More Focus 鈥� Page 520
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Conservation piece
A wood-frame roof may not sound unusual, but Buro Happold's take on it the UK's first timber gridshell at a Sussex history museum is enough to make a structural engineer whimper with fear.
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Perfect pitch
How can a roof make you sound better? The one that tops Shrewsbury School's concert venue is elliptically shaped to help the students make beautiful music.
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Who was to blame?
The tragic death of three children in a house fire led to a council design team being sued for negligence. The case went to the Court of Appeal, and laid down some important rules on designer liability.
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The sense of proportion
Jarndyce & Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless, wrote Charles Dickens, satirising the legal system of his day. It's better now, though, as the rules on proportionality demonstrate.
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Satisfaction guarantees
A new, improved brand of performance bond is now available for project financing and promises to be a cheaper way of covering more risk particularly on private finance initiative projects.
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The biter bit
The RIBA really must pay attention to developers' complaints about the SFA/99 standard appointment form architects will only suffer from the preferential treatment it gives them.
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Tender price forecast
Continued steady growth is the order of the day, with tender prices, materials costs and new orders all continuing to rise. Many contractors are becoming increasingly selective, but the output picture is less clear.
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Balancing act
Allowing workers a home life is the new trend, says the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development s Angela Baron.
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Appointments
Contractor EBC has promoted Robert Wood to area director based in Plymouth. He will be responsible for construction, building and maintenance operations. Housebuilders Grenville Homes Group has appointed Fiona Gordeno sales and marketing manager. David Hill has been promoted to group surveyor at Acorn Homes. He will ...
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Top 250 consultants
Welcome to this year's consultants survey, which finds the top 250 firms in the best of health. Expanding workloads are reflected in swelling staff numbers, with most firms employing more UK chartered staff this year than last. More than 90% say they expect to take on staff in the next ...
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Falkirk's millennium wheel starts to roll
Site work begins on 拢78m, 17 000 tonne rotating boat lift that will link two Scottish canals.
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Rough and tumble
Undoing deals on the grounds of economic duress is difficult, as shown by a recent decision of Mr Justice Dyson in the Technology and Construction Court.
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Solar power: just a bright idea
With the ice caps melting and oil prices soaring, solar has never looked a better bet. But in Britain it remains the concern of cranks and visionaries. Will this ever change?
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Robert Jones
The former Conservative construction minister is now chairman of housebuilder Redrow. Which means he’s back with his first love: planning.
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Going with the grain
Something is afoot in the land of the log cabin. To help boost its timber exports, Finland has developed a range of high-tech wooden products and built striking structures to showcase them.
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The stuff of beams
FBEAM is a new software tool for designing long-span fabricated beams in commercial buildings. Is this the program structural engineers have been waiting for?
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Don’t listen to chickens
So, the Discain case has knocked the wheels off the entire adjudicatory system, has it? Don’t you believe it – the judge was just making a perfectly fair point about being perfectly fair.
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Variations on a theme
The dispute over how to value variations under the ICE form, recently considered by the Court of Appeal, has just been given another twist by the Technology and Construction Court.
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A natural reaction
The Discain case has fuelled the debate over the conduct of adjudications where one party feels there has been a breach of natural justice that affected the outcome.
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Cost study: Birmingham Repertory Theatre
The diversity of performing arts buildings makes it hard to talk about a typical case, but the 拢7m refurbishment of Birmingham Repertory Theatre reveals some common issues