MIPIM 2011 update: Monday

Capita Symonds' Andrew Pryke reports back from MIPIM 2011

An early 5.30am start from home on Monday commences my 2011 MIPIM. A 30 minute journey to Luton Airport in sub zero temperatures - am greeted with a crowded terminal full of familiar faces. Amongst the five or six Capita Symonds co-MiPIMiers, the Aecom engineers are amongst the many queues.

A 1 hour 50 minute flight to Nice sees a change in temperature and a bright sunny day.

More queues for the bus to Cannes reminds me that people don't queue here and it's every man and woman for himself to attempt to get that precious double seat and space for themselves. I get a call from David Matthews from Building magazine, he is flying in tonight and would like to meet up. I will try and get him on the number of lunches and dinners Capita Symonds is hosting. Fingers crossed, we are already over subscribed!

However the journey is quick and painless.

A quick check in at my hotel, and change and out for lunch at a Beach Bistro with my Capita Symonds colleagues. There is much calm before the storm, with the Croisette virtually empty. The locals enjoying a day amongst one of two weeks in the year when an event is not happening in Cannes.

Walking to Cafe Roma, the much frequented cafe/ bar opposite the conference centre, is quiet. Not the place it will be from tomorrow onward.

Work is going on in the conference centre. This will go on through the night to prepare Cannes for its busiest week of the year. It is rumoured that more champagne is drunk (to secure deals!) at MIPIM than at any other time. I believe that this is the myth of better times long time gone.



Registration is painless and after dealing with e-mails the evening beckons.

Cafe Roma is the central meeting place for the number of Capita Symonds architects, structural engineers, services and agents to meet. MIPIM is very much a place for chance meetings. Exquisite collisions with key industry leaders that could never happen back in the UK. People are more relaxed at MIPIM and that person you have been trying to meet for months suddenly has time to talk.

Today is no exception for chance meetings. I bump into two architects from my Stirling Wilford days, whom I haven't seen for about ten years - Chris Dyson and Iain Clavedetcher. Both with their own practices and still surviving.

Dinner is with Capita Symonds. A small restaurant in the old town. As the restaurant begins to fill up, there is much anticipation this year. The commercial market appears to be optimistic. All delegates appear to be going through their rehearsals for the oncoming event. Like Olympic athletes, they are limbering up and going through their last minute routines before the race for that crucial deal, the win that will make their 2011 season.

Returning to the hotel I am grabbed by Richard Payne with his Turner and Townsend colleagues who accuses me of stalking them! Very rich as everywhere I have been they seem to follow later! They offer a drink and a review of their campaign.

Things are looking good for the forthcoming week...

Capita Symonds at the 2010 Public Property Summit

Video coverage of Capita Symonds at the Public Property Summit at the Business Design Centre, London on 01-02 November... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDdZfYOo2I

commercial break

Capita Symonds’ Director of Business Transformation Neil McLocklin looks at how local authorities can learn from the commercial property sector…

Local authorities are used to cutting costs. That is just as well. The imminent Comprehensive Spending Review will ratchet up the pressure on them to do so even further.

But savings are not the whole answer. The government must put more pressure on the public sector to raise money too. This thinking is the lifeblood of the private property industry, but there is little pressure on the public sector to generate income.


It will be hard for the government to change, but change it must: the public sector is missing too many opportunities. These range from the obvious, such as ensuring vacant property is let, to the more innovative.

In August, environment secretary Chris Huhne gave local authorities the option to sell energy through feed-in tariffs. It was a good move, but this was just one possible area to address. The government should send a stronger message to the public sector that it is OK to be commercial.

Some forward-thinking local authorities, such as Lewisham and Southampton, have wisely taken minority stakes in their shopping centres, and will benefit from this income stream as it grows. But this is passive investment.

The diversity of assets within local authorities is immense, and this is part of the problem. Town halls and civic chambers are being rented out by some authorities for weddings and events, but the commercial promotion and marketing of these venues is often poor, so these fantastic assets are under-used.

Car parks and park-and-ride schemes may be operationally well managed, but there should also be kiosks to sell customers newspapers and coffee. Any good private sector property manager would be thinking along these lines.

