House of Commons

It was quite a kick jumping into a taxi and requesting "House of Commons, please". But the traffic around Westminster slowed to a useless crawl, so I walked the last part. The occasion was the launch of a report, wittily titled, "Never waste a good crisis".

After a couple of glasses of wine and a few nibbles, Nick Raynsford was introduced to us. A very good speaker, of course, being an MP. Good eye contact, engaging, and clear points. He drew our attention to one graph in the report and told us how the best construction projects had done really well, but the rest had a long way to go. He shared with us his vision for an improved industry focused on value, and congratulated Andrew Wolstenhulme and his team on a great piece of work. Andrew then gave us an overview and, like a true gentleman, diverted the spotlight to the team rather than himself. One strange point that he made was that for every pound spent on deign, ten are spent on building, a hundred on operating and the benefit is a thousand. Yes, I know, almost impossible to figure out what it can mean, but the last incarnation of this kind of ratio was 1:5:200, a ratio that claimed that for every pound of building there are five of maintenance and 200 of operating. Clearly nonsense, otherwise construction would be half a percent of GDP. We debunked that myth in a conference paper (click here if you want to read it). I was happy with the idea of construction being pitched at roughly 10% of GDP and design being roughly 10% of construction. These are near enough in terms of orders of magnitude. But I had no idea how we could get £1,000 of "benefit" from £10 of construction. All very bizarre, but worryingly typical in this kind of gathering.

Then Vaughan Burnand, Chairman of CE enjoined us to keep the faith and continue to believe in the change agenda. By this time I was wondering if I'd stumbled into some strange kind of church gathering.

I had been involved in one of the multidisciplinary workshops that were part of the background work for this report, I was interested in meeting those participants again, and in seeing what the team had made of our input. Of course, few from our group had made it. And it was hard to recognise our words in the report. Shortly after our workshop, I received a draft nine-page summary of all we'd said, and I remember being satisfied that most of what we'd said had been captured. Perhaps it was not sufficiently "on-message" to have made it into the final report. Or, more likely, perhaps there was just too much of it! The section on industry structure in the report picks up a few of the main points and makes good use of them, so I am pleased with the impact of this. The report is available for download here. It was good to meet up with so many friends and colleagues from the industry, and catch up, and it was particularly good to see reports aobut how we organize ourselves being launched in the House of Commons. Have a look at the report, and post your comments here - it would be interesting to see what others make of it.

ARCOM Proceedings

I suddenly remembered that I had not yet finished with ARCOM 2009! Each paper will now be made into an individual PDF and uploaded to the ARCOM website from where it can be downloaded free of charge. What a great service! It is a laborious task, though, and I am really pleased to have enlisted the help of my newest PhD student, Hafizah Mohd Latif, who is sufficiently knowledgable about computers to add her strength to mine. Now the task will be completed much sooner than I could do it myself. The only thing that remains then will be to update the database so that these files can be discovered by searching in the abstracts database. It should not take too long to get all this sorted out for another year.

If you want to see previous year's papers, go to www.arcom.ac.uk, click on "Abstracts", click on the link to the search page, click on Browse, then click on "ARCOM Annual Conferences", then choose a year, and you can browse all the papers, downloading any that you want to read.

Remembering things

I wish I could remember things to write into the blog. There is so much going on, I don't know what to write about! Very strange.

ARCOM 2009

Nottingham was the location for this year's ARCOM conference. We started on Sunday with a good-natured but busy committee meeting, in which we sorted out various business, not least the finalisation of the election process for next year's committee, since we had more nominations than places. It is strange, but welcome, how the allure of being on the committee seems to be growing stronger. We heard from Simon Smith, the Treasurer, that with the record number of delegates registered, the conference would be a success, at least financially. This was a relief, given the expense of hiring such a venue as Albert Hall, Nottingham.

Monday for me consisted of taking lots of photographs, attending several sessions, including the keynotes, and taking a group photo of the delegates at Nottingham Castle where we went for a reception and introduction to Nottingham's history. It was also the launch of the ARCOM Book about the story of the emergence of "the discipline", a book edited by Dave Langford and me, which provides a selection of offerings about the history of construction, the institutions, the journals, the educational structures, and a series of cameos from a range of different countries, all finished off with a sketch about the future. The index forms a structured picture of the ideas, places and key people that define what we see as the field of construction management. But this is certainly an unfinished story! It seemed to go down very well with the delegates, all of whom received a copy.

