Editorial

Citation

Hoxley, M. (2005), "Editorial", Structural Survey, Vol. 23 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2005.11023baa.001

Editorial

As I write this at the beginning of February I am just reaching the end of my first experience of that rare academic privilege, the “sabbatical”. This means that my University has relieved me (on full pay) of all teaching and administration duties for an entire semester so that I can concentrate on carrying out research. As well as giving me more time to concentrate on editing this journal I have repeated my PhD data collection in a different economic climate, spent two weeks visiting colleagues at the University of Salford, completed research (with Sara Wilkinson of the University of Melbourne) into the impact of RICS education reforms on building surveying (BS), and successfully applied for funding to carry out further research.

Our building surveying research was funded by the RICS Education Trust and after carrying out a survey of BS Course Leaders, we concluded by recommending that the BS Faculty should consider the following:

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  The impact on future supply of graduate building surveyors of the reforms by careful monitoring of APC registrations.

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  The appropriateness of post-graduate conversion courses which of necessity have a lower technical content than traditional undergraduate degrees courses.

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  Whether the profession wishes to position itself as a technically based profession or as an information manager of the technical aspects of construction.

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  There is a widely held view that the BS profession has prospered because of the willingness of other professions to distance themselves from their technical under-pinning. Does the BS profession wish to follow down the same path?

The Education Trust has given us additional funding to carry out a survey of building surveying employers to ascertain their views on education. The other funding for further research referred to above is to carry out a pilot study of employer mentoring of full-time female students in built environment and engineering at my University – Anglia Polytechnic University (APU). This is part of a Cabinet Office initiative to improve the retention of females in Science, Engineering and Technology subjects in Higher Education. The Government has concluded that UK industry is being disadvantaged (when compared to our competitors) because so many female science and technology graduates go off and do other things with their degrees. My own daughter has recently used her Human Genetics degree to gain access to the Accountancy profession. APU is one of 13 HEIs funded and perhaps not surprisingly I am one of only two males funded. The grantees all attended a workshop at the University of Manchester last week and after lunch the other male left. This led to me being described as the “token male” by one of the other delegates in the afternoon! Seriously though, there is no doubt that the construction and property professions could and should attract far more females into their ranks.

The only downside of the sabbatical is having to teach again after a six month lay-off. Before I rush off to prepare next week’s lectures there is just time to introduce the papers in this issue.

Papers in this issue

Two of the papers have a conservation theme and in particular deal with conservation management plans. Dann and Worthing consider the role that the condition survey has to play in the development of such plans while Jim Smith considers the task of cost budgeting for such plans. He approaches the subject from both a UK and an Australian perspective and brings his experience of acting as a cost consultant in Australia to his interesting paper. Cost, and in particular, “cost-benefit analysis” of the decision to rehabilitate or redevelop housing in Hong Kong is considered by Yiu and Leung. Christina Radlbeck, and her colleagues from the Technische Universität München, argue the case for considering aluminium to be a sustainable construction material when whole life issues are taken into account. I will leave you to decide whether they succeed. The paper on solar passive heating from colleagues at Coventry University is the result of DTI funded research into the impact of solar passive heating on energy savings in housing. This is an interesting example of research being undertaken in partnership with industry (an architectural practice) under the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme.

Mike Hoxley