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Showing posts from October, 2012

At the end of a busy month for CIBSE, President David Fisk asks if we are out of recession and if BIM is destined to be yet another government IT disaster.

October is the month for everything… October is a big month in the Presidential Calendar: joining ASHRAE and IMechE for Graduate of the Year Competition , opening the CIBSE Conference at Olympia, hosting the President’s Awards Dinner, dropping in on the Worshipful Company of Fan makers (as you do) and attending the Construction Industry Council . Meanwhile both my first and second year Masters students arrived on campus to systems engineer. Prestidigitation became Presidigitation. Thank heavens for Construction Advisers The CIBSE Conference opened alongside the Building Services exhibition on a bright autumn morning at Olympia. After a quick ‘ let’s keep it simple’ from yours truly, Paul Morrell, the outgoing Government Construction Adviser gave us his wise 40Mb PowerPoint take on the industry. CIBSE gave him an Armada Cup at my Awards Dinner a little later in the week at the Royal Society. In years of turmoil when Parliament often seemed little more than a rehearsal for th

The road to recovery? More Apple engineering and less loft conversions…

Of the historic events fighting to get into this month’s Presidential Blog - CIBSE September Board, Ofgem Board, Start of Term - all pale into insignificance against the Amazing: the launch of iPhone5 . Otherwise it’s back to work in North Korea and a tolerant CIBSE Board suffers a grumpy President. iPhone5 first. Its only snag (aside from the new connector and Maps App placing my house in the next street!) is that you still can’t remove the cement that was once on your fingers and now on the retina screen. Yet again iPhone isn’t the contractor’s phone of choice. What a massive global market to miss! I’ve still got an old Nokia with a sealed rubber keyboard ( YEN members may need to look ‘keyboard’ up on your iPad) that you could throw into a bucket of plaster with impunity. In that big fat CIRIA book ‘Barriers to Innovation in the Construction Industry’ the thinnest chapter must be ‘Barriers to Using the Mobile Phone’. Before it was invented, how did we ever give clients the