Tuesday involved many more photos and many more sessions. In the evening, after an organ recital on the great cathedral in the hall, and a piano recital by our very own David Greenwood, and then the conference dinner, David Boyd regaled us with the story of the ARCOM Movie, a story with an incredible span across the entire history of building. He concluded by using tiles drawn from bags of words to generate random paper titles, and got me, then Richard Fellows, then Faz Khosrowshahi, then himself, to talk for one minute on each of a four randomly generated titles. It was quite a challenge to improvise on a random (and meaningless) title, but good fun all the same.

Wednesday morning began with a "Question Time" style of debate with Andy Dainty chairing, and eight past-chairmen of ARCOM participating. Questions cam from the floor, and covered a range of issues from whether construction management was a discipline in its own right, the issue of the relationship between academia and industry, and the possible theme and location of ARCOM 2034, the fiftieth anniversary conference. The discussion was well-managed and, with so many participants, it was never going to be easy to get heated, especially as the poor acoustics meant we could not be heard without a microphone, and we all had to share the same roving mike! Making do was always something we have been good at, when required. The discussion lead me to make several conclusions about the nature and the future of the kind of things that we do.

First, I have always been clear that construction management is not a discipline in its own right. Indeed, I wrote a paper on this very topic some years ago - Hughes, W.P. (1999) Construction research: a field of application. Australian Institute of Building Papers, 9, 51-58. I still feel that our research into the construction sector should seek to carry out multi-disciplinary research in a way that develops the theoretical understanding of the disciplines that we apply. Can we contribute to real theory-building in this kind of work? What is it that the mainstream disciplines lack that can be met by an applied field like ours? This is a key question for me. The reason that I think that CM is not an academic discipline is that an academic discipline implies a recognisable set of methods, methodologies, techniques and vocabularies. I cannot see how this kind of consistency could emerge in studies as diverse as motivation, HR, organizational structure, economics, psychology, financial analysis and so on.

Second, a discussion on values in research lead me to conclude that research cannot be value-free. What we choose to research, and how it is funded, is fundamentally rooted in our value systems.

Third, another important issue raised from the floor, was about what kind of construction sector we would like to see. Some of the panellists felt that it was not for us to decide upon such things, and to merely observe and analyse. I took the view that we should apply value systems to what we did, and that we should work as part of the construction sector, rather than as an impassive outsider, and that for me the question was what kind of society would I like to see. In that sense, I wanted an industry that did not rely on slave labour and servitude and did not over-exploit natural resources. It would be good see the construction sector lead the way, but that is unlikely to happen give that major contractors seem not to be able to survive without these unsavoury practices, and they are probably are not going to ask us to help them dissociate from such excesses, especially in places like Dubai!

Fourth, the lighter question about the theme and location of the conference 25 years from now prompted me to bring these previous strands together in that I would imagine we might be looking at the interface between the built environment and the natural environment, and that the location would have to be distributed, connected by some kind of brilliant technology, because we would simply not be able to travel such distances for such events.

Overall the conference was an enormous success, and a lot of strong research was reported and commented on. It was great to see old friends and make new ones.

Goulash

I found a recipe on the back of a packet of organic Paprika. It was for Goulash, and involved piles of steak, which was not of much interest to us vegetarians. However, I realized that it would be pretty tasty with vegetarian sausages and some vegetables, so I adapted the ingredients a bit. But then, while I was cooking it, as well the ingredients, I changed the sequence and nature of the cooking and ended up with something almost completely unrelated to the initial recipe. So I'll claim this one as an original:

2 tbs oil, 2 chopped onions, 400g grilled vegetarian Lincolnshire sausages, 2 tbs wholemeal flour, 2 tbs paprika, 1 crushed clove garlic, 2 tbs tomato purée, 150ml beer, 400g tinned chopped tomatoes, 2 sliced cooked carrots, salt and pepper, 2 roasted red peppers, skinned and sliced (buy them in a jar if you don't know how to do this), 150ml natural yoghurt.

Heat the oil, cook onions until soft. Add paprika and cook for 5 minutes, then add the flour. Add the garlic, tomato purée, beer, tomatoes, salt and pepper, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the red peppers, carrots and yoghurt and heat for a further 5 minutes. Serve with white rice.

Try it. Let me know how it went...