Towns and cities attract events such as festivals, exhibitions and shows. But there is no proactive asset management that maximises revenue opportunities that surround these events. In the south, authorities should be considering the potential value for photo-voltaic cells on school roofs and landfill sites. Markets in streets and squares are often administered by local authorities, but in a passive way.

Of course, income generation has to be balanced with political and economic desires to stimulate the local economy – that and the all-too-common letter to the leader of the council from a local business, complaining about its audacity in increasing rent after five years.

We live in a new world. And politicians need to support their officers in taking a more commercial approach. If not, they miss opportunities to mitigate the pressure on public services.

Neil McLocklin is head of business transformation at Capita Symonds
Capita Symonds is a lead sponsor of Public Property Summit 2010.

Profiling the Risk

Judith Hackitt CBE is Chair for the Health and Safety Executive. Judith recently gave a speech at the Joint Capita Symonds and ACE Safety Lecuture. An extract of the speech "Profiling the risk - determining what is important and what is not in project management and consulting" is reproduced below. The full speech is available to download.  


First, some good news. Over the last decade, the UK Construction industry has undergone something of a cultural transformation. Fatal injury rates have been more than halved and major injury rates have improved by more than one third. I have had the pleasure of visiting some of the best examples of good practice in construction up and down the country in the last year or so not least the Olympic Park here in London and Media City in Salford. What is particularly striking about these examples of good practice is not just the safety performance which is achieved, but the way in which it has been achieved. Health and safety is part of the culture and it is led from the top. Workforce involvement and engagement at every level is clearly visible. Innovative practices are being implemented which reduce the inherent levels of risk. Motivation, commitment, collaboration in the supply chain; productivity is high and goes hand-in-hand with good health and safety practice – it’s a win-win, not a trade off.


But this particular success story does of course have a major sting in the tail. We now know what levels of performance can be achieved and what huge benefits can accrue when the culture change happens. So this makes the 41 deaths and more than 3,000 major injuries which occurred in the construction industry last year all the more tragic because we know that they need not have happened. The old ‘assumptions’ that construction was a hazardous industry and that little could be done to change the culture were completely wrong. Attitudes and performance can be changed but we have yet to achieve that across the whole of the industry.

Strong evidence is beginning to emerge of a two-tier industry developing in construction. There is a direct correlation between the high accident incidence rates on smaller sites and in particular on refurbishment work. It would be easy to rationalise this problem away by saying that smaller sites and refurbishment work are ‘different’. In some senses of course this is true. But in the current climate of flexible working, sub-contracting and sub-sub contracting this argument is increasingly difficult to maintain. Those who are today engaged in small scale non-commercial refurbishment projects may very soon find themselves working on large scale green field projects and vice-versa.

Here are just a few reasons why these types of mobility are not just possible but probable:

In the last 2-3 years construction has been hit by the worst recession in over 50 years – the industry now employs 375,000 fewer people than in 2008. As we emerge from recession, private sector investment in construction is going to create huge demand for skills.

We need look no further than the huge infrastructure investment required in the energy economy for evidence of this. Investment in the grid itself as well as massive investment in renewable energy technologies and nuclear – all of this will involve construction activity on a major scale.

At the same time, the huge squeeze on expenditure will have an opposite effect on major construction projects in the public sector in building new schools, hospitals and public amenities.

We have no way of knowing how these events will coincide but my point is that these forces will create movement of labour across the full spectrum of the sector as we enter economic upturn and growth.

But if the difference in performance between large scale projects and domestic refurbishment is telling, the correlation between inexperience in a job and risk of injury is even more compelling.

Just as we have moved on from the generic mindset that ‘construction is a dangerous industry’, we must stop ourselves from falling into the trap of believing that ‘refurbishment and small scale construction are different’. Or that there is anything inevitable about new and inexperienced workers being more ‘prone’ to injury.

