Snow on the road

The snow came in across England today, heavy and cold. With the temperature around -2°C, we were all expecting the country to grind to a halt. Sure enough, railway lines were closed, airports closed, buses were cancelled, and during the early morning, one-by-one, all but a few schools were closed. Total chaos. Mind you, there is some merit in the argument that with this kind of weather being so rare (last time it was like this was 18 years ago), it is clearly not worth investing in the kind of infrastructure that could withstand all this, so many people worked at home or just took the day off.

My daughter was due to do a day observing communication in a primary school across the valley, and my son wanted to spend the day at his friend's house near to the same school. So I gave them a lift and we got in the car and headed to the school, sticking to the main roads, which were gritted because they were bus routes. We were surprised that the primary school was open, and Vicky went in, after I told her I would wait until she told me it was definitely on. After ten minutes, she was on the phone in a bit of a quandary, because the teacher whose class she was observing told her that she should not have bothered, and should have stayed home. Vicky was perplexed, to say the least, since she had actually turned up and was ready to do the observation, but clearly, she was not wanted, so we picked her up again and set of for Dan's friend's house, which was on a small road off a narrow lane, which plunged into a valley. Although this road was not gritted, and was a steep narrow hill, I assumed we would be OK, because we were not going down the hill, but turning off, just beyond the crown.

As we approached the turning, the road was completely covered with snow, and quite slippy. I touched the brakes, as we were already on a slight incline, and the car lost all grip and started to slide completely out of control, but at a very low speed. We slid past the turning, and I could not regain control, as the hill grew steeper. and the car continued to slide, completely out of control, but finally the front end hit the left bank of the road, and the rear swing around until it hit the right bank of the lane. There we were, completely stuck, right across a narrow lane on an a hill. I had completely blocked the road, and nearly hit a pedestrian and her dog in the process. Some neighbours came out with their shovels, and we emptied a nearby grit bin all over the road. A couple of policemen came to help, too, and after an hour I finally managed to get us out without damaging the car. It was a bit stressful and quite hard work. I had stationed my son at the top of the hill, around the corner, to turn back any other cars, and he managed to get about 20 of them to not come through. One insisted on coming through because he thought he could park up and help, but he also lost control and only stopped by crashing into the grit bin! He tried to help, but just kept getting in the way. Finally, we got the grit on to the road, and the salt in the grit melted the snow, and I was able to manoevre the car back up the hill. It had taken about an hour, and I was pleased that there was no major damage to the people or to the car.

Anyway, we all got home safely, and now I am in the warm having a cup of coffee. And I am staying put!

Double-blind refereeing

The habit of double-blind refereeing (reviewing) of academic papers has evolved over the years and is quite common in academic journals. The idea is that when an author submits a paper, the editor makes sure the author's name and address are not evident, then chooses other experts in the field to review it and provide a critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the research and of the way in which the paper is written. It is the basis of scientific quality control, and is also used in reviewing research grant applications, especially when public money us involved. As an editor myself, I am very dependent on the referees' advice when deciding the fate of a paper. But the fate of a paper is my decision, not the referees', and sometimes I don't follow their advice, which can confuse authors and referees.

One interesting thing that frequently happens is that authors refer to their own previous work and thereby reveal their identity to the referees. Sometimes, a conscientious referee will then contact me and ask what to do because they have noticed the authors' identity. My attitude is always the same. It does not matter too much! If authors choose to reveal their identity to referees, they are either not worried about the lack of anonymity, or too naive to realise what they are doing. The key point is that many referees would recognise the writing of someone who was well-known. So the invention of blind refereeing was obviously not to protect well-known people. It was for the benefit of less well known people. It means the judgement of the referee is solely based on the merits of the paper. An unknown research student who submits a paper will have it reviewed by people who cannot guess whether the author is a student or a professor, so junior academics are the ones who benefit the most from blind refereeing.

Of course, referees often think they know who wrote the paper, and they often guess wrong. I have often sent to famous professors comments from encouraging referees who say that with practice and in time, they might be able to get their work up to scratch!

Authors who reveal their identity are either already so well-known that it does not really matter, or they are too naive to realise that blind refereeing requires that they don't reveal their identity. Either way, the conclusion is that the paper can still be refereed by the referee to whom we have sent it.