Authorship of journal papers

The Co-operative Network of Building Researchers list, cnbr-l, saw a fresh enquiry today about authorship of journal papers. I was interested that the person who prompted the enquiry appears to be a rock climber. The essence of this question was this, I’d like to invite discussion of the (possibly contentious) issue of authorship of (journal) papers in construction management – particularly who is named as authors, and in what order, when PhD candidates or other new scholars write papers. This is an issue on which I have strong views, so I responded thus:

You raise a useful and interesting question. My own view is that authorship should not be simply a right of those in authority to have their name on things whether they contributed to them or not. For what it is worth, here is how I put it in a chapter of a recent book:

One worrying aspect of authorship is the question of whether all the authors actually contributed to the writing of the text in the paper. There are different traditions in different areas of science. For example, in some sciences, the head of the institution, the head of the research team, the technicians who provided the resources to enable the research are all cited as joint authors, even though they may have contributed none of the text. In other areas, only those who directly contributed text would be listed as authors. The latter tends to be the case in construction management, although there are some notable exceptions. Because we operate with different assumptions, there is confusion around this issue, and all authors should clarify who will be listed, and in what sequence, before they begin work on their papers, to avoid divisive and difficult arguments later in the process. One alternative to joint authorship, for someone who is not actually an author, is to include mention of them in the acknowledgements (Hughes, W.P. (2008) Getting your research published in refereed journals. In: Knight, A. and Ruddock, L (eds). Advanced Research Methods in the Built Environment, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 193-206)

To answer your questions directly, my opinion is that PhD students should be encouraged to write sole author papers, and it is the responsibility of the supervisor to help structure the paper, comment on drafts, and help see it through the publication process, in the role of supervisor, not in the role of co-author. But I know that this is not everyone’s preference. If a supervisor actually writes part of the paper, then of course that would justify co-authorship. However, in any serious evaluation of one person’s contribution to the field, such as a promotion panel, it is common to ask the candidate to indicate what percentage of each co-authored paper was contributed specifically by the candidate. This avoids any need to develop an algorithm for assessing the strength of authorship when there are multiple authors (as suggested by another respondent to your question).

This question is not a “construction management” issue, but an issue across all the sciences. You might be interested in a broader discussion here: http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/services/authorship.cfm where I particularly liked the opening sentence, “Studies of authorship in science suggest that traditional criteria for authorship no longer reflect the way research is actually done. Although published guidelines on authorship have existed for decades, investigations reveal that they are not followed consistently, and many researchers remain unaware of them.” I think many of us are unaware of the guidelines that already exist, and we are in danger of re-inventing the wheel, yet again! In the biomedical arena, for example, an “author” is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study (http://www.icmje.org/index.html#author).

My advice is that all authors should clarify who will be listed, and in what sequence, before they begin work on their papers, to avoid divisive and difficult arguments later in the process. To help PhD students in such discussions with their supervisors, the links to more established sciences may be of use. And I think you are right to suggest that professors do not need lots of co-authored papers on their CVs, especially conference papers.

By the way, another horror story about authorship – what about those thrusting young academics who make informal agreements to add each other’s names to all of their papers, even when they have not actually contributed, exchanging multiple authorships as favours just to pad out their CVs? Do you think that actually happens? Is it ethical? What should a journal editor do on discovering such “phantom” authorships?

I hope this helps, and I look forward to other opinions on this thorny issue.

Reading Real Ale and Jazz Festival

More ale than jazz. In fact the music was pretty poor. It rained a lot, so we were in side the big tent, with torrential rain pouring across the entrances like waterfalls. The beer was awesome. Six of us tried loads of different types. Thankfully it stopped raining at closing time, so I walked home. It was so peaceful and quiet after the noise of the beer festival.

Woodcote Steam Rally

It is few years since I was able to make it to the annual rally. Every year, hundreds of enthusiasts with their refurbished engines and vehicles do the rounds of various rallies around the country. Many of the steam traction engines have been rescued from scrap and restored to their former glory. As well as these engines, there are cars, motorcycles, lorries, buses, all sorts of vehicles from the dawn of transportation to more recent models. Most important, the beer tent. This is run by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, a group of volunteers who formed in the 1970s as a reaction against the bland fizziness of the kind of antiseptic cheap coloured water that was gradually replacing real English beer in pubs throughout Britain. Due to their dedication and hard work, real ale is now a widespread phenomenon and at events like this we can enjoy some classic beers. I was there at the end of the event, so only got to sample a few beers, all of which were brilliant:

• Rebellion Brewery: Mutiny
• White Horse Brewery: Oxfordshire Bitter
• Loddon Brewery: Flight of Fancy
• Appleford Brewery Co: Power Station

By the time they were closing the beer tent, there was almost nothing left. They judged the quantities well. As always, a great day out with the wonderful smells of oil, coal and steam in the hot summer sunshine. A very happy bunch, these old vehicle enthusiasts.

