May 12, 2014
New NHS purchasing framework announces list of appointed firms
Details have been announced of the firms appointed to a new NHS purchasing framework designed to provide best value and improved service levels across a range of procured services including architecture, quantity surveying, health and safety, environmental management, project management, mechanical & electrical and building consultancy. The procurement division of NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), claims to have redesigned the existing construction consultancy framework which was originally only open to architects and quantity surveyors, to cover a total of 11 different disciplines and covering 12 different regions. The new framework, which was first announced last month, will apply to all 600 NHS Trusts and their commissioning organisations as they procure consultancy services for new build and refurbishment works for buildings.
April 7, 2014
Can building design presage a fall from grace for the world’s tech giants?
by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Technology, Workplace design
At the movies, buildings are often used to denote hubris. The ambitions and egos of Charles Foster Kane and Scarface are embodied in the pleasure domes and gilded cages they erect to themselves. Of course, things then invariably go badly wrong. In the real world too, monstrous edifices have often presaged a crash. The UK’s most ambitious and much talked about office building at the turn of the Millennium was British Airways’ Waterside, completed in 1998, just a year after Margaret Thatcher famously objected to the firm’s new modern tailfin designs by draping them with a hankie and three years before BA had to drop its ‘World’s Favourite Airline’ strapline because by then it was Lufthansa. Nowadays BA isn’t even the UK’s favourite airline, but Waterside remains a symbol of its era, albeit one that continues to influence the way we design offices.
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