitats on a beautiful water meadow — is a dismal piece of work as the architects who have read the report and visited the site unanimously agree."

admin News aesthetics, beauty, business_models, CABE, complexity, Economics, Harford, McKay, planning, regulations, renwables, scenario

These are my links for May 12th through May 15th:

• Blueprint for green stores | Forum For The Future – "Stephen Heal, the company’s director of climate change programmes, says that the Cheetham Hill store’s carbon emissions should be 70% less than those of an average store of its size in 2006. The sixth Tesco supermarket with the ‘eco-store’ tag, it boasts a natural refrigeration system, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, a timber frame and cladding, rooflights to allow natural daylight inside – and a ‘very good’ rating for the building on the BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) system. Investment costs were around 10% higher than a typical store – but fuel bills are predicted to be 48% lower."
• Burn the trees to save the world? | Forum For The Future – Great overview of biochar – pros and cons: "Today, many climatologists are as excited as agronomists about biochar. Professor Tim Lenton, from the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, believes that, of all the large-scale solutions under discussion, biochar and reforestation stand out as the most viable options. Professor Johannes Lehmann, an eminent soil specialist from Cornell University, goes so far as to suggest that it is theoretically possible, by the end of this century, that we could capture 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon each year through biochar production in tropical agricultural systems. If we achieved that level of reduction, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would actually be falling. It’s no wonder that, in January, Gaia hypothesist James Lovelock told New Scientist that “There is one way we could save ourselves, and that is through the massive burial of charcoal”. "
• Objectives – www.cecop.org.uk – via Guy Battle:
  The Construction Emissions Community of Practice has the following objectives:
  1. To support the propagation of carbon emissions reporting in building procurement.
  2. To provide an accessible knowledge resource.
  3. To advance theoretical discussion in techniques and methodology.
  4. To support emissions prediction, monitoring and analysis for the reduction of emissions from the construction industry.
  5. To establish protocols for building whole life emissions reporting towards comparability of case studies.
  6. To utilise existing calculation tools, standards and widely available software wherever possible to support widespread adaptability of protocols within the construction industry.
  7. To identify and promote best practice in data collection.
  8. To accumulate and disseminate case studies to a broad construction audience
  9. To demonstrate improvements to sustainability achieved through case studies
• David MacKay, energy star: “How many light bulbs?” « lightbucket – Another great post from Lightbucket, this time analysing what SDC have to say about David McKay: "Trying to read between the lines, I guess Rebecca Willis was trying to make a case against nuclear energy, but somehow ended up arguing against arithmetic instead. David MacKay remarks in a BBC article that “I am not pro-wind or pro-nuclear: I am just pro-arithmetic.” [10]. If I had to speculate about what she’d meant to say, my guess is that Rebecca Willis set out to make an anti-nuclear case, but just came across as anti-arithmetic."
• Planning Portal – Draft single policy for economic growth published – Consultation closes 28 July 2009: "The new PPS will, in its final form, replace PPG 4, PPG 5, PPS 6, and PPS 7 in relation to economic development and paragraphs 53, 54 and Annex D of PPG 13."

admin News agriculture, biochar, BREEAM, carbon, case_study, construction, costs, developing_world, development, economic, embodied, Energy, fuel, nuclear, planning, renewables, retail, rural, SDC, Tesco, UK, urban

This is one of those posts which blogs were originally invented for – a record of something I did to my computer which I can refer to in the future, so I know how I did it.

Every company I have ever worked for has used Outlook. As a tool, it has it’s limits in it’s “out of the box” configuration. Below are the three main tweaks I use to keep my inbox to zero. Note – I use folders extensively to keep project related email in. When projects reach a milestone (out to tender or report issued etc) or a conversation reaches a conclusion, I archive to the central repository. This is not my ideal way of working, but given the constraints I’m working with, it’s the best solution I’ve found so far.

The first tweak is to keep all my incoming and outgoing live emails in one inbox. The sent items get automatically filed in my inbox (although not from the crackberry) and deleted from the sent items. Instructions for setting this up are here complete with screen shots. As a summary:

Rules and Alerts > New Rule > Check messages after sending > Next > Specified folder (Inbox)

To delete outgoing mail from sent items (and only have in your inbox):

Tools > Options > Email options > untick save copies of messages

The next part of the equation is to set up a key shortcut to move emails into folders. Depending on your work flow you may also want to set up a copy shortcut. Personally, I try to keep only one copy of an item at any one time (hence deleting the sent items).