SCME PhD Conference

Our annual PhD Conference was particularly enjoyable this year. Graeme Larsen and Katie Saxelby-Smith introduced some new features, notable a poster presentation session in the afternoon, over a buffet lunch. In the morning, eight of our PhD student presented their work in varying states of completion, mostly early stage researchers, and the audience provided feedback and probing questions. The room was full, and there was good representation from Professors to Research Students, and the whole thing ran as smooth as clockwork. I think this was the eighth year that we have run this, but it is certainly the most successful one to date. Graeme and Katie did us proud.

Phallus Impudicus

What a thing to appear in the garden overnight! It turns out that these beauties pop up and grow to this length in a matter of hours. A most peculiar fungus. It smells disgusting, and so we investigated to find out more. Amazingly, our book of mushrooms does not contain this so-called stinkhorn type of fungus, but a quick search on the web revealed the facts. The slimy dark head attracts flies, who then pick up the spores and spread them as they go about their day. Apparently, they are almost impossible to eradicate, so all you can do is enjoy the surge of botanical invasion. I am grateful to Michael Kuo, the mushroom expert, for his website full of information about mushrooms.

WABER Seminar - West African Built Environment Research

The two day seminar in Accra was at the British Council. After a brief welcome from the Deputy Director of the British Council in Accra, and an opening address by myself about the nature of research in our field, and what we are looking for, the event was formally opened with a welcoming speech from Professor Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa, the Vice-Chancellor of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. We also presented KNUST with a hard copy of the entire back-catalogue of Construction Management and Economics, as a gift to the library. We hired the British Council for the venue, and arranged the refreshments and food, so that the delegates had only to turn up and take part. We did not charge them for attendance, this being the first time we had tried anything like this. The turnout was excellent, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the event. It soon became clear that there had not been an event focused on the built environment in this region before.

Over the course of two day, 32 PhD students and prospective PhD students presented their work to the audience. Each presented for ten minutes, and then there was a ten minute critique and discussion, lead by the panel. We paired up presentations, so that the discussions could have the space to develop into something interesting. The sessions were all chaired by distinguished academics from the region, and this helped to keep the pace moving along. In many cases, the work being reported was at such a preliminary stage there was not much to discuss, so suggestions were made instead. What was intriguing was that although some of the criticism was quite harsh in some cases, the speakers took it on the chin in good spirit, and saw the experience as an opportunity to learn and develop. It was indeed refreshing to be among people who valued criticism, and did not see it as an affront to their dignity, as can happen in some parts of the world.

The range of work that was presented was broad. Despite our efforts to keep the focus on construction management, there were some presentations on materials science, some on property valuation, and even one from an artist on the representational aesthetics of palaces in Nigeria, or something along those lines. The quality, as well, was extremely variable, and so when one delegate presented a piece of work that was coherent, clear, well connected to what had gone before, and likely to produce something worth knowing, we decided to implement a prize for the best presentation. This was awarded to Mrs Kulomri Jaule Adogbo of Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria. It was a pleasure to see such good work. Some of the other presenters were just setting out with their research, and so we had a huge range of quality, from clearly enunciated, well-paced and easy to understand through to garbled and incoherent embarrassment. But everybody's got to start somewhere. Whatever was presented, there was a good discussion and in each case, constructive advice emerged from the various contributions to the debate. Here is a short list of some of the topics that are being researched in this region:

• Energy efficiency
• Construction costs
• Contract management
• Construction finance
• Construction procurement
• Supply chain management
• Building maintenance
• Human relations
• Productivity
• Economic development
• Marketing
• Decision support systems
• Information technology
• Urban development
• Materials science

A couple of themes came up in many of the presentations. First, there was clearly some confusion as to what constituted academic research. Many presenters were clearly setting up a piece of consultancy work. When it was pointed out to them that this was not research and would not satisfy the requirements for a PhD, there was some confusion. In the end, we simplified the message down to "if you are doing what practitioners do, you are doing consultancy. If you are examining or analysing what practitioners do, it is research". This was something that had to be hammered home, but is also a regular problem in CM research the world over. Second, few presenters had come across the idea of research methodology. As usual, the word was bandied around a lot as a heading, but as usual, it heralded a discussion of methods. The distinction between methods and methodology was as difficult to get across here as anywhere. One metaphor that seemed to work was cooking - a recipe is a list of steps that are to be used in preparing a dish, but the recipe does not tell you why these steps work. Such is the difference between explaining what steps were involved (research methods) and explaining why they were chosen and how they generate data and information that will usefully address the questions (research methodology). Another frustration with research methods was the preoccupation with survey questionnaires and the notion of preparing some kind of model. It is a common feature among new researchers to assume that social science research requires a questionnaire survey. It doesn't. There are so many research methods that might be used, and the lack of variety in approaches to hugely varying questions indicated that few of these researchers were aware of the literature on research methods. So we frequently pushed people to carry out some review of research methods before they did their fieldwork, and in many cases we told them that a questionnaire survey would simply not answer the questions they were asking. However, some of the research studies were well designed with appropriate methods, and over the two days we saw the full range from expert to novice.

