Architecture remains a profession where practitioners strive to ‘make a difference’ using the vehicle of innovative design. In November the RIBA will present a one-day symposium examining design practice as research, featuring a host of speakers active in areas such as social change, housing, health, the environment and technology.

The event has been convened by Katherine Heron, head of architecture at the University of Westminster, who has given the event an international aspect by including Professor Leon van Schaik of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Richard Blyth of the University of Tasmania among the contributors.

During the symposium RIBA vice president for education Simon Allford will present the first annual RIBA President’s Research Awards for outstanding PhD research and for outstanding academic based research. A call for next year’s awards will also be announced.

Further details of ‘Making the difference: design practice as research,’ which takes place at the RIBA on 24 November 2006, is at

http://www.architecture.com/go/Events/Events_2623.html

An opportunity to tell the government exactly what you think about Building Regulations ahead of the government’s promised overhaul of the system is currently being offered on the DCLG website. Taking the form of an online forum, the consultation exercise is part of a scoping study that has been commissioned to give the DCLG an independent view of what type of reforms are needed.

The Practice Department is encouraging architects to make their views known on the forum at http://forum.communities.gov.uk/achievingbuildingstandards which will be open until 13 December 2006.

The RIBA submitted its own detailed proposals for Building Regulations reform at the end of August (see Practice Bulletin 363), headed by a call to co-ordinate all building performance criteria into a revised and improved Building Regulations system. Key concerns of the RIBA are the increasing weight of piecemeal revisions and the recent trend towards overlapping of controls, particularly when exercised through planning.

The RIBA Practice Policy Paper, Improving the Building Regulations, is available at http://www.riba.org/fileLibrary/pdf/improving_building_regulations.pdf

Far from being the driving force behind new offsite construction solutions, architects are criticised as being too wedded to traditional construction techniques in what is claimed to be the first industry-wide survey of offsite construction prospects. And the people pointing the finger are contractors.

The survey, published this week in Contract Journal, was carried out by offsite consultant Mtech, and focused on contractor attitudes towards offsite methods and the emerging trends. One of the key findings was that contractors now see themselves as the main decision makers over whether to go offsite, in contrast to the conventional view that leading-edge clients and their design consultants are driving the process forward.

The companies surveyed suggested that only 16% of decisions to use offsite technologies are being directly influenced by the client. Instead, more than half said that decisions are being dictated by the nature of the project, while almost one third of companies said that the decision would be influenced by corporate strategy.

A majority of the companies also reported that a senior executive at board level has responsibility for offsite constructions, while 39% said that they had a specialist director or manager responsible for offsite technology and innovation.

One of the unexpected trends emerging from the survey was the number of companies that suggested that architects should be taking more of a lead and not leaving contractors to discuss offsite alternatives with a client and then translate existing designs to accommodate an offsite solution.

Speed of construction and safety issues, were by far the most frequent considerations when choosing to go offsite, according to respondents, with architects coming in for criticism again over the contractors’ need for speed. The criticisms focused on architects’ failure to appreciate the value of an early ‘design freeze’, without which the advantages of offsite construction are compromised.

The professional indemnity insurance market is reported to be as ‘soft’ (cheap) now as it has been for several years, with premiums in steady decline since 2003. Giving a RIBA business masterclasses on risk management, PI consultant Roger Flaxman said that the industry consensus is that 2007 PII rates are likely to fall again next year by up to 15%.

A traditional indicator of PII premium directions is the solicitors’ market, which tends to set the pace for other sectors; the market expectation here is for general reductions of up to 20% across the profession.

For the time being the PII market is flush with money looking to underwrite insurance risk, so competition is fierce and premiums are falling. The big question is when will the PII market turn – when insurance markets do turn the corrections can often be rapid.

Flaxman reports that the majority of PII underwriters already believe that the time has come to increase prices, which are low when set against rising levels of claims. However no-one wants to be the first to make the move.

There is also increasing evidence that PII service is suffering as premiums continue to be slashed to acquire market share, leaving architects’ claims resisted by insurers and in some case rejected altogether.

As a risk management and PII consultant, Flaxman argues that the best strategy for practices is to seek specialist advice to find the best combination of broker and insurer to meet a practice’s needs. There are currently 38 insurers specialising in PII in the UK and some 25 firms of specialist brokers. It is quite possible, argues Flaxman, for a practice to take advantage of a soft market to manage future costs when premiums will inevitably rise.

An independent PII consultant can also provide an assessment of the ‘risk gap’ faced by a practice, particularly when it is considering changing insurers, and how this can be reduced by the best choice of insurance deal. As Flaxman points out, the secret of effective PII cover is not found in the description of what a policy covers, but in exclusions and restrictions that might not be explicit.