Profound misunderstandings

I came across some notes I had made at a meeting with some industry people back in 2005. The purpose of the meeting was a launch of some research these business people had done which was about the construction sector. Interestingly, one of the opening statements was that they had interviewed people from 50 major private sector organizations, which by anyone's reckoning (because of the collective spending power of these organizations) made it a major study. Should I have been pointing out how many papers we had published in CM&E that has larger samples? They were confident that no one had done such a significant study before or since. I remember thinking that they were so confident, they did not need to do a literature search in order to ascertain this for sure.

Another speaker declaimed that if you do not know what kind of health care you need 25 years from now, then you should not let a 25 year PFI contract. And if you do not know how we will be educating children in ten years' time, then do not let a 25-year PFI contract. I wondered what he thought of 999-year leases on land. I wondered if he had a 25 year mortgage on his own house, even though he did not know what his lifestyle would be like ten years from now, or where he would be working. I wondered if he knew what it meant for a business to own real estate, and then I wondered how he had become so important in our industry.

He went on to talk about "value", a word that still makes me squirm. Why does it make me squirm? It is indefinable because it means all things to all people, and it usually is introduced into conversations about the impoverished nature of the kind of objectives that business set themselves for their "key performance indicators". This guy defined value as what you wake up worrying about in the morning. Ha! What wonderful mumbo-jumbo.

The session included some e-voting opportunities where each audience member had a little device to select from options that were presented to them. Fascinating. Questions appeared on the screen, with 4-5 options to choose from. Often, the last option would be "other", and the speaker clearly had not wanted this, because in putting each question to us, he described this option as being there for those who could not make up their minds between the specific options he had listed. We could see the collective choices being counted on the screen in real time. The speaker knew what he wanted us to answer, because whenever the majority chose the option that he favoured, he used the phrase "finally being honest"! What was even worse, he then told us that he was going to use this as "data" to inform the policy for the organization he represented. I despaired.

There were many other presentations that day, from a series of industrial captains, many of whom had been involved in the preparation of the reports being launched. There were some interesting points that I took away from the meeting. One speaker asked why people were so preoccupied about capacity when efficiency (productivity) was so low. Surely we should first improve productivity, before trying to increase the capacity of such an inefficient sector. Another questioned the tone of the rhetoric surrounding partnering in the industry. He said that driving improvements from the client side is not as effective as equal partnership. Even radical change can be made step-by-step. But it is rare to find partnering agreements that are genuinely equal in terms of commitment.

As is often the case, I wondered about how we could bring industry and academia closer together. This was five years ago. I think we are making progress.

Test Department

Today I was rediscovering Test Dept, a UK group from the 1980s who used large pieces of metal, assorted hammers, buzz-saws and so on to create a mesmeric industrial sound that was hugely original at the time, and ultimately lead to the whole "industrial music" scene I guess. They still sound good to me. Check them out here. I always appreciate musicians who are sensitive the economic and political context of their music. Too much music is de-contextualized and lacks meaning. This stuff might not be to everyone's taste, but at least you can see where they are coming from! This is not sugar-coated, over-produced, escapist pap. I wonder what happened to these guys. The bass player from one incarnation of the group is Vic Reeves, and he's been quite successful with his surreal brand of knockabout comedy.

Presumably this would be called performance art these days, and I guess that anyone making this kind of noise these days would create the sounds with synthesizers and sampling, rather than smashing real lumps of metal with huge great hammers! They were good.

First week back

The first full week back at work has been a time for tidying up. Hundred of e-mails that I've read and not answered, and thousands of files on my computer that have been cluttering up my workspace for too long. I have spent several hours a day revisiting these old e-mails, deleting anything that is not absolutely necessary. Some e-mails I had kept thinking that I would get around to taking some action on them later, when there is time. But now I have to acknowledge to myself that there won't be time. One consequence of sorting through them all was finally finishing off a major paper jointly-authored with Stephen Gruneberg, on Performance-based contracting. Finally we can get this submitted. I still have two book chapters and a couple of journal papers to finish, as well. One book chapter I had committed to has disappeared. The editor of that book decided that it was going to take too long to wait for me, so he asked someone else instead, and now has the chapter he needs. In terms of tidying up my computer, I have got in quite a mess with trying to syncrhonize the documents on the various computers that I use. Every time I synchronize two of the computers with each other, all the files I had deleted from one are resinstated unless I deleted them from the other! I have ended up with four different locations for all my document files, so I was finding it impossible to lose and files that I had tried to delete. The solution? Make an "old documents" folder on all four computers, and then move anything I want from there to a fresh new documents folder, which can be synchronized across all locations. Now I can pick up everything I need from a sub-folder, and then remember to delete the whol sub-folder in all four locations. All this for data security. It is remarkable how difficult it is to maintain a usable and robust backup regime with computers.

