Bsria’s head of Sustainable Construction, Joanna Harris, will be presenting at the Facilities Management Forum at the Whittlebury Hall Hotel & Spa, Northampton on Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 July.   Facilities management is at the heart of a good workplace. It starts at design of a facility and continues during operation. Harris will discuss how an FM makes a positive impact on workplace productivity and wellbeing. She will discuss how to influence the design of a facility and the environment that can improve workplace wellbeing. Drawing on good examples from recent new build projects that have been monitored and published. Concluding with how on-going management of the workplace environment can promote wellbeing. Harris said: “I am delighted to be speaking at the forum. I’m passionate about facilities that meet the needs of the users and the facilities management industry has a large part to play in improving users experiences. I keen to pass on lessons learned and influence the delegates to engage in the design and construction process much earlier and ensure standards are not let to slide during operation.” The event is a perfect opportunity for industry to share its experience with a pre-qualified audience. The seminars are 45 minutes and are intended to be an education programme for the delegates. Facilities Management Forum is a niche event, with a tailored personalised itinerary of face to face meetings, for full delegate participation.    Source link

©Magali Delporte Ségolène Royal, pictured for the Financial Times at the environment ministry in Paris Ségolène Royal says her bluntness has been a potent weapon as well as her trademark during a three-decade political career that brought her close to becoming France’s first female president. It helped her as early as in 1988, shortly after winning her first seat for the Socialist Party at the age of 35. Ms Royal applied for the vice-presidency of a parliamentary committee investigating the mad cow disease. More On this topic IN Europe “This is great, we’ll have a mad cow in the bureau,” the committee president joked sparking laughter from colleagues. “Better a mad cow than an old pig,” she snapped back. “I already had repartee back then,” the 62-year-old Ms Royal, now energy and environment minister, says with a chuckle. “Nowadays, this man’s behaviour would be impossible in public. But sexism still exists — in politics as much as anywhere else.” Ms Royal’s straight-talking manners, political longevity and experience as presidential candidate — she lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 — are among the traits that have made her a popular figure of French politics. Since being appointed minister in 2014 by President François Hollande, who is the father of her four children, her former partner and university classmate, she has reached a unique position in power — not quite a first lady (Mr Hollande and Ms Royal separated when she ran for president), more than a close ally, yet an independent thinker who speaks her mind. Now, with approval ratings double that of the deeply unpopular French president, she is expected to play an instrumental role in his attempts to win back the hearts of disaffected leftwing voters to get reelected next year. “With her presidential run in 2007, she’s a household name, more so than most of the presidential hopefuls in the right and left,” says Laurent Bouvet, a political sciences professor at Versailles university. “She’s an asset, and Hollande is making sure she’s on his side.” Ms Royal shuts down when asked about Mr Hollande and the next presidential elections: “I’m not saying anything on this.” ©AFP Ségolène Royal earlier this month with François Hollande, French president and her former husband But her appeal to leftwing working class voters and the environmentally minded would help the president mend fences with an electorate who feels betrayed by the government’s midterm pro-business shift, according to Francois Miquet-Marty, a pollster at ViaVoice. “She is vital to unify the different factions of the left,” says Mr Miquet-Marty. Ms Royal defends Mr Hollande’s legislation intended to insert a dose of flexibility in the country’s labour market. It tore the socialist party apart, sparked union protests and forced the government to use decree powers to bypass parliament earlier this week. It was an attempt to “better take into account the constraints of companies while maintaining employees’ rights,” she says. “We need to make companies more agile, but the problem is, they don’t always have virtuous behaviours,” she adds. Ms Royal, who became a member of the socialist party in 1978, when she entered ENA — the elite school that grooms France’s top civil servants and where she met Mr Hollande — criticises the market-oriented approaches pushed by Emmanuel Macron, the 38-year old economy minister who has emerged as a potential rival to Mr Hollande for next year’s presidential elections. She dismisses Mr Macron’s views that too much work protection and regulation have created a world of insiders clinging to their long-term jobs and benefits at the expense of outsiders who struggle on temporary contracts or make up France’s 10 per cent unemployed. “I do not share this vision, which is a bit backward looking, because with this kind of reasoning, you end up resenting the railways workers just because they managed to secure some rights,” she said. “You don’t want all workers to become precarious; ideally you want all the employees with secure jobs.” The daughter of a navy colonel who divorced her mother and left her in charge of eight children, Ms Royal says the rise of the far-right National Front is due to “a fear of identity loss, the disintegration of families, massive migratory movements, climate change.” “It is the fear of losing an idealised past for a future unknown that no one can draw,” said Ms Royal, who chairs the UN’s climate change conference and as such is the guardian of last year’s Paris accord. “It’s the increasing inequalities, with the poor who get poorer, the middle class that stumbles and the wealthy who get wealthier.” Feminism has also been a constant feature in her career. Ms Royal says she always picks the female candidate among two equally skilled applicants. She says she was instrumental in the choice of Isabelle Kocher as head of Engie, the state-backed gas supplier. Ms Kocher is the first French female chief executive of a CAC 40 company. “If she had been a man, it’s not certain that she would be there,” Ms Royal says. “It’s a shame that women who succeed don’t use their success as a symbol for the other women. I’ve always said that I was here too to open doors for women.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

