Twenty-five years of Structural Survey

Citation

Hoxley, M. (2007), "Twenty-five years of Structural Survey", Structural Survey, Vol. 25 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2007.11025eaa.001

Twenty-five years of Structural Survey

As this year in which the journal celebrates its first quarter century draws to a close, it is appropriate in this volume, to look back over this period and reflect on the progress achieved to date. I have been reading some previous issues recently. This of course, is easy for volumes 12-25 where full text versions are available to subscribers via the Emerald web site. For the earlier volumes however it is not quite so straightforward. I am pleased to say that copies of nearly all of these early issues reside in my University’s library. However inevitably things go missing and it is disappointing that I have not been able to find the very first issue. However the Editorial by Ian Melville in issue 2 of Volume 1 reflects on the positive reader response to that inaugural issue. In those early days the journal was very much written by, and read by practitioners. However a change of publisher mid-way through the journal’s life led to a much greater academic focus being taken. Even if a conscious decision had not been made to head in this direction it is likely that Structural Survey would have developed in this vein anyway. The considerable demands made on practitioners’ time in the modern age mean that very few of them have the time available to undertake any reflective writing. I was APC assessing for the RICS recently and my two fellow assessors (both senior practitioners) were regularly checking their Blackberries for emails throughout the day. In this age of instant communication it is impossible to escape from persistent clients who a few years ago would have to wait several days for a reply by letter to their query. Nowadays they expect an instant response.

If practitioners have less time available to put pen to paper the same cannot be said of academics. Indeed such scribbling is expected of them and career progression is very much tied up with getting published. The last few months have been very busy for research active academics as they polish their submissions for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This is the Government’s current way of apportioning their research funding in each subject area. In this RAE, for the first time, built environment academics will be assessed alongside architects which may lead to some interesting results. In any event it is likely that as in everything else in life, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer, as the available resources are divided amongst the top achieving institutions. One positive aspect of the RAE is that there are definite signs that the professional bodies such as the RICS are far less enamoured of the whole process. These institutions realise that, for instance, a text book about some aspect of surveying practice is of more value to students than some esoteric research paper. Certainly the thing that I am most proud of writing, is my book on building surveys – this gave me far more satisfaction (and indeed was much more demanding) than any of my research papers – or indeed my PhD thesis!

In Ian Melville’s editorial in that second issue he referred to the need for the journal “to embrace a wide field of knowledge … .convinced of the validity of widening the scope of the journal … ” I suspect that this was an early real realisation of the fact that the subject area of “condition surveys” is by itself rather too narrow for a journal to focus on. This is a conclusion I quickly came to when I took over from Tony Poole as the third editor in 1998 (Tony succeeded Ian after the first ten years). In determining whether a paper should be published in the journal, the editorial board, reviewers and I have always followed the principle “will this paper be of interest to building surveyors?” Of course building surveying is a very wide church and not just concerned with condition surveys. I have always been immensely proud to be a Chartered Building Surveyor and when Nottingham Trent University recently awarded me a Chair I was delighted to assume the title of “Professor of Building Surveying”.

As part of my research for this piece I have read Ian’s final editorial and Tony’s first. Both were preoccupied with the economic recession that was taking its toll on the profession – and with the difficulty of getting people to write for the journal. Nothing much has changed there then! Let us hope that the recent signs of a downturn in the housing market (with, for instance, flats being more difficult to sell) is not the precursor of a recession anywhere has deep as that in the early 1990s.

One recent achievement of this journal is its award of CIB encouraged status. The CIB W086 Working Commission on Building Pathology brings together the eminent researchers in this subject throughout the World and will, I hope generate some interesting papers in years to come. This seems a good point to offer my warm congratulations to Professor Peter Barrett of the University of Salford (a Chartered Building Surveyor and my PhD Supervisor) upon his being elected President of CIB. Very well done Peter.

Papers in this issue

It is appropriate at such an important mile-stone in the life of this journal, that most of the papers in this issue should look at very important topics that are likely to concern all building surveyors in the foreseeable future. Two of these are about energy and climate change. Adeyeye, Osmani and Brown’s paper is concerned with the legislative framework of energy conservation while Baiche, Kendrick and Ogden, write about air-tightness in metal clad buildings. Their assertion that far more energy can be saved by improving air-tightness than by continuing to raise insulation levels is an important one. Wilkinson and Morton present a critique of the feminist approach in built environment research. There can be no-one who is any doubt of the need to encourage more women into the built environment professions. I was struck by the sexist language of the early issues of Structural Survey – there seemed to be little or no acknowledgement that a surveyor could ever be female! Of course things have changed a little since then, but there is still a long way to go. Sommerville’s paper on defects in new housing, is an important contribution to what is likely to become an ever more relevant subject as we rush to build many more homes. The other paper in this anniversary issue is concerned with achieving faster curing of concrete (Alan Richardson).

Here’s to the next 25 years!

Mike Hoxley