Saturday morning orchestra

Feeling that I was not getting enough time to play my trumpet, I accepted the invitation of a fellow trumpet player, Dave Johnson, to tag along to another orchestra. This one is quite handy as it rehearses exactly the same time, as the orchestra in which my son plays double bass, and just across the road. Since he needs taking and collecting every Saturday morning anyway, it is very convenient for me to join in. I took part for the first time today, and they were a very friendly bunch. Not too bad at sight reading. The timps and harp parts were put in by a guy on a keyboard with an amp, which was novel. We worked through Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, McCunn's Land of the Mountain and Flood, and Wagner's Prelude from Tristan und Isolde. Not much for the trumpets in this latter one, but enough to keep us busy in the other two pieces. This also gives ma an opportunity to use my new trumpets because each piece demands a different instrument. Indeed, the Wagner starts with an F trumpet and then changes to an E trumpet, neither of which I have! However, Dave had a useful tip. Using the C Trumpet, the transposition is pretty straightforward because the key signature is obvious. It's good to be practicing and learning more!

Pig-headed scientists

"Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous..."

Eysenck, H.J. (1957) Sense and nonsense in psychology. Penguin.

Heavens above

I found this website where you can track the location of the International Space Station, and the numerous communication satellites whirling around the globe. One network of around 80 satellites, known as Iridium, is for satellite phones. Apparently, the mirrors on these satellites catch the sun and reflect it down to us, at certain points in their orbits. These are visible to the naked eye as bright flare of light, known as an Iridium flare. In this website you can enter your location, and it will then provide you with forecasts about where and when you can catch sight of the International Space Station, the Iridium flares and even, if you have some binoculars, the toolbag dropped from the International Space Station by an astronaut. Let me know if you see any of these things. Click here

(Photo courtesy of Ideonexus)

Persepolis (2007)

Persepolis is a cartoon movie about a young girl growing up in Iran through the Islamic revolution and subsequently the war with Iraq. It is a brilliant film, providing a really powerful account of how the impact of huge political change on ordinary people. It is remarkable to see how much of what has happened in this part of the world was brought about by interference of the UK and the West. Apart from the questions that it raises about what it means to be a civilized society, this film is a very moving autobiography. See it if you can.

Head of School

We received formal notification today from the Vice Chancellor that I would be appointed for a further four years to the Headship. This is a four year term of office, and I am currently in my fourth year, which comes to an end next July. So now I, and all my colleagues, know that I shall be continuing for a further four years, so we can continue to implement the planned recruitment strategy with a sense of direction and purpose. The VC consulted the staff of the School in coming to his decision about who to appoint. So while it is not intended to be a democratic decision, there is consultation. And apparently, there was overwhelming support for my continuation, which is great news, because it provides me with a mandate and reinvigorates my enthusiasm.