Confidence in the North of England and Northern Ireland catches up with rest of UK Anecdotal evidence suggests practices starting to struggle to attract skilled staff Housing remains the most resilient sector despite slipping back in November The RIBA Future Trends Workload Index fell back this month, standing at +29 in November 2014 compared with +37 in October 2014, but remaining firmly in very positive territory. In terms of geographical analysis the highest balance figures were in Northern Ireland (+50) and the North of England (+46), as some of the areas that were initially the slowest to indicate a return to growth continue to catch up with the rest of the country.  Workload forecast balance figures were positive in all nations and regions of the United Kingdom in November. In terms of practice size, small practices (1 – 10 staff), with a balance figure of +23, stay positive about the outlook for future workloads, but medium-sized practices (11 – 50 staff) with a balance figure of +70 and large-sized practices (51+ staff) with a balance figure of +60 remain even more optimistic about the likely shape of their medium term order books. In terms of different work sectors, the private housing sector workload forecast fell back somewhat to +26 in October 2014, down from +34 in November 2014, but remaining the most buoyant of our sector forecasts.  The commercial sector workload forecast continued its recent steady upward trend, nudging ahead by a single point to stand at +20 in November 2014; clearly a sign that practices anticipate the growth this sector has experienced in 2014 to continue in the New Year. Our participating practices continue to predict stability but little growth in public sector work (balance figure +3) and there remain few signs of any significant increase in the community sector commissions (balance figure +5).   The RIBA Future Trends Staffing Index stands at +11 in November 2014, down a little from +14 in October 2014, but remaining strongly in positive territory, with only 4% of practices predicting a decrease in overall permanent staffing levels over the next quarter.  Medium-sized practices (11 – 50 staff) with a balance figure of +52 and large practices (51+ staff) with a balance figure of +40 continue to be more confident about their ability to sustain higher staffing levels in the medium term. In November 2014, the percentage of our respondents reporting that they had personally been under-employed in the last month was 12%, representing the lowest level since our survey began in January 2009, and suggesting that most of the spare capacity retained within the profession during the recession is now being productively employed.  Prospects for salaried architects going into 2015 look better than they have been for a number of years.  Our practices report that they are currently employing 6% more year-out and post Part 2 students than they were 12 months ago. RIBA Director of Practice Adrian Dobson said: “We are beginning to see the first real evidence of practices encountering difficulties in attracting new staff with the right mix of skills and experience.  This seems to be a countrywide phenomenon and not particularly confined to specific geographical locations.  “There are also reports of an increasing gap between the salary expectations of applicants and potential employers.  At the present time profit margins remain tight for many practices, as a legacy of the long recession which inevitably depressed fee levels, and this is clearly constraining the capacity of practices to increase salary offers.” ENDS Notes to editors 1. For further press information contact the RIBA Press Office: 020 7307 3761 pressoffice@riba.org 2. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members. 3. Completed by a mix of small, medium and large firms based on a geographically representative sample, the RIBA Future Trends Survey was launched in January 2009 to monitor business and employment trends affecting the architects’ profession. 4. The Future Trends Survey is carried out by the RIBA in partnership with the Fees Bureau. Results of the survey, including a full graphical analysis, are published each month at: http://www.architecture.com/RIBA/Professionalsupport/FutureTrendsSurvey.aspx 5. To participate in the RIBA Future Trends Survey, please contact the RIBA Practice Department on 020 7307 3749 or email practice@riba.org.  The survey takes approximately five minutes to complete each month, and all returns are independently processed in strict confidence 6. The definition for the workload balance figure is the difference between those expecting more work and those expecting less. A negative figure means more respondents expect less work than those expecting more work.  This figure is used to represent the RIBA Future Trends Workload Index, which for November 2014 was +29 7. The definition for the staffing balance figure is the difference between those expecting to employ more permanent staff in the next three months and those expecting to employ fewer. A negative figure means more respondents expect to employ fewer permanent staff.  This figure is used to represent the RIBA Future Trends Staffing Index, which for November 2014 was +11   Posted on Thursday 18th December 2014 Source link