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Electric shock

Chancellor Phillip Hammond鈥檚 plan to invest in driverless cars, announced in the Budget last week, has won backing from unlikely places at sustainable construction event Ecobuild. After delivering his annual planning rant, chair of Berkeley Homes Tony Pidgley spoke out at his disappointment that the vision of the future he imagined a decade ago, with electric cars zipping around the capital, has failed to materialise. Speaking at the conference, he said: 鈥淲hen we did our first development in Chelsea we put space for five [electric cars] in, I can鈥檛 believe they aren鈥檛 in use today.鈥�

Could it be magic?

With a new devolution agreement under his belt and developers signing up for higher affordable housing targets, you could say that mayor of London Sadiq Khan has a magic touch at City Hall. However, incoming RIBA president Ben Derbyshire went one further at Ecobuild last week with his assertion that Khan has a crack team of magicians beavering away at City Hall. Addressing the audience, Derbyshire said he welcomed Khan鈥檚 ability to clear out the 鈥渧oodoo鈥� of viability assessments, saying 鈥淲e [RIBA] endorse your decision to have your own team of witch doctors looking at the decisions. The whole process is pretty complicated.鈥�

A tonne of bricks

Mace, my spies tell me, is still coming to terms with losing out to Lendlease for the job to build the new Google HQ at King鈥檚 Cross. My advice is to move on and the firm is no doubt eyeing the next high-profile job to get its hands on. Now, let me think, what sort of job could that be? High-profile client? Tick. High-profile architect? Tick. Lots of bricks? Tick. It can only be Chelsea鈥檚 new stadium scheme by Herzog & de Meuron, which is expected to use six million bricks. Mace must fancy its chances given it worked with the same architect on its brick-heavy Tate Modern extension. That said, Multiplex, Sir Robert McAlpine and, yes, Lendlease will surely have something to say about that.

English, but not as we know it

Oh dear, how not to do PR.

A press release arrives announcing that a firm called Liquid Management Solutions has won a deal at Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be the 鈥渇uel management partner鈥� of the Kier/Bam JV at the site. More garbled jargonese I have never seen (and I鈥檝e seen a lot). What caught my hack鈥檚 eye was the threat of legal action if any attempt was made to turn this into plain English. 鈥淭he copy in this press release,鈥� it warned, sternly, 鈥渃annot be edited as this has gone through corporate communications at EDF Energy in order to gain permission to be released to the public. Any failure to comply will mean legal action may be undertaken 鈥︹��

We would treat you to the press release in its full glory here, but frankly, we just don鈥檛 dare 鈥�

Double date

It鈥檚 been Cheltenham Festival week this week, the annual jump racing spectacular when swaths of the construction industry part with huge sums of money in punts in no way influenced by the amount of Guinness consumed. Cenkos analyst Kevin Cammack said he鈥檚 been busy studying the form with the help of an Irish friend. He added: 鈥淗e told me he was secretly seeing a pair of twins. Blimey, I said, that鈥檚 a bit risky. Can you easily tell them apart? Oh yeah, he said, no problem there. Cindy has blonde hair and Dave has a dark goatee beard.鈥� I think Kevin should get his coat.