Three year operating plan

Each year, Heads of School have to prepare a rolling three year plan. This year was particularly difficult, for two reasons. First, the University is continuing to refine the process, and this year, although the once-separate teaching and learning plan was simply rolled up as part of the main document, a research plan was prepared earlier in the year, for the first time, with a view to the feedback from that informing this operating plan, and a risk register was requested in order to demonstrate to our auditors that we are managing our risks adequately. Second. a combination of events has resulted in our need to request lots of new academic posts. Basically, this is a combination of a spate of retirements plus the massive recent expansion of our activities. We have just about doubled the size of the School in the last four years, in every aspect of our work. This is why I have to make a case for a crop of new posts. And each one has to be carefully rationalized in line with our strategy for the next few years. It was a real relief to get it submitted today, just on the deadline. Over the next few weeks, senior management of the university will read all the plans from the different Schools. In January, a group of senior staff tour the Schools, interviewing the Heads, to be sure that they understand the aims, priorities and risks. Then they can rank order a master list of all the posts requested, so that when we find out from the Higher Education Funding Council how much grant the University is to receive this year from government, the final piece of the jigsaw will be in place in terms of next year's overall financial planning. At that point, they can determine how far down the list they can go in terms of the posts requested across the University. So it is a serious business as it affects how many new staff we get to appoint next year, if any. And it takes a lot of consultation and conversations to be sure about our relative priorities within the School before we put the plan before senior management. I was pleased to have got the document drafted, edited down toe the requisite length, and then submitted. Now I wonder how far down our list of priorities we'll get, given the dreadful ever-worsening situation.

Crowthorne Symphony Orchestra

Our concert went very well. It was all a bit touch and go, though. One of the viola players cried off at the last minute with flu, and even the piano soloist was feeling too ill to come to the afternoon rehearsal, so the conductor had to rehearse the orchestra without the soloist, which is not easy in a piano concerto. In fact, it is unheard of! To deal with this strange situation, the conductor and soloist agreed that for once, the soloist would follow the conductor, rather than the other way around. We rehearsed the whole programme from 1:30 until 5:30, which was quite am exhausting to do immediately before a concert. But all the brass, the basses, the harp and a large proportion of the violins were brought in just for the day, because we seem to be low on string players these days. It would be unusual to have many brass for all the weekly rehearsals, as there is generally not enough for them to do to keep them occupied. So the rehearsal on the afternoon of the concert is the first time we have played together, and for some instruments, the first time they have seen the pieces. Normally we would not have this many extras on the day, though. My new trumpet was excellent. I played set it up as a D Trumpet for the Cimarosa overture, and as an E flat for the Liszt piano concerto. It sounded good in the acoustic of the hall. The first half went off without mishap, and most people in the audience seemed to enjoy it a lot. After the break came the Symphony, the big piece we had really focused most of our attention on for the preceding 12 weeks. It is a huge and demanding piece, but very absorbing and great fun. It went very well indeed, and was a real success. I'd sold tickets to 23 adults and 6 children for this concert, an unusually large contingent. Although half a dozen of them were unable to attend due to flu or unexpected guests, I still had 24 people in the audience, which made it a very special concert for me. We're all looking forward to the March concert now. I wonder what we'll be playing?

Graduation ceremony

I have not seen such a strong staff contingent in a graduation ceremony before. We were 44 strong! Apparently, that is pretty close to the maximum that can fit on the stage. The December graduation is mostly for postgrads, although there are sometime some undergrads who passed on resits, or whose results were unavailable in time for the main (July) ceremony for some other reason. This was the first year that there were two days of December graduations ceremonies. It was as smooth and well organized as always, and the VC's speech was short and to the point, and well received. The students and families that I spoke to enjoyed it a lot, and as they were postgrads they were able to compare this to their previous graduation from other universities, and everyone who did so preferred this one. It was not too long, the speeches were interesting and it all worked. The weather was horrible, though. Grey, cold, wet and dark. But we had wine and nibbles with our SCME graduates on the London Road site, courtesy of Gerri Excell, and everyone went away happy. As always, it was a real delight to see PhDs graduating. Of all the awards a University can award, this is the highest, and the hardest work, so doctoral graduates are always enormously relieved to have finally completed their arduous journey. Graduation is always an enjoyable event, reminding us just how much it means to the graduates to have completed their courses of study. Let's hope that we can keep in touch with them, though, as pretty soon they will be the very people we want to talk to for access to research data, or for developing our employer engagement agenda. They generally progress through their careers quickly.

