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Timber frame: lessons from Scotland

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It’s easy to sound glib, but one of the simplest and most effective ways to build green is to build well. The better organised the team, the less time and less resources get wasted. And the clearer the instructions, the more likely it is that they will get carried out correctly first time.

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This elementary lesson was re-inforced on a visit I made to Scotland last week as guest of the UK Timber Frame Association.

Me and my estate agent

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I had an interesting visit from an estate agent yesterday. I'm tentatively wondering whether to, as the expression goes, "sell-up". The advice I seem to be getting from some is that this time is as good as any to do it given that if you can get a buyer (big if) then you then may be able to pick up a bargain for your next property. That's the theory anyhow. So in whizzs Daren last night for a valuation, and he stayed for nearly an hour. The fact that we could command his undivided attention for 50 minutes is probably as good an indication of the state of the market as any of the gloomy statistics doing the rounds at the minute.

Barratt blues

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It's a somewhat unfortunate parallel. The volume housebuilder most gungho about building the highest level Code houses, Barratt, is now the one being pummelled in the City for the perilous state of its balance sheet. Chief executive Mark Clare, who spoke impressively about the challenge of achieving zero carbon at Think this time last month, is now turning his attention to a "heavy dialogue" with his firm's banks on debts and banking covenants, according to an interview in Building yesterday. I'm not sure whether there's an Icarus-like lesson here for those who boldly go before falling to earth or not.

Dunster and Egan - the unlikey pair

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Two fundamental problems and challenges facing the industry in the past decade. Two figures with wildly different backgrounds and perspectives who come up with eerily similar conclusions. Step forward the unlikely pair - industrialist Sir John Egan and the architect Bill Dunster.

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Egan wrote his report, Rethinking Construction, ten years ago and there's a good catch-up on what has, and hasn't, happened since in last Friday's Building.

Whither the BRE?

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I am concerned about the BRE (Building Research Establishment). I am not alone. Lots of people are voicing doubts and misgivings, and they all seem to point to one critical event in the organisation’s 80 year history, the ill conceived privatisation that took place in 1997.

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Up till then, the BRE had been part of the government, essentially an arm of the Civil Service, like the DVLA and the Jobcentre. It did, as its name suggests, lots of research and informed our building regulations. The privatisation was, of course, an attempt by the government to save a bit of cash: the government has continued to fund research at the BRE but it has been shaving away at this bit by bit, leaving the BRE to fend for itself.

Indifferent, energy inefficient, UK consumer ... come on down!

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Reading the announcement: '12 Experts Sign up for Ecotowns Challenge,' it occurs to me that the Government communications people seem to have confused government policy with a reality TV quiz show amlagam. Is town planning a 'challenge,' then, like the Great Egg Race? If so, shouldn't Heinz Wolf, with his glasses on his head, be showing developer contestants a room full of bits of turbine, a slab of green roof and assorted Code for Sustainable Homes certificates?

Consumer confidence

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Only now had time to draw breath after a hectic week. Not much time to consider a major piece of work by the NHBC Foundation on consumer knowledge and appetite for zero-carbon homes. Building has plenty of detail on this in today's edition, which essentially points out that while the industry and government has been beavering away at coming up with bold plans, definitions, targets and technical guidances they have as yet failed to communicate any of this to the general public.

Hips fiasco

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It seems that in spite of warm words from the Government in recent months on the "successful and smooth" introduction of Home Information Packs news from the ground is somewhat different. Last week's article by my colleague Michael Willoughby in Building, and just as importantly the attendant reader reaction, gives the profession perspective, whilst an excellent piece in this month's Which magazine gives the consumer viewpoint. Both are pretty dreadful.

Code conflict

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Interesting thread that has begun in response to Code coverage in last week's Building Design. The magazine started a debate on whether the CSH was working over a year on, pitting housing architect PRP's chairman Andy von Bradsky against your friend and mine Mark Brinkley (I have to admit having some hand in introducing him to BD). Brinkley brands it a "graveyard of good intentions" and commenter John Waldron agrees, describing it as "benign but ultimately harmful bureaucracy".

East London - refurbish and recycle

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Two strong pieces of content in this week's Building Design, both focused on east London. The first concerns the paper's fantastically well supported campaign to save the Robin Hood Garden - editor Amanda Baillieu widens the argument from the architectural to the sustainable, vigorously claiming that the east London block of flats "is a sustainable community". Surely there must be red faces all round at quango English Partnerships, who is proposing the demolition of the estate.