黑洞社区

Bricking it

黑洞社区 proved that Lego isn鈥檛 just for kids this Christmas (pages 26-30), as we set various professional construction teams the challenge of 鈥渂uilding the recovery鈥� out of the ubiquitous plastic bricks. The Lego company itself has also been busy building during the festive season. Punters can see Santa and his sleigh pulled by nine Lego reindeer in London鈥檚 Covent Garden, while at Legoland Windsor there is a 26ft Christmas tree made out of 300,000 bricks. The tree took six modelling experts four weeks to construct, with the final sections having to be manoeuvred into place using a cherry picker crane. Just imagine what our teams could have created had we given them four weeks and the right equipment.

Planning in a winter wonderland

Thank you to all those who have sent us Christmas cards this year. A particularly big shout out to Liz Male of PR firm Liz Male Consulting, who, as per tradition, has sent the most inspired construction-related card of the festive season. With the election ominously close next year, Liz has sent a tongue-in cheek 鈥淐hristmas Manifesto鈥�. Pledges include HS3, a fast rail link from Leeds to Lapland, and the rebranding of Crossrail to 鈥淣ot Cross At Christmas Rail鈥�. The card also recommends a radical new housebuilding programme 鈥� HHH4H or 鈥淗o, Ho, Ho for Homes鈥� 鈥� whereby all housing construction is outsourced to elves. It gets my vote! Get building, my pointy eared minions!

Blazing saddles

Cycle to Mapic, little sister to the annual Cycle to Cannes, which is done in time for the Mipim property conference, involves a number of the industry鈥檚 cycling nuts biking to the Mapic retail property conference, also held in Cannes. This year鈥檚 ride was held over three days and 450km from Milan to Cannes between 16-18 November and took in thunderstorms, road closures and detours. The organisers achieved a final sponsorship total of 拢20,000 for a number of charities, including children鈥檚 charity Coram. Huzzah! Congratulations to all involved.

Absent friends & a really big train set

Spare a thought over the festive season this year for the 11,000 engineers who are being mobilised to upgrade parts of the rail network on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. An army of engineers take advantage of this sleepy period to build station facilities, platforms, flyovers, junctions and thousands of pieces of equipment. This year is Network Rail鈥檚 biggest ever end-of-year investment programme and includes major works at London Bridge and Reading stations. Santa hats off to all of those involved.

Virtual reality

Boffins at contractor Costain have found a way for Google to help them upgrade the A556 dual carriageway in Cheshire. The firm鈥檚 BIM technician James Heaton has devised a method of exporting the road scheme鈥檚 3D model to Google Earth, allowing members of the project team to view and share information that is overlaid over the 3D map. Whether or not this will help Google calculate better directions for people travelling in the area once the road upgrade is complete is unclear - we can but hope, my friends.