It is always very productive and a change of scene; to get the Building Tectonics team out of the office together to learn more about particular areas that we work on.  So, on Thursday 14th March we all went on a trip to Kingspan Potton, based in Great Gransden, Bedfordshire who specialise in fabricated timber frame housing. The walls, floors and roof of the houses are fabricated in large panels in their factory and are then taken to site and bolted together to construct a ho

There was a time when architects, builders and the clients were the only people involved in completing small projects, and that was known as the triumvirate of building. On the larger projects, quantity surveyors and mechanical engineering consultants were brought in to compliment the team. As far as I remember, sometime during the 1970’s, the term “project manager” was coined as a new rank of professional acting as an information filter between the client and the architect;

If you’re having work done on your own home or the home of a family member, and it’s not in connection with a business, you’ll be a domestic client. The only responsibility a domestic client has under CDM 2015 is to appoint a principal designer, and a principal contractor when there is more than one contractor. However, if you don’t do this, (as is common practice) your duties as a domestic client are automatically transferred to the contractor or principal contractor. If you

This year has seen an explosion of building work, ask any builder in Milton Keynes and he will probably say that he cannot commit to any new work until half-way through the new year. The construction industry is renowned for these boom and bust cycles. It is very sad that we cannot flatten out the peaks and troughs as it makes it hard on builders to cope with the demand, when just a short while ago they were laying people off and no one was taking on trainees. Our job is desi