There was a strong sense of occasion to the event. On the second day we were featured on the radio, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, at breakfast and on the six o'clock news. Sadly we were too busy to find a radio and listen, but a journalist from the GBC was with us a lot of the time, and this hammered home to us just how unusual it was to have a workshop/seminar of this kind in West Africa. And although it was based on Accra, Ghana, the vast majority of the delegates had travelled from Nigeria. They had a meeting among themselves after the seminar was over, because, it seems, this was the first opportunity they had had to meet as a group.

Overall, then, this seminar was a resounding success. Something like 80 people spend two days sharing views and knowledge about the research process and how academic research can be applied to the practical problems of management in this particular industry sector. We all learned a great deal, and there is a genuine commitment to running this again in the not-too-distant future. There is now increased interest in the journal, Construction Management and Economics, and we have opened up a huge range of networking opportunities for collaborative work in the future. The next step is to set up a website for WABER, to record what we achieved at this inaugural seminar, and provide a space for discussion and development. This was an excellent venture in every respect.

St Bernadette of Soubirou's School

Because Roine is involved in research around the UK's Building Schools for the Future programme, we arranged a visit to a local primary school in Accra. St Bernadette of Soubirou's is a private sector catholic school in the district of Dansoman. We chose this School, because Sammie's mum works there as a teacher, teaching class six. The head teacher, Mrs Mary Aquiline Cato, has been Head for 22 years, and she and her colleagues were very welcoming indeed, giving us a guided tour of all the facilities. Despite the heat and humidity being so enervating, there was no air-conditioning. Indeed, there was no mains electricity at the time we visited, due to a power cut, which seems a regular feature here. Instead, a noisy generator throbbed away on the sports field, which also doubled as their assembly hall. We talked in the Head's office for a while, and met some of the teachers and admin staff, then went for a tour of the classrooms. The first one was for very young infants, and they were just about to have their mid-morning snack. Those who could afford to buy a little meat pie had one, some kids had brought a snack from home, and some had only a drink. They were sat patiently, quietly and politely, waiting to be told when to start eating, when we walked in. Whenever the Head walks into a classroom, the kids all speak in perfect unison "Good morning Mrs Cato", to which she response "good morning, how are you". The united response is "Fine, thanks, and you?", to which Mrs Cato does not respond, as far as I could tell. This little catechism happened in every room we entered, except one, where they little poppets called here "Madam" instead of her name, and she pulled them on that. Every step of the way, we were accompanied by a photographer with a still camera and a video camera, recording the visit for posterity, especially as this was an anniversary year for the school, and they wanted to include our visit as part of the annals of the anniversary.

Sam's mum was delighted to see
us again. We spent a bit of time in her classroom, and after the kids gave us the usual welcome, Sam asked them what they were doing. They had been reading about animals, so he got them to tell hi what they had been working on, and they were enthusiastic about raising their hands and answering his questions, shouting out the names of animals. It suddenly struck me that they might not have any idea who he was, or who we were, so I asked them, pointing at him, "Do you know who this is?" They went quiet, and shifted uncomfortably on their seats, clearly not sure what to say when this was a question for which they had not been prepared. I put them out of their misery by telling them he was Mrs Laryea's son, and their mouths dropped open and their eyes widened - they were nicely impressed with her brilliant offspring!

After our sweltering tour we returned to Mrs Cato's office for cold beer and sandwiches, and a chat about our mutual interests. On the way back across the school, we cam across a game of football in full swing. Some of the boys had already been given one of the footballs we had brought for the school, and the hi-vis football shirts. They were so pleased with this stuff that they put it to good use immediately. Even Sam tried to join in the kick-about, but he was not up to their standard. Back in the office, we cooled down and discussed the books we'd brought as gifts for their library, and other things we'd donated. We learned about the Ghana education system, and shared our thoughts on how it compares to the UK, particularly with regard to the interplay between people and their buildings. Apparently, the idea that the building plays an important role in the quality of education is knocked into a cocked hat by places like this! Clearly, you don't need multi-million pound facilities to teach well.