Full instructions are here (third tip down the page). Basically, you end up with an Alt+1 shortcut in a new toolbar which will give you the ability to move emails to a folder without using the mouse.

The final tweak is to make Outlook look a little more like Gmail. I use this inside my project folders to help me decide if a conversation is finished and can be archived. Click on any of the fields at the top of the inbox. Choose field chooser and add the extra field ‘conversation’. Drag onto the toolbar. Remove the Subject field. Right mouse click and arrange by conversation. You should end up with a nested view of conversations, and as all your sent items are in there too, you can keep track of who said what, when. You will have to do this for each folder you are using this method on. I don’t use it in my inbox – my inbox should really only have outstanding non-project related emails and incoming unread emails.

A few more useful keyboard shortcuts for Outlook:

Alt + w Forward

Ctrl + u Mark as Unread

admin Geekery Gmail, gtd, inbox zero, Oulook, Productivity

Spotted this article in BD last week which piqued my interest. I’ve been thinking long and hard what a change of government next May might mean to the industry.

The Conservative Party has trained its sights on Cabe as part of an expected crackdown on expensive government quangos if the party wins the next election.

In the midst of the worst recession for decades, shadow ministers Ed Vaizey and Grant Shapps this week raised questions over the future of the taxpayer-funded watchdog following leader David Cameron’s recent pledge to replace the current “spendaholic” government with a new government of thrift.

So how much spending are we talking about here? Off to the ERC Quango database and a few minutes later I had knocked up a graphic with the 2006 government funding inserted. Note that the LDA figures are taken from their annual report for 2006/7 and relate only to the DTI funding (they have contributions from others). Also, the HCA was still EP and HC back in 2006.

click image to enlarge

Whilst CABE spends considerably more than say SDC, it pales in comparison to English Heritage and the RDA’s. And by far the biggest slice of the pie is HCA. (I’m assuming the spending in education is actual delivery of education rather than building of schools).

I’m not sure whether CABE are safe or not, or if they should be. But it’s always worth putting a bit of context to a story when there’s no data given. Come on BD, you could have done that?

And why should the industry care? Take a look at the bodies above and tell me you haven’t been involved in at least one project where funding came from one of those pots over the past 10 years? So, crystal ball time. Without getting into party politics, anyone want to predict what the effects of a change at the top will be (especially for those of us (mid thirties and younger) who have never really worked under any other flavour of government)? Comments, as always, are open…

admin News, Regulation CABE, government, quango, SDC, spending, UK

Don’t forget that tomorrow is the conference Sustainability Now – a virtual event – no carbon footprint involved in your travel.  Look out for me and come and say hi…

admin Events conference, Events, sustainability now, virtual

These are my links for May 5th through May 11th:

• BREEAM: BREEAM Extranet – Elements of the BREEAM Extranet are now available to all with a public log-in option – loving how BREEAM are continuing to open up to all.
• Multiple monitors boost productivity by 35.5% | 18 Feb 2009 | ComputerWeekly.com – Some bias in that Fujitsu have an interest in selling more screens, but good to see some data on something I've suspected a long time (and I'm still hankering after Terry Pratchett's 6 screen set up): "Employees can perform a typical knowledge-sector job much more efficiently at a three-display workspace than at a conventional one, according to a laboratory survey by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), supported by Fujitsu.
  Fujitsu said this is particularly relevant for jobs where digital information has to be processed very frequently, as is the case for scientists, editors, engineers or insurance company employees.
  Overall, the study showed that larger screen areas increase productivity, and with the three-display workspace interconnected to form one desktop, Fraunhofer IAO scientists recorded increases in productivity of 35.5%."
• Andrew Winston – " I have a new book coming out this summer called Green Recovery. It focuses on going green in hard economic times. It lays out ways to get lean quickly, which can help companies survive today and preserves capital to invest in people and innovation. This plan can prepare companies to emerge from the downturn in a much better competitive position.
  My publisher is making a core part of the book available for free now. You can download my special report here:
  www.tinyurl.com/WinstonReport
  This pdf includes the introduction and the core chapter on getting lean. The other chapters on how the green wave is evolving, and how to get smart, get creative, and get (your people) going will be out by August in the full book."
• Andrew Winston: Is Bjorn Lomborg Dangerous or Helpful? – "Lomborg has a long habit of tilting at windmills that he mostly imagines. His most famous argument is that we shouldn't prioritize climate change over other pressing social priorities like poverty alleviation — as if they're all separate. The poorest people in the world are energy poor and don't have access to clean water — the two biggest environmental challenges of our time. He's always setting up false tradeoffs to establish his more "reaonsable" middleground…
  Lomborg's arguments are more subtle than he usually gets credit for. Probably 75% of what he says is dead on — but that's what makes him so dangerous. It's the other 25% that gets us in trouble."
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Procrastiflation: Procrastination + Inflation – I'm a procrastiflator!: "The longer a task goes un-completed, the harder it is to do it.
  If you say you're going to call John Doe on Monday, and you don't, and you continue to procrastinate on Tuesday, and then Wednesday, it becomes harder and harder with each passing day to ever complete the task."
• Dave Gorman: Limescale – Hilarious post from Dave Gorman in which he fixes the economy by rerouting hard water from London to Scotland.
• Commissioning strategy to be included in revisions to Part L – Building Sustainable Design – "The proposed changes to Part L were due to come into effect in April 2010, but this target is now likely to be missed. A government spokesman said the April date “is becoming increasingly challenging and the revisions to the regulations could be put back to October 2010”."
• Wales introduces green building standard – PlanningResource – A sign of things to come for the rest of the country? "Housing developers will have to meet the Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3 while non-residential buildings will need to achieve the BREEAM ‘Very Good’ standard.
  The legislation will come into effect on 1 September 2009.
  Davidson said: "I am determined to use the planning system to move towards zero-carbon buildings. We need to do everything we can to make new buildings, from our homes through to our offices, as environmentally friendly as possible. The new policy will play a key role in achieving this.""
• Defra, UK – Sustainable Development – Need to write a sustainable policy? "The Stretching the Web tool was developed with the aim of helping practitioners to integrate Sustainable Development into their policy making as well as project or programme work. The web is a simple graphic that allows you to easily explore a broad range of key positive and negative impacts."
• Aecom buys Savant to boost European presence – Building – More familiar names go, as AECOM assimilates Faber Maunsell and EDAW further – now to be known as AECOM Europe. Follows the news that Whitby Bird now to be known only as Ramboll.

admin News book, BREEAM, chapyter, construction_industry, CSH, debate, DEFRA, economy, environmentalists, extranet, free, green, gtd, hard, lomborg, names, News, offices, part_L, philosophy, policy, Productivity, recession, Sustainability, wales, water, winston

A few years ago, just before I started this blog and around the time I started my MBA, I followed an eclectic bunch of folks on RSS. At the time there were not that many green blogs and even fewer construction industry ones, and the proportion of UK blogs was much lower. So my RSS feed consisted mostly of marketing, entrepreneur, venture capital and tech blogs from the US. In amongst them was an intriguing proposition called Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Pam‘s blog does exactly what it says on the tin. And now she has written a book, summarising the best posts and comments and condensing the advice into a highly readable tome.  Through the magic of Twitter, she requested reviewers to read and write reviews, so I offered to give a UK perspective. Happily, Pam was willing to ship the book over to me and over the last week or so I devoured it.

As you can probably tell already, I enjoyed Escape from Cubicle Nation. It is a lifestyle choice book, aimed squarely at those who are considering a career switch, from something safe and corporate, to something more scary, but ultimately fulfilling. Initially, I was worried that it might be a little too touchy feely, Oprah style. Whilst it’s most definitely not a “butch, get rich quick, stomp the competition and watch them weep” kind of book, it’s not at all prissy and condescending either. Neither is it a step by step “nuts and bolts” book, with spreadsheets and cash flow projections, although she offers plenty of advice as to where to find such resources. The book concentrates on the mental preparation involved in becoming an entrepreneur for the first time. It would also serve as a timely resource for those who find themselves at a career crossroads not of their own choosing, through redundancy.

Pam’s prose is chatty and funny, with healthy doses of reality thrown in. My favourite phrase from the book by far was:

hating your job intensely is not a business plan

From a UK perspective, the advice stands up to scrutiny. Obviously, as the book is aimed at an international market, specific technical financial advice would not be appropriate. Too often I read a book from the US and they are peppered with references to Roth IRA’s and 401k’s. Pam has the good sense to corral all this into chapter 13, which is specifically about addressing benefits (health insurance etc). Very easy to skip over, but at the same time it acts as a mental jog to check out your own situation.

