All Comment articles – Page 485

  • Comment

    ǿմý buys a pint … for Mott MacDonald

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    ǿմý’s meeting with Mott MacDonald’s transportation team has an inauspicious start – there’s a security alert on the Jubilee line. Out of breath, dishevelled and half an hour late, I arrive to find them settled in.

  • Comment

    Do well at schools: How to win BSF work

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    If you want to come out at the top of the class in the competition for ǿմý Schools for the Future work, now’s the time to pull your socks up

  • Comment

    Rethinking Britain

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    Historically the construction industry has been used as either a brake or an accelerator for the UK economy – subject to the whims of the party in power

  • Tony Bingham
    Comment

    The reader: Tony's booklist

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    Here’s my personal selection of handy reference books to help you solve those legal conundrums that my columns don’t cover

  • Rudi Klein
    Comment

    Payment times: 10 days seems a lifetime away

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    The government says its suppliers will be paid within 10 days, but it still has an awful lot of work to do to stamp out payment abuse in the public sector

  • Comment

    Short and Tweet 20.02.2009

    2009-02-20T00:00:00Z

    Dispatches from the Twitter social networking tool…

  • Comment

    Private housing starts dive well below levels in 1980s and 1990s recessions

    2009-02-19T11:25:00Z

    Housing starts in England plunged in the final quarter of last year to levels not seen in modern times.At the depth of the last house building recession during the worst three month period at the end of 1992 private firms started 19,227 homes. In the final quarter of 2008 just ...

  • Comment

    War, Peace and Taylor Wimpey

    2009-02-18T11:46:00Z

    “I am so fed up with this process.”This was the verdict of someone involved in the fraught and never-ending Taylor Wimpey debt talks this week.They were referring to the latest delay in signing off on a restructuring deal that has been more than six months in the making.Pen was expected ...

  • Comment

    Inflation, deflation, Japan and paradoxes

    2009-02-17T11:58:00Z

    So consumer price inflation isn't falling as fast as many commentators had expected. Is that a surprise? Well not really.Ok there are lags in the systems. But with oil price falls, the cut in VAT and deep discounting the big plot twists pre-Christmas, it was hard to see where the ...

  • Comment

    More buyers sniffing around for bargain buys in the housing market, says RICS

    2009-02-17T01:58:00Z

    More green shoots appear to be sprouting in the housing market with the surveyors' body RICS finding an increase in interest among potential homebuyers over the past three months.Sensibly RICS economists are not getting over excited by this, after all interest from buyers was at basement levels and was almost ...

  • Comment

    Could buying up unsold private stock be stifling social house construction?

    2009-02-16T17:54:00Z

    Is it just me, or is there a link between the deals being struck through the Government's National Clearing House to take unsold private homes into the social sector and the recent collapse in new construction orders for social house building?I ask because I have been doing some analysis and ...

  • Comment

    The FD revolving door keeps spinning

    2009-02-13T12:08:00Z

    Another week, another new finance director.The latest move sees David Wilton promoted to take over the reins from Bob Hartley at White Young Green. The reshuffle sees Hartley move sideways to become services director as WYG braces itself for the recession.The last few months have seen FD changes at Atkins, ...

  • Gus Alexander
    Comment

    The new realism

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    The economic downturn isn’t without its consolations. It seems to be ushering in a new age of collaboration in construction and a more sober reckoning of what we’re about

  • Comment

    Like with like

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    With reference to the issue of foreign trades taking UK jobs, while the government is correct in stating that we can all apply for these jobs, that everything is fair and square and minimum wage laws and so on are covered, this does not mean that the wages paid to ...

  • Comment

    It's simple really

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    To meet the BSF programme, we need to respond to the current financial environment

  • Sir Michael Latham
    Comment

    How to stay healthy

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    Hands up all those who have been tempted to cut training on safety during the downturn? Do so and your business will suffer

  • Denise Chevin
    Comment

    This is an emergency

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    The argument this week over whether Ed Balls meant to say we were in the worst recession for 100 years may have caused mild hysteria in the media, but it won’t have raised many eyebrows in construction

  • Comment

    Don't keep it to yourself: Notifying insurers

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    Insurance policies provide a secure safety net, but that can disappear pretty quickly if you keep the insurers in the dark when things go wrong

  • Comment

    Local difficulty

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    Your correspondents, Patrick Cooper and Sally Hughes, do not want the John Roan School to move to a new site on the Greenwich Peninsula as part of the ǿմý Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. They are perfectly entitled to their views, although I do not myself agree with them.

  • Most recently I downloaded all of The Deadliest Catch, a documentary about crab fishermen in Alaska
    Comment

    My digital life: Peter Cunningham

    2009-02-13T00:00:00Z

    This week