Had to be here
Remember the eclipse last month? Well, Costain boss Alex Vaughn doesn’t. The morning after the night before, my hack was making small talk ahead of his firm’s half-year results. Did he see it and what did he make of it? “I was stuck in the office preparing for this call,” he replied. Oh dear, my man replied a little sheepishly.
Towering ambition
Eric Parry’s One Liverpool Street has completed, and the architect joined developer Aviva Investors and my colleague on a tour. Parry was particularly proud of the fluted, 10m-high cast aluminium pilasters adorning the front of the building, which do indeed look splendid.
There was a good view of the City’s tall building cluster including the half-dismantled stump of St Helen’s on the site of 1 Undershaft – another Aviva/Parry scheme, set to be the City’s tallest on completion. My colleagues are already angling for an invite to that one.
‘Fashion moves fast,’ the company’s email read. ‘Your chauffeur should move faster.’ Not in London traffic it won’t, where the 20mph speed limit is not so much a restriction as an ambition that few fulfil
Step on it
An email arrives letting me know that London Fashion Week returns this month. I’m not sure why and, by the time you read this, it might have returned. Anyway, I was rather taken with the selling point of the firm that had contacted me – a chauffeur company.
“Fashion moves fast,” it read. “Your chauffeur should move faster.” Not in London traffic it won’t, where the 20mph speed limit is not so much a restriction as an ambition that few drivers fulfil.
Room with a view
On a Teams call with a construction industry boss, a colleague admired the impressive sweep of the London skyline from his City office tower, only to notice a pair of binoculars on a stand by the window. Intrigued, she asked what they were for. “Ah,” the industry boss replied with a wry smile, “those are for keeping an eye on site progress,” before panning his laptop camera towards a couple of nearby construction sites.
Must be tempting though to keep an eye on the competition too, surely? But a handy talking point at meetings just as long as clients don’t get too distracted.
Wooly thinking
After multiple heatwaves throughout the summer, the weather has largely returned to being the wet and overcast conditions we are used to in Britain. However, some are clearly struggling to adjust.
One housing chief executive at this week’s Housing Community Summit in Liverpool was caught out by the change in temperature and had to dart out of the conference centre to the shops to buy a jumper as he was too cold. He was later seen sporting a smart black jumper under his suit jacket. It certainly brings a whole new meaning to building fabric.
Flight of fancy
Hiring a last-minute helicopter to Poland on a Tuesday night isn’t easy, as PR boss Bobbie Hough discovered. After a night out at the Housing Community Summit, Hough woke to a call from a helicopter company confirming a flight to Warsaw he had no memory of booking. Once the fog cleared, he realised he had actually tried to arrange it the night before, for the stranded husband of former CIH president Alison Inman, who was delayed at Stansted by flight disruption. Good intentions, quick thinking, and, in the end, no helicopter.
Come all ye faithful
Despite the furore surrounding Nigel Farage’s donations over the summer, the Reform UK conference earlier this month certainly drew in the crowds. A scribe of mine who went along reported huge queues snaking through Birmingham’s NEC on its first day, with attendees apparently waiting for hours because of a tech issue.
Luckily, he happened upon a VIP entrance and simply walked straight in, waved cheerily through by staff who skipped the usual pass-checking protocol, and making do with a bag search that lasted barely two seconds. Not the most reassuring endorsement of the venue’s security arrangements. They could surely have benefited from some of that £5m “gift” which Farage says was meant for his own security costs.
Send any juicy industry gossip to Mr Joseph Aloysius Hansom, who founded Building in 1843, at hansom@building.co.uk
