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We have just launched the Built Environment Marketing Awards in association with our sister titles such as The Architect’s Journal, H&B News and AJ Specification.
 
There are 15 categories covering all aspects of marketing and business development and the awards are open to both agencies and in-house marketing teams. The deadline for entries is not until [...]

The £11 million Wrekin ruby has been described as jinxed in a report by the Financial Times.
 
The FT visited the East Sussex home of a significant former owner, South African-born businessman, Trevor Michael Hart-Jones who said “the stone is jinxed”.
 
“It was bad luck and from the moment I bought it everything went wrong.”
 
Mr Hart-Jones, 66, [...]

Spurs are set to save £40 million on the cost of their proposed 60,000 seater stadium thanks to the falling price of steel and cement, the club’s finance director has said.
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’s FD Matthew Collecott told Bloomberg that a planning application was due in “the next few months”.
“The stadium build cost has come down [...]

If you haven’t already, it’s worth having a look at the sustainability research CN conducted with Tarmac.
The research shows that there appears to be at least a widespread acknowledgement of the problem: 64 per cent of respondents thought the issue was a threat to their business.
But the fact that chief executives and chairman were less [...]

Energy companies are asking for £2 billion in ‘state aid’ to kickstart building work on large offshore wind farm projects.
The £3 billion London Array in the Thames Estuary and Npower’s £2.2 billion Gwint y Mor off the coast of Wales are both held off as the cost of building them has doubled in the past [...]

The BBC is getting quite bothered about the “draconian” and “unusually severe” contracts that firms are signing to construct the Olympic venues.
Contractors are not allowed to speak about the projects for up to six years after the event.
Adrian Warner says that the organisers of the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics do not have the clauses, that [...]

The Times has some fantastic coverage of the proposed £15bn Severn Estuary energy schemes.
There is a graphic of all the proposed schemes, with detail on how they would work, here.
Meanwhile Lewis Smith, the environment reporter at the paper, runs through the arguments for and against the schemes on environmental grounds.
The final scheme will not be [...]

The Times reports this morning that £2.4 billion of public sector works are on hold, damaging Gordon Brown’s attempts to accelerate capital projects to deal with the credit crunch.
The paper says that PFI arrangements, among other things, are behind the delays. Using research from Glenigan, the paper updates figures published in CN at the end of [...]

Claims in disputes involving construction companies rose in the third quarter of last year, signalling an end to the decline over the last few years caused by alternative dispute resolution.
There were 32 claims during the third quarter compared to 28 in the second quarter and 29 in the same period in 2007, according to research by law firm [...]

Housebuilder Bellway has been criticised for the size of bonuses due to be paid to senior managers – despite the terrible year the sector had in 2008.
 
The Association of British Insurers said some shareholders were planning to oppose the payouts at the annual general meeting on 16 January.

The company’s pre-tax profits fell 30% in [...]