Listing the 700 people who reviewed papers for CM&E this year

Each year, the editors of Construction Management and Economics like to compile a list of all the referees who have reviewed papers in the preceding 12 months, and thank them formally by publishing this list. Given that we have a database recording everyone's involvement, and their contact details, this should be, on the face of it, a simple task. On listing the people who had been active, I first noticed the obvious errors. Some people had been entered twice into the system, sometimes by themselves, sometimes by their co-authors. The system distinguished people by their e-mail addresses, but these change, or people use different ones for different purposes. Then I found that some people type their details all in lower case or all capitals, so I had to fix that, both in the outputted list and in the database. Then I found that a large number of people never bothered to enter their institution, so I had to figure it out from their e-mail addresses, or if that was not clear, find a paper they had authored, then inspect the cover page. Some people have middle initials, but there was no consistency as to whether they put a full-stop after their initial or not. I had to add one for every user who had omitted it, on the basis that if I subsequently wanted to remove it from any output for consistency, a global search and replace would have something to go at. Some users are unfamiliar with the name of their own university! Several had XYZ University, when it should be University of XYZ. Others had apparently not noticed that their University had changed its name, sometimes several years ago. Some had entered the University and part of their address, but not bothered changing the default country (UK), so I had to relocate them to their correct country. And then we noticed that strange thing had happened in the database (which is maintained by a software house in USA). Certain countries had been changed, arbitrarily. While Taiwan had changed to "Taiwan, Province of China", Iran had changed to "Iran, Islamic Republic of" and Hong Kong, SAR China had changed to just "Hong Kong". We decided that the change to Iran and Hong Kong were OK, but were aware of the sensitivities surrounding the status of Taiwan. All of the entries for Taiwan had to be edited manually, because countries are selected in the database from a drop-down list, which we cannot edit. Perhaps this was why some Taiwanese users had left the country as United Kingdom, because they preferred this kind of mistake over being categorized as part of China. After several hours of editing the list of 700 people, we finally had a list we could publish. Having put most of the errant records straight, and allocated someone to the task of checking the database more thoroughly over the next year, I am optimistic that next year, this will be a ten-minute job!

Kitchen finished (more or less)

Finally, the builders, electricians, plumbers, fitters and decorators have departed and we have been able to clean up and start moving things into the cupboards. Modern fittings at last! When a door or drawer is slammed, the "soft closers" prevent them from banging, and the close themselves with a gentle movement every time. It is such a pleasure to have a space like this, and to be able to cook again. We have reorganized the layout completely and now have a much better view of the garden and more of a feeling of open space and brightness. A successful job! We await one final light fitting and one final door closer, but there are always bits and pieces to deal with after a job of this nature, and we are just thankful that these things are trivial.
The next thing is to get a table and chairs to suit the new kitchen, and fit out the pantry with shelves and a stout new door. The table we already had is too small, and the chairs in the picture are from the dining room, and we want them back in there. There's always a "next thing", though. Hard to believe, but the company who did this said that there was plenty of time to get it done for Christmas, and it turned out that there was. Why don't all kitchen companies manage to do this kind of job in a few weeks? This lot have been so impressive, right from the design through to the co-ordination of the installation and building work. I recall that before the job started, the builder and the structural engineer cam to the house to look over the job and decide the best way to do the work, so that the engineer would understand what the builder had in mind, and vice versa. At the time, I thought this was very impressive because they did this quite spontaneously, figuring out that it was the best way to get a co-ordinated approach. Its impressive to me because I read so much research and policy guidance designed to get people in the building industry to do just this kind of thing. Clearly, the lack of co-ordination and communication is not a problem in all parts of the building industry.

Nearly new kitchen

The completion of our new kitchen is tantalisingly close now. The installation was delayed by one day, so the fitter started on Thursday, and in two days has most of the work done. At the close of play on Friday, the electrician and the builder were also here, ensuring that we had something that was useful over the week-end. The new hob is working, but so far without the electric ignition, and the sink is plumbed in. It was a great relief to have access to a cooker in order to do a stir fry. The wok burner is great for generating the right kind of heat under the wok. And life with a sink is much more civilised than life without. The washing machine was half set up, but the hot water connecting hose was unusable as it had cracked, and the fitter did not have one with him, so I picked one up Saturday morning after dropping Dan off at the bowling alley for his mate's birthday bash. We're expecting the fitting to be completed on Monday, with some tidying up and a final coat of paint on the walls on Tuesday. Is it going to be possible to get the whole thing finished in 30 days (they started 3rd Nov)? At the moment, it is still looking likely, strangely enough!