What the evidence of the past tells us is that despite making significant progress; particularly on major high profile construction projects, refurbishment and the influx/flow of inexperienced recruits throughout the sector are two priority areas which we must now focus our attention on in construction to reach the next level of performance improvement and culture change. Furthermore, the performance improvement which has been achieved over the last decade clearly demonstrates not only what is possible but the very clear business benefits of doing it.
 
For more information on the Health and Safety services Capita Symonds offer visit our dedicated microsite.

wielding the axe

Chris Marriott on how to make savings in local authority leisure and arts management

The recently announced budget cuts for local authorities have been brutal: savings of anything between 25% and 40% will need to be delivered over the next four years.

Councils have for some time been working out what they can cut, how much they can save, and when they can do it. All services will come under intense scrutiny and all are likely to suffer, some more acutely than others.

So, what is the future of ‘leisure and arts’, as a non-statutory service? Some councils may be tempted - as they are free to do at their discretion – to close their leisure centres and theatres and sack staff. Closing the doors is a very efficient way of making savings, but the problem is, whilst councils do not have to provide leisure and arts services at all, they do represent some of their most visible activities and are integral to the delivery of a far wider social and economic agenda.

So what is the alternative to closing facilities? Well, for those councils who are operating their facilities directly, the simple answer is to get someone else to do it for you, under contract. About 65% of leisure centres in England are still operated in-house, whereby the council takes responsibility for the delivery of the service and takes on all the risk. The other 35% is run by a mature stable of specialist private contractors (Leisure Connection, DC Leisure, Parkwood, SLM, Serco) and trusts (Fusion, Greenwich Leisure, Active Nation, SIV).

Leisure operators typically charge the council a management fee in return for taking on the financial risk of operating the facilities. Councils tend to find it cheaper to contract with a partner rather than deliver the service themselves. This is for a number of reasons, including more commercially astute management, better marketing and programming and faster decision making, leading to higher sales and lower costs. Also, trusts (although not private operators) benefit from business rate relief and tax benefits which they can pass on to the Council via a reduced management fee.

On the cost side, cynics might question whether these contractors will reduce the staffing base, but the truth is council employees are transferred across as part of the contract and their terms and conditions will be protected under the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment (TUPE) Regulations. That’s not to say that over the course of a contract (which will typically be around 10 years) they will not be banking on making savings through improving the productivity of their workforce – savings that they will pass on to the council in the form of a lower management fee.

Given that staffing typically represents the single biggest cost (around 75% of the total) it warrants some consideration here. We have undertaken a number of reviews of local authority leisure operations over the past few years. Compared to trust and privately operated facilities staffing costs – almost without exception - proved to be significantly higher, due to a combination of better pay and higher numbers of staff. Going forward – and there is no avoiding it – councils are going to need to address this if they want to retain the scope of their service and continue operating in-house. Up until now it’s an issue they have been unwilling to tackle and they have not been under much pressure to sort it out. It’s been easier to just cut back on repairs and maintenance. That’s just not sustainable.

Regardless of how they make these savings, the fact is that external partners can substantially reduce the cost of the service to the council and can prove this through a demonstrable track record over a number of years.

One of the leading leisure contractors in the UK will tell you that it typically delivers a £200,000 saving to a Council for each leisure centre it takes on (reducing the net cost from £300,000 to £100,000). If they can all demonstrate that the quality of service can be improved and they take on the risk of operating the facility, this makes for a very attractive proposition.

Proponents of in-house delivery will argue that councils are generally more in tune with the needs of their community and are better at delivering sports and arts development programmes. This may well be true and there are some councils we know who do it extremely well. However, leisure officers will have a difficult job convincing their chiefs that this is important in the current climate and whether they are indeed any better at doing it than a third party contractor. And then they will have to make a convincing case to continue funding it.
Even if they can put forward a compelling case for retaining their sports and arts development service in-house, the business of managing the facility is a separate issue. Councils will find a very competitive market out there and contracts are likely to be keenly priced. The fact that all councils who currently manage their leisure and arts facilities in-house will be reviewing their options at the same time is positive; there will be opportunities for like-minded neighbouring councils to club together and jointly offer a larger portfolio of facilities to the market (e.g. Guildford and Woking). The bigger scale opportunities tend to be more aggressively pursued by operators and can help drive a keener price, whilst the councils can share the burden of the procurement costs.