The takeaway lessons from the book from me were the importance of building up a network of support before you make any leap and also the need to check the finances and if necessary plan to keep that ‘cubicle’ job in the short term to finance your dreams.

Why should you buy the book rather than just read the blog? I have a well established fondness for books and there’s something about being able to flag up pages and flick through a hard copy that online just can’t yet compete with. The book is 300 odd pages, whilst Pam’s archives (which I recommend, but for new readers may be daunting due to the sheer volume) has over 42 months of content.

Escape from Cubicle Nation does not release in the UK until 9 July 2009, so I’m truly grateful to Pam for letting me get my mits on it so early. I would heartily recommend it to anyone who is toying with the idea of starting their own business but has been put off by the image of the blood thirsty “personalities” which are portrayed as entrepreneurs in the UK media (such as Dragons Den and the Apprentice).

admin Book Review Book Review, entrepreneur, Pam Slim

Sometimes it’s good to get to events which don’t have a construction or buildings focus. Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I heard that Nick Stern (aka Professor Lord Stern of Brentwood) was presenting a public lecture about his new book at LSE on 21 April. I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to listen to a celebrated economist talk on 2 of my favourite topics after buildings – climate change and economics!

It’s been 2.5 years since the Stern review catapulted Nick into the public consciousness. Since leaving the government shortly afterwards he’s been keeping busy, proposing green new deal’s and writing “Blueprint for a Safer Planet“.

An mp3 of the event (76 mins) is available from the LSE website or the Guardian if you want to listen to the whole thing. Unfortunately the slides aren’t available. James Randerson has a slightly more coherent take on the event in the Guardian here. The FT also did a review of the book when it came out at the beginning of the month.

The need for addressing carbon was covered with a swift dash through the Hadley/IPCC climate data. I suspect most readers of this blog will know the headline figures, so I’ll not regurgitate here.

Three actions

1. Energy efficiency
2. Develop low carbon technologies and activities
3. Halt deforestation

He illustrated many of the cost issues with McKinsey’s now famous abatement curve (first published in January 2007, revised this year and available here – the full report is 190 pages).

How much will it cost? 1.95% of GDP (unless GDP drops). Stern admitted some flab in this number and cost is likely to drop with technological progress. Think of it as an insurance premium for a few decades. Drivers of growth over the next few years will be technological, towards a low carbon economy. Why not strive for zero growth now? He believes we need a growth story to deal with world poverty. We don’t need growth forever, afterall forever is a long time.

As it turns out, Stern’s views on CCS were fairly prescient, given the post-budget announcement that potentially all new coal power stations will have to have CCS. Stern asserted that CCS was fundamental, as we need to know quickly if can we do it in (i.e. in the next 10 years). 50% of the world’s electricity is currently coal fired. If not we move to plan B, which will be much more expensive. Developed countries have to take the lead on this to ensure China, India and other developing countries do not have any excuse not to follow it.

Some more in the press re:CCS since I went to the event – according to The Week (can’t find a direct link to the article) coal still provides a third of the UK’s electricity. Proportions abroad are much higher: 50% in the US, 70% in India and 80% in China. Ed Milliband’s requirement for CCS on new UK coal stations only covers 25% of their emissions, rising to 100% in 2025.

In the Q&A, we discussed political will. Stern made the very good point that if we want things to change, it is quite within our own remit to lobby politicians and businesses for the change – they are humans after all, and ought to listen to reason.

admin Book Review, Economics, Events CCS, Climate Change, coal, Economics, LSE, Nick Stern

David MacKay seems to be flavour of the month at the minute. I’m not sure whether it’s the Cory Doctorow review over at Boing Boing which triggered off this flurry of media awareness, as the book has been out for some time. Whatever it was, it worked. I’ve given up on remembering to read my digital version (downloaded from here) and bought the hard copy.

I might even review it (no promises – at the last count I have about 10 book reviews in various states of unfinishedness), but in the meantime some people who actually have posted reviews:

Chris Tweed

Derek Deighton

Best Foot Forward

And finally a great short video in which David himself explains energy use using the unit of a 40W lightbulb and cycles around in a rather dubious jumper.

admin Book Review David MacKay, UK energy consumption