Aburi Botanic Gardens

Sunday morning, and we accept the invitation of Nada, one of Sammie's many pals, who offered to drive us to Aburi Botanic Gardens. She is the project manager of the refurbishment works in the hotel where we are staying. Why don't hotels tell you at the time of booking that they are busy refurbishing, banging, hollering, sealing off parts of the hotel for weeks on end? This is a big project, so they knew about it when we booked. Anyway, Nada likes to chat, and is one of Ghana's resident Lebanese population. She took us through miles of short-cuts through several districts of Ghana, and we were entertained with scenes of folks going about their business, buying and selling things at every possible opportunity. There were no beggars, just people selling things, and they did not pester, quickly turning to the next person if you made clear you were not interested. Road junctions were fascinating, because every time the heavy traffic slowed to a halt, dozens of traders, often with their merchandise on their heads, walked between the lines of stationary traffic selling things to the vehicle occupants. Chilled water and plantain chips seemed to be the most popular commodities, but we could have bought mirrors, exercise machines, sweets of all kinds, bread, eggs, yams, tampons, pies, furniture, anything. Apart from the furniture which stayed on the sidewalk, the rest of it was on people's heads. And the urban landscape tended to be low-rise, a never ending sprawl of huts that had been made into shops, often with religious names, like the "God is able provisions store" and the "Blessing hair cut" and so on. Although the road was tarmac, it was dreadfully potholed, sometimes with huge trenches and holes that had to be driven around. The edges of the road had no kerbs, so were breaking up, and the side roads tended to be red earth, rather than tarmac. Everywhere was buzzing with life, and there was a real friendly feel to the place, with no sense of threat or danger. A huge proportion of the buildings were unfinished, although occupied. It seems that people just run out of funds mid-way through a project, and have to suspend building operations until they can get enough money together to complete. If they don't live in the half-complete building themselves, then squatters move in immediately work stops.

When we got to Aburi, the notices at the gate were very entertaining. One warned that there was to be no passing through the gardens. It took us a while to figure that one out. Another announced a complex price list. Different prices for Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians, and for various types of children. 50 GHP was half a Cedi, and there are about two Cedis to a pound. Adult Ghanains, 1 Cedi, Foreigners, 3 Cedis. Little Ghanaian kids were charged 0.2 Cedis. They even wanted to charge anyone who wanted to take videos, up to 100 Cedis if the video-maker was commercial. Some hope! Nada had to argue and show her identity card to get the Ghanaian price, but then she gave them the difference back again as a tip "because that is how we do things here".

The gardens were clearly well past their best. Nada told us that there used to be clear labels showing which tree was which, and what all the different species were. The place was clearly past its former glory, and they even had a crashed helicopter. It smelled bad, probably urine, and had been stripped of everything that could be moved. It was hard to tell how long it had been here. Was it an exhibit, or had no one got the resources to tidy up? It was hard to tell. In a corner, near a house, one little solitary girl was gently swinging on a makeshift swing.

A little further on, we came across a tree that had a fence around it. Roine asked Sam why that particular tree might be fenced in, and two little kids appeared out of nowhere, carrying a small bag that contained fresh nutmeg. That was what the fence was for, they said, to prevent them from picking the nutmegs. They were beautiful, a black hard shell covered in a delicate tracery of a red wax-like substance. The kids wanted a lot of money for half a dozen nutmegs, and they knew the value of them so Sammie could not negotiate them down. After chatting to them for a few moments, we went on our way. It was insufferably hot and humid. After walking around the gardens and taking in the sights, we jumped back into Nada's truck and headed for a restaurant where we had a nice lunch with plenty of cold beer. They didn't really cater for vegetarians, but they were able to make a meal from an egg sandwich, some fries and some salad. At least it was all freshly cooked and nicely prepared. That evening, we went to another hotel on the beach, Labardi Beach Hotel, which was rather swish and had a brilliant buffet, and very effective air-con. Sam's brother turned up with his mum, who wanted to meet us before we went to her school tomorrow, and it was really nice to meet her at last. She only stayed an hour, though, as she had to get back home. After the meal, we wanted to go to the beach, because we could hear music. The gate from the hotel to the beach was manned, and since we were not residents, we were not really allowed through, although Sam charmed the guard and eventually he agreed we could go through. The music was not live, but recorded, and was coming from a beach bar. But it was all over. So we sat down anyway and watched the waves roll in, in the dark, while drinking more cold beer. That was Sunday.