So, in the face of swingeing cuts and competing budgetary priorities local authorities will need to demonstrate a sound business case for continuing to operate their services in-house. In fact, from now on, the onus is likely to be on why councils should not outsource their service.

Chris Marriott is Principal Consultant at Capita Symonds -

air tight regulations

Yianni Spanos on what the recent revision to Part F of the Building Regulations will mean for the construction industry… 

One of the challenges for achieving low energy buildings is to significantly improve their air tightness. Ventilation provisions within the new Building Regulations Part F have been increased for commercial buildings and dwellings with a recommended design air permeability tighter or equal to 5 m3/(h.m2) @50Pa.

Focusing on construction, achieving an air tightness target of 5 m3/(h.m2) is not a difficult task. For many years specifiers have demanded significantly better standards of air tightness in quality buildings to ensure that the occupants enjoy a satisfactory state of comfort and well-being. For air-conditioned buildings, and buildings which aim to be low energy, a maximum air permeability standard of 3 m3/(h.m2) has been set by many building owners and operators.

The major benefits of tighter air tightness standard are far better control, fewer staff complaints and improved energy efficiency. Equally, many clients in the retail sector have adopted lower air tightness standards than required by the Building Regulations, such as 2 m3/(h.m2) for new build projects. Even extensions to existing buildings can routinely achieve an air permeability target of 3 m3/(h.m2).

In this regard, under normal practices for mix-mode and air-conditioned buildings, superstores, museums and storage, mechanically ventilated dwellings, factory and warehouses, the air-tightness should is expected to be better than 2010 amendments. Special consideration should be given to the design of naturally ventilated dwellings, schools, hospitals and naturally ventilated offices, when best practice for those type of buildings can achieve 40% - 60% better air tightness level than the new Part F standards.

The path to routinely achieving air tightness targets is as follows:

• Specify the air tightness target at a very early design stage;
• Specify the air seal line at a very early stage. The inside surface of the structure is usually the airtight surface. The airtight surface should be brought inside rooms which will be ventilated to outside, such as boiler rooms, plant rooms, electrical switch rooms and lift shafts;
• Require air sealing detail drawings from the architect or design and build contractor;
• Consider specifying an air tightness consultant to review drawings;
• Specify that air tightness testing be undertaken by an independent organisation  which is a member of ATTMA, the testing organisation for the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing;
• In liaison with the testing organisation, specify all aspects of the air tightness contract process. Where necessary, specify penalty charges for failures not rectified in a reasonable time-scale;
• Consider specifying an air tightness consultant to inspect the building during the construction process;
• Clearly communicate the requirements to all design and construction parties.

What main contractors and subcontractors need to do to ensure they're not caught out by the changes?

Specialists should have an early involvement and provide support to the contractors in the design and project management process. In some cases, advanced solutions may be required to meet the targets of the 2010 amendments, especially for construction solutions for which it was challenging to pass the 2006 amendments. It also vital that the project management fully understands and ensure co-ordinations of different trades with aspects of the external façade, and especially when structural supports, or building services, pass through a ‘perforated’ façade and external building elements.

With regard to ventilation systems, reference should be made to a new ‘Domestic Ventilation Compliance Guide’ for guidance on installing, inspecting, testing and commissioning ventilation systems in dwellings. For mechanical ventilation systems installed in new dwellings, air flow rates shall be measured on site and a notice given to the Building Control Body. This shall apply to intermittently-used extract fans and cooker hoods, as well as continuously running systems. In addition, the owner shall be given sufficient information about the ventilation system and its maintenance requirements so that the ventilation system can be operated to provide adequate air flow. All fixed mechanical ventilation systems, where they can be tested and adjusted, shall be commissioned and a commissioning notice given to Building Control Body.

What impact the changes will have on finance and profits?

Under Part F 2010, the contractor should have a greater focus on ensuring that the design is delivered according to correct specifications by specialists. Over the last four years, air-tightness levels were in many cases 50%-60% better than Part F 2010 at no additional cost. It is expected therefore that changes will not have an impact on profits when the design follows a proven assessment routine.

