黑洞社区

A panda in sheep鈥檚 clothing

The Ken Shuttleworth-designed Bamboo Village model - built out of Lego by Ecobuild delegates last week - was a roaring success. The four-towered structure, one of which reached the target height of 2m, was officially 鈥渢opped out鈥� by the Make founder on the final day of the event complete with lights, a smoke machine and Lego pandas.

I hear the pandas - which, in a case of art imitating life, had been extremely hard to come by - were especially popular. One sneaky delegate even tried to snaffle one in her handbag. But Make鈥檚 Justin Lau was having none of it as he chased her down and demanded the safe return of the panda to its rightful Bamboo environment. Her excuse for such flagrant pilfering? 鈥淚 thought it was a sheep.鈥� Oh, well that鈥檚 all right then.

From here to paternity

There鈥檚 nothing quite like a bit of moral support from your parents. Even when you鈥檙e a grown-up. Greg Barker, the minister for energy and climate change, spoke to a packed auditorium at Ecobuild last week and had his own Dad sitting in the audience. The MP stopped to give his father a hug before hitting the stage to deliver his keynote address on Tuesday. Proof then that you鈥檙e never too old to have a friendly, familial face in the crowd. I鈥檓 sure Mr Barker senior was very proud, and delighted to see just how far his son has come on since those nativity plays.

The private life of 鈥�

I鈥檓 glad to see Richard McCarthy playing up to his controversial reputation. At the Ecobuild conference last week, the former top civil servant - who led development of the government鈥檚 divisive planning reforms - acknowledged he had made the 鈥渘asty鈥� move from the public sector to the private sector by joining Capita Symonds last month. The fallout from the move even made the front page of the Daily Telegraph. He described his career as progressing from 鈥渘asty poacher鈥� at developer Peabody, to 鈥済ame keeper鈥� at the civil service, through to 鈥渞eally nasty poacher鈥� at his current employer. Well, we did say he would be one to watch in our January predictions for 2012.

Stepping on toes

Candidate for Twitter storm in a tea cup of the week. Chief construction adviser Paul Morrell created a bit of a stir on the first day of Ecobuild last week by appearing to deliver a stinging rebuke to the UK鈥檚 project managers. Speaking at a panel he said that project managers were frequently 鈥済iven the space on projects to destroy value鈥�. Given that Morrell has previously run one of the oldest and best known UK firm of construction consultants and project managers, Davis Langdon, that seemed quite an admission. After the 黑洞社区 team tweeted the comments, consultant Turner & Townsend seemed personally hurt: 鈥淥uch! We strongly disagree 鈥︹�� ran the company鈥檚 official Twitter account. Morrell later clarified that he had only been referring to certain - unnamed - project managers who 鈥渏ust didn鈥檛 get it鈥� and acted as a barrier between clients and potentially innovative construction teams. Thank God for that. Hell hath no fury like a project manager scorned.