Ephemeral buildings

My research and conversations into the nature of the impact of the built environment on the processes that are carried out in buildings is beginning to worry me. I knew for a long time that most buildings are gutted and refurbished every seven years. So the typical building is a somewhat temporary affair, even though the external shell sits on a piece of land for decades, seemingly semi-permanent. Not only are they refurbished regularly and frequently, but also they change hands. So no matter how appropriate they were for one occupier, the next occupier will inevitably find the facility inadequate or inappropriate in some way. When the Private Finance Initiative was introduced as a means of getting the private sector to fund the development of infrastructure, and then charge the public authority for its use under a 30-year contract, we all thought that finally there was a long-term view of infrastructure. But in the event, the deals were re-structured soon after the project was completed, once the development risk had gone, and the Private sector partner would often sell the facility to someone else for them to operate it. So, the engagement was still temporary. Now, I have discovered something else. There are some very good schools around, and they often have very poor quality buildings. Kendrick School, for example, a girls' grammar in Reading, which is one of the highest performing public sector schools in the UK, is situated in dreadful old, poorly maintained and unfit-for-purpose buildings on a crowded site. Failing schools are often provided with brand new buildings, because they need help, but are their results any better with the new building than with the old? If it is the same teachers and the same kids, dealing with the same syllabus, is anything changed? Finally, I learned that a field surgeon on a battlefield in a tent is more likely to succeed in terms of performance metrics thatn a surgeon in a well-equipped operating theatre. So all this leads me to question the permanence and even the significance of buildings in terms of what happens inside them. They now seem to me to be ephemeral things that have little impact on what happens inside them. Can this be true?

A sense of purpose

Our vision for the School of Construction Management and Engineering (SCME) is to grow the strong multi-disciplinary research base underpinning aspects of construction management in which we have developed an internationally-leading reputation. The vocational disciplines around which our work is focused are not usually the focus of research funding in their own right and, therefore, on the face of it, our research and our teaching seem to be in different areas. That difference is more one of perception than reality. The professional institutions are acutely aware of the need for the professions to develop their respective bodies of knowledge. This extends beyond understanding what passes for best professional practice, to understanding the underlying sciences that can explain and challenge professional practice. In other words, the view in SCME is that the construction professions are not academic disciplines in their own right, but fields of application of theoretical frameworks and empirical research methods drawing widely from management, organization, law, economics, engineering, mathematical modelling, and so on. This is why we appoint academics who are specialists in diverse academic areas, with experience of the complexities of the construction sector. Each academic discipline brings a unique insight into the built environment, and the sector is strengthened as a result. It is this approach that makes SCME a world-class leader of the field. We want to continue to bring diverse academic disciplines to bear on the problems confronting the construction sector so that we can develop new ways of working, new approaches to complex problems, based upon robust and rigorous academic research that not only informs that practical world of construction internationally, but also contributes to the theory-building that helps the mainstream academic disciplines to deal with the complexities of the built environment. We seek to develop the professions in the UK and internationally by providing fundamental insights based on rigorous multi-disciplinary research.

Carlo Mollino

A book about Carlo Mollino, a present from Paolo Tombesi, reveals an architect passionate about his buildings, deeply involved in the craft of buildings and of furniture, and whose designs echo the movements and balance of his other great passion, skiing. It is wonderful to read about the people he shared his passions with, and to see the sketches and designs for the buildings and furniture that expressed his feelings for the mountains, the snow, and the movement involved in skiing. The buildings that were built are remarkable, and still look modern. I was unaware of Mollino until now, and looked him up in the internet, where you would be surprised about his great architectural achievements, and about his writings about skiing style. Surprised because the bulk of the results from an internet search focus on the photos of naked women he took later in life, and his passion for fast cars. But what a complete life he lived, spanning so many different interests. And what a legacy he leaves behind.

Kitchen in progress

Plenty of progress to report on the kitchen. The new back door has been fitted, the new ceiling is in, new window board, new lights, tiled floor throughout, and nearly all the walls plastered. All the electrics and plumbing are ready. Tomorrow, the paint goes on the walls, and next week the units start to be fitted. So far, all is going to plan, and the workmanship is first class. Meanwhile, we are still cooking with one microwave oven, and washing up in a small hand basin in the downstairs cloakroom. This is the third week of the project, and it is on target to be completed end of next week. Fingers crossed.