Although these changes will not have a fundamental effect on finance, as well as setting out physical performance requirements performance specification for building envelopes, procurement will need to ensure that contractors have the calculation competences and accredited details needed to secure the required air-tightness levels. Projects with many on-site design variations could be subject to greater misalignment with the expected air tightness results and a greater risk to the contractor team charged with delivery.

Dr Yianni Spanos is Associate Director at Capita Symonds.

let's get down to earth...

Malcolm Richards (right) on how rammed earth construction techniques can be used to reduce the energy used in constructing buildings...

Whilst initiatives such as photovoltaics and geothermal energy will help to deliver longer-term energy efficiency benefits, it is clear that they could be usefully supplemented in the more immediate future if the embodied energy in construction materials were reduced.

Research has shown that about ten percent of global CO2 emissions result from cement production, so cutting our dependency on this and other kiln-fired components, such as bricks, could make a big difference.

For some time now I’ve been studying the use of ‘rammed earth’ construction. Rammed earth is based on the compaction of graded soils into formwork to produce an unfired environmentally friendly building material. Rammed earth materials can be also sourced and produced locally, negating the haulage and storage impacts of kiln-fired masonry components and mortars.

Walls produced using rammed earth contain less than one twentieth of the embodied energy of traditional cavity walls. They are more easily returned to the ground when no longer required so the material is borrowed, not stolen. Earth walls have a high thermal mass and act as a heat sink, absorbing heat energy through the day and releasing it into the building as temperatures fall at night. Experiments have shown that rammed earth can actually reduce warm daytime temperatures by 4 or 5 degrees C - equivalent to some cooling systems. At the same time earth buildings stay warmer in cold climates, with internal temperatures unlikely to fall below 140C when occasional external sub-zeros are experienced. Given that half the energy generated in Britain is used to heat or cool buildings, the potential to reduce energy consumption makes earthen buildings an important environmental initiative.

Earth walls control humidity levels within buildings by absorbing excess water vapour and releasing it back when the environment is drier. They also have good sound absorption properties and absorb volatile organic chemicals from the atmosphere, potentially eliminating sick building syndrome. In addition to the normal applications, rammed earth can also be useful in disaster areas as it can be rapidly built using indigenous materials and local labour that requires little training.

Earthen architecture is gaining strength in many parts of the world, including Europe, Australasia and the Americas while building codes for the material are also now being developed, including new seismic design regulations in New Zealand.

Rammed earth is a material that minimises energy input in the construction phase, makes an input into energy consumption and can be returned to the ground when no longer required. It is a material with a viable future and one that won’t (ahem) cost the earth.

Malcolm Richards is a Director of Structures at Capita Symonds.

Free to plan...?

Christian Rogers, Director, Capita Symonds, looks at the government’s big idea of ‘Big Society’…


The ideas for devolving decision making to the local level, especially in terms of planning and housing, as well as the proposed rights for communities to take-on service delivery and increased local financial autonomy, could enable significant efficiencies as well as better quality, more locally relevant services. With the right support and approach, local communities could now be free to plan for all of their local needs as part of a single, joined-up local approach for council, education, housing and health services.


In conjunction with potential overhauls to local government finance, this could enable communities to make real decisions about their futures which can be backed up with the means to deliver - free of Whitehall control.


The spirit of these proposals is to be particularly welcomed for its recognition that lasting and sustainable change is more likely to occur if local people are in the driving seat and own it. Direct community involvement in the planning system could help make the move away from the historical position where people have only engaged in the planning system as objectors, and towards groups with the same determination and enthusiasm for positively planning their communities.

But to make it work, local authorities and their local communities will need new skills and resources to be able to engage this ‘legion of community grass roots capital’ and thus enable local government to play its critical role effectively in making the change happen.