Flaxman Partners’ latest professional indemnity insurance market report is at http://www.flaxmanpartners.co.uk/main/services.php?dbcontent=Indemnity_Insurance

They have been four years in the writing, but the draft revised CDM regulations have finally been approved by the Health and Safety Commission. The Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) is expected to be issued in the new year ahead of introduction on 6 April, when it will be goodbye Planning Supervisor and hello to the CDM Co-ordinator.

Presented as a single package, the new regulations combine CDM regulations, ACoP and the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations in a bid to unify the construction health and safety regime. The commission reports that most of the proposed changes have been welcomed by the industry, although the door has been left open for comments on the few remaining contentious issues.

No new duties are imposed on clients, the Commission stressed this week. Rather, the new rules make explicit what clients should already be doing under existing legislation.

There are new duties for designers, however. The regulations make clear that designers have a duty to eliminate hazards and reduce remaining risks, so far as is reasonably practicable. Secondly, there is a new duty to ensure that any workplace they design complies with the relevant sections of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

And there is the imminent demise of the Planning Supervisor, who will be replaced by the CDM Co-ordinator. This new duty holder will provide the client with advice, co-ordinate the planning and design phase and prepare the health and safety file. Again, the Commission says that issues surrounding the role of this new figure have largely been resolved.

Changes in the client role are described as ‘enhanced’ rather than new, reflecting the fact that the new rules make existing requirements more explicit. There will be a primary duty to ensure that arrangements made by other duty holders are in place and sufficient, and clients must instruct any contractors they appoint how much time they have allowed for the planning and preparation of construction work.

Formal provision allowing the appointment of Client’s Agent and transfer of CDM liability is removed from the draft regulations - one area that the Commission says remains contentious.

Domestic clients’ duties are unchanged (the above changes do not apply) and there is little substantial change for primary and other contractors, other than a duty to tell those they appoint how much time they have allowed for health and safety planning and preparation before work commences.

A summary paper is at http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/hsc/meetings/index.htm and new, simplified guidance aimed at clients and SMEs is in the pipeline.

While the debate about the merits of the Planning Gain Supplement (PGS) versus the ‘roof tax’ rumbles on, the Housing Corporation has launched a new toolkit aimed at negotiating Section 106 agreements, which remain one of the key mechanisms for delivering affordable housing.

The new assessment system, known as the Economic Appraisal Tool, is designed to help all sides reach agreement more quickly, both on the level of finance that should be offered by developers and the amount of social housing grant required to make developments viable and sustainable.

The toolkit was commissioned by the Corporation from property agents GVA Grimley and Bespoke Property Group with an eye on Kate Barker’s forthcoming Review of Land Use Planning and the Treasury’s decision on whether to press ahead with its plans for PGS.

Launching the toolkit, the Corporation’s deputy chief executive, Steve Douglas, said that applying the new appraisal approach would also help the Corporation to better measure the value of its investments on Section 106 sites.

The Economic Appraisal Tool consists of an Excel spreadsheet model and a user manual, both available to download at http://www.housingcorp.gov.uk/eat

The ‘good practice’ requirement for all replacement windows to be fitted with trickle ventilators, as set out in Part F of the Building Regulations, was hastily withdrawn last week after the DCLG admitted getting its sums badly wrong on the cost to industry.

Doubts about the measure first emerged at a NBS seminar on ventilation in September, when the DCLG’s Buildings Division admitted to ‘a bit of a problem’. The problem was that the financial impact to industry had been estimated at £8m a year, while the Glass and Glazing Federation put the figure at ten times that amount.

The Approved Document for Part F calls for trickle ventilators in replacement windows only where the original windows had them until 1 October 2006, after which date all replacement windows were to have them (paragraph 3-4 in Approved Document F, 2006 edition). This guidance was officially withdrawn by the DCLG on 2 October 2006.

Instead the DCLG has accepted the offer of the Glass and Glazing Federation to produce new good practice guidance that will take on board industry views. The DCLG added that the new guidance should be in place as soon as possible.

Another major piece of employment legislation came into force this week, although aspect of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations are likely to generate more deliberate resistance than the new fire safety regime.

Key points of the new regulations are that employers should not permit age discrimination in areas of recruitment, promotion and training, should not set or maintain any unjustified retirement age policy for those under 65. The age limit for unfair dismissal claims and redundancy rights has also been removed.

New rights for employees include the opportunity to request to work beyond retirement age (a request the employer is bound to consider), and at least six months notice to be given prior to any planned retirement date.

In a profession where practitioners under 40 are still regarded as ‘young’ and some at 65 are just getting into their stride, the employment concerns are not typical of UK businesses as a whole; other sectors are more likely than architecture to challenge the new regulations - as is already happening in the courts. The new age of anti-ageism has clearly arrived, however.