Flight to Accra

The flight to Ghana went well. Sammie and I managed to get the seats next to the emergency exit. Roine was a few rows in front. The cabin crew were in good spirits, and as one team served food and drink from the back, the other worked from the front, and they tended to meet just where we were sitting. So we got offered most things twice, especially the wine. Every time they gave us a red wine, they offered an extra one. We were consuming them rapidly, but after an hour or so, we have accumulated at least half a dozen unopened ones. Sam went to get Roine, and he was able to sit facing us on the cabin staff seat. What a great way to pass a flight. The three of us chatted away and drank red wine for the rest of the journey, taking it in turns to go to different ends of the cabin to get more supplies. The cabin staff referred to us as having a party, and everyone else on the plane looked glum and alone, but we had a great time. We landed about 8:20 p.m. and were met by Sam's brother, Ebenezer, or Eben, in his car. We were also met by someone from the hotel, as Sam wanted to make sure that there was a backup plan. So we all made our way to the hotel around the corner. The immense heat, mid-thirties, made us glad of the air-con in the car. We checked in, and a short while later met up to go to a mall where there was a reasonable restaurant. It was a bit bland, but it was great to finally be in Africa!

First we tried Star beer. It was not particularly good, so we moved on to Club beer, which was much better. Then we tried Gulder, which seemed better again, but only because we had drunk so much. In the end, we decided that Club was the better of the beers on offer in Ghana. Beer seems to be the drink of choice here. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was well and truly knackered. What a Saturday.

Trumpet duets

Because I was originally supposed to be in Mali by now, Cathy took the kids to the in-laws in Yorkshire, and they won't be back until after I leave for Ghana on Saturday. So I was delighted when Simon texted me this morning to see what I was doing this evening. How about trumpet duets says he? Absolutely says I. You bring the beer, and I'll supply the food. What a great noisy, self-indulgent evening. Both of us have improved a lot since we last attempted duets, which was quite a while ago now. Most satisfying.

Langtree Sinfonia

Recently I started rehearsing with another orchestra, the Langtree Sinfonia, at the invitation of a friend of mine who had helped out with his trumpet at one of my Crowthorne Orchestra performances last year. Langtree Sinfonia takes its name from the School where it rehearses, having been set up there a few decades ago as an adult education class that developed into a permanent ensemble. It is interesting just how many of the community orchestras and bands started this way.

This evening we had a concert in the beautiful Dorchester Abbey which is about 19 miles North of my house. The programme was fairly standard, an overture, a concerto and a symphony:

• Rossini - The Barber of Seville overture
• Beethoven - Violin concerto - Soloist: Todor Nikolaev
• Sibelius - 1st symphony

After assembling with our instruments for a formal orchestra photo, we started the concert at 7 pm. The overture was nothing special, just a warm up to get everyone going, really. The Violin Concerto had been somewhat dull in the rehearsals. Naturally we did not have the soloist with us, so it was lacking in that key aspect. Even in the play-through in the afternoon, the soloist did not play the cadenzas, which have no orchestra backing, so I was not prepared for anything special from him. However, his main cadenza was quite long, but incredibly musical and very dexterous. It was a real pleasure to be a part of that. But for me the real highlight was the Sibelius 1st Symphony. This is a marvellous piece of music, and this was the first time we had played it with timps, trombones and tuba. I have got to know the symphony very well over the last few months in rehearsals, so it was a tremendous experience playing through the whole of it. Naturally, one or two of us got lost, particular one climactic section where all we could hear from where I sat was the timps bashing away so loud that we lost our place. But it all came together at the end in a huge climax, with the sounds resounding around the old abbey. What a great evening.

Next time I might bring some people along to listen, if they can make it to such an out of the way place in the Oxfordshire countryside.

Mali - no commitment

As part of our trip to West Africa, we wanted to visit Mali. One of the cultural highlights was to be one of the regular Friday evening performances of Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra. They never perform outside Mali, but the idea is that they perform every Friday night at Hogan's Club in Bamako. I wanted to see them, but the Friday after our Ghana Seminar, it turned out that Toumani was not sure if he would even be in Mali, because he was due to play in the USA a few days afterwards, and his secretary felt he might want to travel early. Just in case, we rearranged our schedule so that we could catch him the Friday before Ghana, but Sam was in touch with the secretary trying to get confirmation that Toumani would be playing for sure. But they could not commit. Eventually, she forward the e-mail to Toumani himself, asking him if he could be sure of performing that night. We scheduled our flights and hotels, only to find it really difficult to get to Mali from anywhere other than Paris, but we were willing to spend the time travelling on badly times flights, adding four days to our trip. Then Air Burkina decided to cancel the Saturday flight, so we would now have to add five days to our trip for this possible performance. Then the hotels could not be sure they had any rooms. In the end I realised that commitment was not something that happened in Mali, and that the whole excursion was just too tenuous to be committing time and money. So with much reluctance and regret, we have cancelled the Mali leg of the journey, saving ourselves buckets of money, days of travelling and inevitable disappointment. Maybe Mali might get its act together sometime in the future?