Of course, there is a risk that, if not properly supported, it could lead to a return to the bad old days of local government being the whipping boy for failings at both the micro-local and macro-national level. Some might say that there is also a risk that there will be a balance shift towards smaller scale local regeneration projects and away from the kinds of larger scale brownfield developments that have been seen over the last ten years. This could adversely affect the drive to ‘close the gap’ on the supply of affordable housing which major developments like the Thames Gateway and sustainable urban extensions have been addressing. It may even lead to regeneration funding and control being diverted to more ‘politically popular’ projects.


There is also the need to carefully consider how to balance the potentially conflicting aims of greater direct community involvement and a more streamlined planning system as councils will be covering the cost of even more consultation and needing specialists to properly facilitate this engagement process. The need for specialist support for planning within local communities if the regional tier of planning is removed (i.e. moving from a national planning framework straight to a local council level service) again increases costs and the need for specialist support.

There may not be universal support for these new policies - and the RTPI has indicated it will resist them through negotiation with new ministers - so the danger is that we could end up with little more than smoke and mirrors and little real change.


Overall though, the greater freedom for areas to decide how they want public services to operate could be exciting and efficient, stripping out costly central supervision and local duplication. The separate streams could be drawn together in a model that allows local authorities to fulfil a strong community leadership role that includes coordinating a single plan for all local services developed in a cohesive way, focused on local needs and priorities, providing for not only the delivery of health and education services but also for the housing that the teachers and nurses will need. This would replace the current system where formal plans just implement government targets on housing and are often divorced from spending decisions on schools, GPs, hospitals etc.


Local Authorities would therefore be ‘free to plan’ because they would have both the financial autonomy and the planning autonomy: they would be free to focus on the local priorities that they understand best and to provide genuine community leadership that removes duplication and overhead, delivering better services at less cost.

Capita Symonds students complete BusinessWise

42 students from Capita Symonds have successfully completed the company’s BusinessWise programme, achieving a Postgraduate Certificate in Business Performance Management from the University of Salford.

This is the first group of employees to complete the ground breaking business skills programme, one of the first programmes to be jointly designed and delivered by an employer and a university in the UK.
The knowledge and skills that the graduates have developed during the programme, will be essential now, more than more than ever before, to the continued success of the company...

Successful students attended the graduation ceremony at The Lowry Art and Entertainment Centre in Salford where Craig Kirk from Capita Symonds' Cumbria & North-East business also collected the award for Most Outstanding Student on BusinessWise from Capita Symonds Executive Director Dave Spencer.

Pictured: Craig Kirk, winner of the first ‘Most Outstanding Student Student’ Award for BusinessWise, with Capita Symonds project manager Ann Graves and Dr Ed Doran, University of Salford programme leader

Dave said: “We are delighted that BusinessWise has proved to be so successful. The knowledge and skills that the graduates have developed during the programme, will be essential now, more than more than ever before, to the continued success of the company. We are proud of the commitment that all the graduates have made to BusinessWise and in particular Craig should be congratulated on achieving the Most Outstanding Student award, which is a credit to the work he has put in over the last two years.”

Stuart Wells, Director of Management Development Programmes at the University of Salford, Salford Business School commented: “We are extremely delighted to see the first cohort graduate from this ground breaking programme. The programme is unique in that it is co-developed and co-delivered by Salford Business School and senior staff from Capita Symonds. It offers a substantial grounding in the theory relating to management disciplines combined with business specific skills. This has enabled students to combine learning in both the workplace and the class room. Special praise should go to Craig for the effort and determination he has put in over the course of the programme. He has excelled in his studies and the prize is recognition of his outstanding academic performance.”

23 students that commenced the second cohort of BusinessWise are now half-way through the programme and are on track to graduate in July 2011.

Find out more about BusinessWise.

How the stunning Goodwood Festival of Speed sculpture was made

Capita Symonds’ Structures team provided structural engineering design for the spectacular central sculpture at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The innovative display – sponsored by Alfa Romeo to celebrate the company’s centenary – was designed especially for the event by renowned sculptor Gerry Judah. The structure’s design, which is reminiscent of the car giant’s Quadrifoglio badge and the red livery of its racing cars, features an Alfa Romeo P2 (a P2 won the inaugural Automobile World Championship in 1925) and a 2003 8C Competizione.

Click here to see how this amazing structure was designed and put together.