Ironic "construction manager of the year" award.

I love the Alan Turing Building, home of the School of Mathematics at Manchester. It is designed to maximize chance encounter and people therefore run in to each other and stand around talking about mathematics. Just as it was intended.

But like many construction project in the UK it is let down by lack of attention to detail. My PhD students have been in a room that is for most of the time too cold as cooled air is blown in. Rather ironically negating the value of the solar panels on the roof. Other rooms suffer from basic errors of control theory in their heading and ventilation.

Only now, a year and a half after we moved in, is sound insulation to be installed in the walls. Turns out they forgot to put it in at the time!

Just minor niggles you might say in an otherwise great building. However I read that Tony Grindrod has been nominated for Construction Manager of the Year for his work on the Alan Turing Building. So the state of the construction industry in the UK must be really bad. Just imagine the problems of the projects managed by less celebrated construction managers!