88 Wood Street, London - Stressful City Office Design

Keeping up standards - the risk of ‘vendor capture’ Peter Campbell has written, presumably from Australia, but his e-mail address is not specific. He says: A problem with standards, which has led to comments in the USA, is the ‘vendor capture’ of standards or, perhaps, of their committees. It would be very surprising if manufacturers and other interested parties did not take the opportunity to use standards committees and their standards as an indirect marketing tool.

When I spoke to Martin Milner at TRADA (the Timber Research & Development Association), he had just returned from a weekend meeting with his ‘Class of ’78’, exchanging experiences with his former sixth form school mates. It had made him think what had attracted him to become an engineer. He said: ‘I think it’s in the blood. An engineer wants to create and make things happen. I was a meccano enthusiast. I wanted to make things work.’ Kathy Stansfield

Mr R. Hickman You were talking about the design team manager who wasn’t the design team coordinator. What particular skills do you think that person should have or group of people should have?