Jul 20 2020
An email landed in my inbox this morning announcing that it was a year since my first Parkrun. It motivated me to write about my past year in running, and to ponder on volunteer communities. I am a late convert to running, though I ran a lot in my teens (I did some cross-country for …
Jan 10 2019
A survey carried out by the UK’s Construction Knowledge Task Group has found that a third of construction practitioners do not have easy access to the knowledge they need. Feedback from 299 practitioners from every part of the industry, found almost two fifths (38.5%) said they did not have easy access to all the knowledge they …
Nov 14 2018
A frustrating 15 hours without Twitter following a seemingly random suspension. As I am on most working weekdays, I was up and at my desk bright and early yesterday morning, filing a few daily photos to my Blipfoto photographic blog, before dealing with some emails and heading out to an event at the Institution of …
Aug 24 2018
Modernising construction is not something that will be achieved just by the adoption of new technologies. “The current business model of the construction sector is not sustainable.” I spoke at two Specifi events in July 2018, the first in Manchester on 4 July, and the second two weeks later in London on 17 July. In …
Sep 25 2017
According to a Designing Buildings analysis of six million pieces of data, the knowledge framework underpinning the construction industry is no longer fit for purpose. Designing Buildings Wiki has undertaken what it says is the “first ever comprehensive mapping of construction industry knowledge”. It analysed data relating to its 5,000 articles, looking at the popularity …
May 17 2017
By combining construction-specific communication expertise, strong industry leadership, and a clear vision of the future, we can tackle structural issues in ‘the industry currently known as construction’ that perpetuate its poor image. This post was stimulated by two things – a discussion about construction-specific communication skills, and a conversation about the need for strong leadership …
Oct 03 2016
What started out as a Virgin Media #fail has now become an OpenReach #fail, facilitated by a #TalkTalkfail. Having experienced some poor TalkTalk service in respect of my telephone landline, and had some generally positive customer experience over several years with Virgin Media (notwithstanding the Great SE London Broadband Outage last December), it seemed logical …
Sep 19 2016
Atmotube puts air pollution monitoring in your hands, and enables users to share readings in real-time and via social media. Earlier this year, I participated in a COMIT community day workshop which asked us to think about ways in which air quality might be monitored for construction workers in tunnels. As a cyclist and someone employed at …
Apr 22 2016
We need to tackle some of the fundamental issues in the UK construction industry before we can effectively change “the image of construction”. “The image of construction” has featured heavily this week for me. On Tuesday, I attended a CIMCIG-led roundtable discussion in London with Mark Farmer, the consultant helping the Government’s Construction Leadership Council …
Dec 20 2015
I wish VirginMedia would provide more extensive, detailed and realistic information via its customer services. I am now almost two weeks into a long-running conversation with my broadband and TV service provider VirginMedia, some of it conducted via Twitter, some of it via online chat and via telephone and email. The problem started on the …
