Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

This is how I spent mine:

Started Boxing Day morning and finished about an hour ago.

Such is the life of the modern academic.  Works out at roughly 45 minutes per paper, or 11.25 minutes per undergrad question and 15 minutes per postgrad question.  Which is about right when you factor in the breaks necessary to keep the concentration up.  Used a whole pen and a half of (really expensive) red ink!

Now comes the admin involved in processing these marks…

One for my students – a good link on mediation as the first dispute resolution method in construction.

http://constructionlawva.com/personal-thoughts-on-construction-mediation/
(US law, but the principles are transferable)

I took over a project looking at how education institutions can go about collocating in the same physical place to share common facilities and services.  It went well, and here’s the result:

I’ll put a link to the actual document up as soon as I’ve got the final sign-off.

Seeing as I’ve got a research team looking at benefits quantification in the healthcare sector, it’s been really interesting to see two health projects nominated for this year’s Stirling Prize.

Two completely different projects, however.  One – Kentish Town Health Centre – was an innovative NHS building, structured around the emerging “polyclinic” model.  This one was really interesting to me because the client advocated the need for a competent Design Champion.  It seemed like someone was really taking this OGC/DoH design guidance seriously, and the results speak for themselves.  The traditional design challenge of wayfinding had been overcome through symbolism and, above all else, the atmosphere of the building had been carefully managed to make patients feel at ease.

Kentish Town Health Centre

It was really interesting to see the doctors using the new space labelled as the “client” and not the procuring body.  This, plus the input and importance placed on the Design Champion role, made this project the winner for me.  They even had anecdotal evidence suggesting that Evidence Based Design had been realised, as patients were being more open with their doctors because they felt more comfortable and weren’t intimidated by the building, as is the norm.

The second health building was a Rogers building.  This was interesting because the design brief wasn’t complicated: build a Maggie’s centre using the metaphor of the home.  Just an designed and adaptable space seemed to win the judges over to the Rogers design and he won (again).  All very nice.  All very disappointing, to me at least.

Maggie’s Centre, London

What struck me most in the differences between these two healthcare projects was the identity of the client:  the first was the NHS as a public sector client which had taken great efforts to shed its prior design expectations and push for something better.  The second was a private charity client building to an establised brief, with the Architect left free to do what they wanted within that brief.  So we got one branded building and one that really explored its purpose and was well liked, with arguably demonstrable clinical benefits.  Shame the signature building won.

While preparing teaching materials tonight, I caught myself lol’ing at a new JCT SBC/Q clause which arrived with the second Revision over the summer.  This cannot bode well.

Anyway, here it is – introducing Schedule 8 (the new one), cl. 2.1:

Without limiting either Party’s statutory and/or regulatory duties and responsibilities and/or the specific health and safety requirements of this Contract, the Parties will endeavour to establish and maintain a culture and working environment in which health and safety is of paramount concern to everybody involved with the project.

Bonus points to whoever can come up with legally workable definitions of “culture,” “paramount concern” and “everybody involved.” Draw your own conclusions as to this thing’s efficacy!

Finally the mainstream (albeit tech) commentators are waking up to the reality of the “good enough is best” problem and the barriers it creates when trying to diffuse something new into everyday practice.

I first encountered the attitude about eight years ago when working with Architects and Engineers in Amec.  I could show them a new way of resolving a problem that they all agreed existed and had detrimental consequences.  They all took a careful look at what was proposed and the evidence of its benefits from trial applications.  Nearly all accepted that the proposal was a genuine improvement; that their work would be improved from its adoption.  Yet still I encountered the “good enough is best” attitude and existing practice remained unaltered.

So, what is it?  It arises when a practitioner builds their individual faith in a process or technique that they used time and time again and have found to be “fit for purpose.”  Through their experience of using this practice, practitioners may well have become aware that it has problems and appreciate that there must be a better way of doing it.  So, even though practitioners accept that their practices aren’t the best ones possible, they stick with “what they know.”  Inertia is immense.

Basically, practitioners are reluctant to throw away their investment in what they know.  Moreover, in the industry climate of litigation and dispute, they’re not willing to put their head above the parapet to – as they conceive things – risk their reputation and their professional indemmnity insurance.  Of course, these risks aren’t real, because the innovation in the new practice has already been done by those who created it and proved that it works.

What dissappoints me a little about the recent mainstream recognition of this issue is that they’re not identifying the source of its characterisation.  This has been known about for ninety years, viz:

That the increases in production under scientific management have not been secured at the expense of quality would seem proved, if proof were needed, by the permanence both of those increases and of the firms which have secured them, and will be questioned by no one acquainted with the facts. As a minimum, the maintenance, at least of the engineer’s “good-enough-is-best” quality, must be the first concern of those who expect fully and permanently to benefit by modern methods of management. It has remained largely for the time study man and the instructor, supported by proper quality bonus and thoro inspection, however, to prove that as between speed and quality there is not only no intrinsic irreconcilability, but indeed that with intelligent handling an improvement in quality usually accompanies increase in speed. Just why this is so may be left largely to the psychologists -we are here dealing simply with the abundantly proved fact.

Farquhar, H.H. (1919). “Positive Contributions of Scientific Management” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 33(3), pp. 466-503

I have only ever been able to overcome the attitude by engaging futures users in the development of the new technique; an approach that – ironically – does expose them to risk from its initial uses.  I haven’t been able to crack the good enough is best mentality.  I don’t think anyone has.  Although those looking at the social diffusion of innovations would argue otherwise, I personally believe such innovations are really adopted when there is a particular resonance between the new idea and a need for it.  In these situations, practitioners would have found their existing approaches unworkable in changed circumstances: a markedly different situation than having something that works “just fine” but could be better.  Even though each practitioner accepts that it’s not the best, it’s the best for them.