About Mark Eltringham

Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.

Posts by Mark Eltringham:

Chinese government to create a $2.1 billion industrial park dedicated to artificial intelligence research

Chinese government to create a $2.1 billion industrial park dedicated to artificial intelligence research

The Chinese government is preparing to build a technology park in Beijing dedicated to research into artificial intelligence, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua and Reuters. The scale of the development can be gauged by the level of investment – some $2.12 billion (13.8 billion yuan) to build the park, located in west Beijing. The park is also forecast to generate revenues of $7.7 billion (50 billion yuan) a year from the 400 enterprises that are expected to be housed there. Zhongguancun Development Group, the developer of the project, will look to partner with foreign universities and build a “national-level” AI lab in the area, according to the reports.

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Automation will impact low paid jobs first because of the living wage, report claims

Automation will impact low paid jobs first because of the living wage, report claims

The development of the living wage coupled with the growing automation of tasks could create a perfect storm that prices a growing number of people out of the jobs markets, a report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies claims. The authors suggest that one of the unintended consequences of the increase of the rate to £8.50 by 2020 could be that people in low paid work could find themselves in competition for jobs with robots and artificial intelligence. The report concludes that there will be a tipping point at which human labour becomes economically unviable, although it does not predict when that will occur.

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The global BIM market projected to reach $18.8 billion by 2024, report claims

The global BIM market projected to reach $18.8 billion by 2024, report claims

The global BIM market was valued at $3.6 billion in 2016, and is projected to reach $18.8 billion by 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.9 percent from 2016 to 2024. This is according to the report Global Building Information Modelling Market. In 2016, the BIM software segment generated the highest revenue share of $2.7 bn, growing at a CAGR of 23.4 percent. Among major regions, North America is currently leading the BIM market with the revenue of $1.07 bn, however, Europe and Asia Pacific are expected to surpass the North American market by 2021. According to the report, the emerging countries of Asia Pacific and Europe will experience a steep growth in the market because of infrastructure developments. The rise in population and the requirement for new buildings and structures will lead to a hike in the growth of the market in countries such as India and China.

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Poor management driving nearly half of UK workforce to seek a new job

Poor management driving nearly half of UK workforce to seek a new job

Nearly half of the UK workforce (47 percent) will be looking for a new job in 2018, with nearly 1 in 5 people already actively searching for opportunities, according to new research produced by Investors in People (IIP) in their annual Job Exodus Survey 2018. These findings highlight an improvement in satisfaction across the UK job market according to IIP, representing a fall of 12 percent on last year’s figure, where 59 percent of respondents stated the intention to seek a new job. However, despite the reduction in the proportion of those considering a job move, there are still nearly 1 in 4 unhappy workers.

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Demand for office space in Central London continues to grow steadily but falls elsewhere

Demand for office space in Central London continues to grow steadily but falls elsewhere

A new study from commercial property advisors Savoy Stewart based on UK government data claims that demand for office space in Central London has continued to grow at a steady rate for a number of years, but that the trend is not always matched elsewhere in the UK, including for areas on the outskirts of the capital. The report, based on an analysis of data from the Valuation Office Agency, covers the period from 2000 to 2016. It found that the total floorspace of 21,092,000 square metres in Central London accounts for nearly one quarter of the total office floorspace in England and Wales (89,037,000 square metres) and more than twice the total floorspace of the top 10 office hotspots outside London combined.

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UK commercial property volumes to exceed £50 billion for sixth consecutive year

UK commercial property volumes to exceed £50 billion for sixth consecutive year

Despite 2017 being a year of political surprises and, seemingly, never ending Brexit negotiations, both the UK economy and commercial property market have shown demonstrable resilience with transaction volumes reaching £55 billion. With recent announcements suggesting more certainty about the post Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU, renewed business confidence will increase demand for quality commercial real estate. Global real estate advisor, Colliers International, predicts that 2018 volumes will exceed £50 billion for the sixth consecutive year.

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UK commuters spend five times more on rail fares than European counterparts

UK commuters spend five times more on rail fares than European counterparts

British commuters face fresh rail fare increases as they return to work today (Tuesday), now spending up to 5 times as much of their salary on season tickets as passengers on the continent, according to new TUC research. Someone on an average salary travelling from Chelmsford to London will have to fork out 13 percent of their pay for season tickets (£381 a month). By contrast, comparable commutes would cost a mere 2 percent of the average salary in France, 3 percent in Italy, 4 percent in Germany, and 5 percent in Spain and Belgium. Meanwhile, the TUC claims that wages are set to grow by only 2.6 percent in 2018, while season tickets will go up by 3.6 percent – over a third faster than wages.

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Choices and expectations perpetuate higher education gap and gender pay gap, UCL research finds

Choices and expectations perpetuate higher education gap and gender pay gap, UCL research finds

Teenagers’ own career aspirations could be perpetuating both the gender pay gap and the higher education gap, a study from researchers at UCL Institute of Education (IOE) suggests. The new research reveals that, while teenage girls are more likely than teenage boys to have high hopes of going to university and having a professional or managerial occupation, when it comes to salaries it’s the boys who are aiming highest. The research team at the IOE’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), analysed data collected from over 7,700 teenagers in the UK who are all part of the Millennium Cohort Study, a study which has followed their lives since they were born at the turn of the century. When they were 14, the teenagers were asked a series of questions to find out their future aspirations.

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Seven stories that got us thinking over the holiday season

Seven stories that got us thinking over the holiday season

Around the world in 80 architecture offices

If work dominated your every moment would life be worth living?

Ten years in and nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

The case against digital transformation

All the creepy, crazy and amazing things that happened in AI in 2017

The tyranny of competence: why it is bad for us to be ‘good enough’

The dangers of dark nudging

The most read workplace stories from the last twelve months

The most read workplace stories from the last twelve months

Sky Central workplaceOne of the greatest joys of online publishing is the opportunity it offers to reflect on the demonstrable preoccupations and interests of an informed audience. We can see what professionals see as the most important issues they face by what they read in the UK’s most widely read publication in its field. It’s especially heartening to see that those do not include the usual glib misdirections about Millennials, gimmicky office design, robots, open plan and ‘trends’ that have been more or less commonplace for years. We can leave those to others. Instead you have been seeking out stories that challenge the lazy mainstream narratives, reflect the reality of the endlessly shifting landscape of work, understand the challenges involved and retain a focus on the human beings at the centre of it all. So, here are the ten most read pieces from Workplace Insight published over the past 365 days.  More →

Automation will benefit the economy but many people could lose out

Automation will benefit the economy but many people could lose out

Around a third of all jobs in the UK are vulnerable to the introduction of robots, automation and artificial intelligence and the government must intervene to manage the transition and stop new technology driving up wage inequality, a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) claims. Although the report suggests that the tech will have a generally beneficial impact on the economy, it warns that lower-skilled jobs are far more likely to be phased out over the coming decades, and only higher-skilled workers would generally be able to command higher wages.

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UK enjoys sharpest rise in output for two years, CBI report claims

UK enjoys sharpest rise in output for two years, CBI report claims

Business activity in the UK ended the year on a high after manufacturers, service sector companies and retailers reported the sharpest rise in output in two years, according to a report from the business lobby group CBI. The composite measure based on 642 respondents across the three sectors showed the balance of firms reporting a rise in output at +19 percent, compared with +6 percent in the three months to November 2017. Growth was broad-based, according to the CBI, with all sectors reporting robust output volumes growth last quarter at a pace above their long-run averages.

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