The last can of Tsingtao

The minibar fridge in the hotel room was a good place to keep a couple of tins of Tsingtao beer for the odd moments when I wanted a drink for normal prices. Two large tins of beer for around a quid - how I appreciate the 7-11 store. But when it came time to check out of the hotel on the last morning, I found I still had a large tin of beer left. After packing everything else, I put the beer in a bag with a couple of bottles of water, one for me and one for Llewellyn, with the idea of giving it to someone before it got too warm out of the fridge. I didn't want to drink a beer at that time of the morning. I thought I would give it to one of the staff in the hotel, but they really did not look the drinking type, and they had not done anything special, anyway. I passed the doorman, and thought about giving it to him, but somehow I felt it would just confuse him. We ended up carrying it all the way to the White Star Ferry terminal. I'd almost forgotten about it when I saw two tramps drinking beer and arguing loudly in Chinese at each other. I was relieved to have found someone who would really appreciate a tin of beer, and they did. They were well pleased with the unsolicited gift, and I was happy to have added to their contentment for today.

Busy day

The Thursday of my Hong Kong trip was packed with things to do. In the morning I got up early and spent a couple of hours editing a document for a company back in UK who needed my input. After that I had breakfast, then went to the office I'd been given in Hong Kong Polytechnic University to prepare the slides for my lunch-time seminar. My topic was "Managing a peer-reviewed journal: processes and policies" and I prepared some graphs of our performance with Construction Management and Economics, to explain how we did things, and how well we did things as editors. I also explained what kind of things were likely to succeed for authors who wanted their papers to be published. The seminar was packed out, I'm glad to say, and the questions were probing and challenging. It was an enjoyable seminar, but in total must have occupied two hours.

From the seminar at HKPU, Llewellyn and I made our way to City University, HK, to meet our colleagues there and talk about the potential for future collaboration as well as have a tour of their facilities. They showed us their environmental chamber, still under construction and an improvement on the one we have in Reading, because it can split into two rooms for various kinds of experiment. They also showed us their new wind tunnel, which was really impressive with its 300 bhp motor, and an experimental area the size of a study. There is a lot that we could do together, so we had a lot to talk about, but the time soon came when we had to meet the car that was to take us to Hong Kong Island.

We went to Admiralty at the end of the afternoon in the HKPU Jaguar so that I could give an industry seminar to the HK branch of Chartered Institute of Building. We got there early enough to go for a coffee, and I set up the computer with my slides for a talk about the research I had done on the costs of tendering. Again, the room was packed out, and the the seminar went well, with plenty of questions at the end. Fortunately, I had hit the spot with my talk and highlighted things that really concerned these contractors and consultants. After this, the CPD committee of HK CIOB took us for a banquet, which was rather splendid.

After the banquet, everyone went their separate ways, but Llewellyn and I fancied a bit more beer, so we returned to Lan Kwai Fong and found a relatively quiet bar where we could sit and watch the world go by while we paid attention to some beer. Draft beer called, funnily enough, Lan Kwai Fong. The people walking by were mainly young, some surely as young as 12 or 13, and mostly having a great time dressed up and making a noise. I guess we were there until about 2 am. What a great day.

HKU Civil Engineering

Today we took a trip to the Civil Engineering Department of Hong Hong University, to meet Prof Mohan Kumaraswamy and Prof Albert Kwan, the Head of Department, among others. We had a brief chat first, sharing some tales about our work, and the issues we deal with, then I gave a seminar on flexibility in procurement to a packed room, with a mixture of industry and academics. I was very pleased with the turnout, and with the level of the questions. There was a lot of interest in this kind of research, and I could have gone on for much longer, but we were all getting hungry, so we finished at lunch-time, taking ourselves off to the staff cafeteria and continuing our conversation about research, publishing and so on. That evening we were the guests of Weisheng Lu, at the Kowloon Renaissance Hotel, where we were treated to a buffet style, all-you-can-eat kind of a meal and some really fine wine.