THE COASTAL ISSUE05/19

®

HARNESSING TIDAL ENERGY 10 / PORTS INVESTMENT: A MATTER OF CONTROL 16 / THREE WAYS TO BEAT FLOODING 28

Do we need to rethink coastal development? 22

MODUS 05/19

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HISCOX RICS R&E GATE FOLD 3pp V8 AW.indd 2-3 04/04/2019 17:31

Between now and 2035, the consultant McKinsey & Co

predicts that $3.7tr a year will need to be invested in

infrastructure globally, just to keep pace with economic

growth. Yet, as you will see from this edition of Modus,

from flood and coastal defences to ports and tidal energy, national

budgets are struggling to fund this volume of new infrastructure.

Billions of people in cities across the world will increasingly rely upon

private investment to prosper in the 21st century. Our profession must

work to ensure that this private capital not only fuels economic growth,

but also social and environmental progress. The question is: how?

Thanks to our work developing international construction and

property measurement standards, the way in which we collect and

produce data relating to the built environment is constantly evolving.

Crucially, these standards are enabling us to collect more consistent

behavioural and environmental information relating to our built assets.

The next step is analysing this data to gain deeper insights into asset

performance and use. This will allow us to produce more sophisticated

valuations of assets, improve the ability of the market to make pricing

decisions and inform the future design of buildings.

Our profession will need to consider how these advances in data

collection and processing power will transform the real estate and

infrastructure investment market. Most importantly, we must anticipate

how we can capitalise on this change to ensure that the built

environment meets the challenges of the 21st century. future.rics.org

Views expressed in Modus are those of the named author and are not necessarily those of RICS or the publisher. The contents of this magazine are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without the prior permission of the publisher. All information correct at time of going to press. All rights reserved. The publisher cannot accept liability for errors or omissions. RICS does not accept responsibility for loss, injury or damage or costs that result from, or are connected in any way to, the use of products or services advertised. All editions of Modus are printed on paper sourced from sustainable, properly managed forests. This magazine can be recycled for use in newspapers and packaging. Please dispose of it at your local collection point. The polythene and paper in this pack are recyclable. The polythene wrap can be recycled at carrier bag recycling points.

FOR RICS Stephanie Bentley RICS, Parliament Square, London SW1P 3AD

FOR SUNDAY Editor Oliver ParsonsArt Director Sam Walker Deputy Editor Andy Plowman Designer Katie Wilkinson Creative Director Matt Beaven Account Director Karen Jenner Head of Recruitment Sales Sam Gilbert Senior Account Manager James Cannon Production Manager Michael Wood Managing Director Toby Smeeton Repro F1 Colour Printer Walstead SouthernPrint Cover Image István Szugyiczky

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EB1061577_VCUK_Affinity_Q2_XC60_RICS_200x265.indd 1 05/04/2019 14:56

INTELLIGENCE

EXPERIENCE

FEATURES

What we can learn from … / … using blockchain to make home owndership more affordable

How to … / … futureproof our workspaces, as told by those responsible for them

Opinion / Tim Oldman on the importance of employee-focused workspaces

News, events and notices /

Chartered territory / Who’s responsible for making sure new housing is socially inclusive?

Way to go / Cadogan’s Jane Henshaw MRICS on managing a 300-year-old estate

What if? / Building new homes to a minimum space standard is a good idea, isn’t it?

06

08

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36

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50

Breaking the waves / With a few notable exceptions, generating electricity from the motion of the sea has failed to catch on. Is the tide finally turning?

10 16Port without authority / Who owns a country’s major ports is now a political question as much as an economic one. Is the investment worth the trade-off?

22 28The coastal erosion conundrum / When it comes to building on our coastlines, how do we balance development with defence?

Water world / Profiling three projects that show how the built environment is providing solutions to a world in which flooding is a part of life

I N T E L L I G E N C E

Tokenised home ownership / Workplace productivity /

Social inclusion in new housing /

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G I M M E S H E L T E RA real estate application that enables buyers and sellers to do deals over a blockchain-based network promises to make purchasing a house as simple as touching your smartphone screen. Developed by New York-based ShelterZoom, the app runs on a Ethereum-based encrypted blockchain ledger that gives sellers, vendors and agents transparent online access to all offers and acceptances in real time. Property titles, mortgages, legal and home inspection documents can also be accessed via the platform. All documents are electronic and use a participant’s blockchain key as a signature.

C R Y P T O K E N Y A The Kenyan government is looking to use blockchain on an affordable housing project to help manage funds and restore the trust of citizens wary of corruption related to land acquisition. Local news outlet the Star reports that the government wants to build 500,000 homes, using six billion Kenyan shillings a month (about $59,000) from the National Housing Funding, paid for by citizens who contribute 1.5% of their salaries, with match funding from their employers. Blockchain’s immutable ledger will prove ownership of the properties and allow data to be stored securely.

B L O C K C H A I N B O N D SBerkeley, California, is set to become the first municipality worldwide to apply blockchain to public finance. The city council has approved a pilot programme to use the technology to issue micro-bonds of $10 to $25 to raise funds for community projects, including affordable housing. The pilot launched at the end of 2018, focuses on raising money for a fire engine, which, if successful, could scale up to funding for affordable and homeless housing, or managing internet-of-things applications such as connected city vehicles and street lighting.

Millions of city dwellers across the world are resigning themselves to a lifetime of rent, unable to get a foot on the housing ladder due to spiralling property prices. Housing cooperative Doma is proposing a more sustainable alternative, based on the concept of shared ownership in a secure blockchain-powered network. Users – or “dwellers” – pay a monthly fee for equity shares in the network, instead of the physical asset, giving the stability of home ownership and the flexibility to move between different properties. Similar to a mortgage, as the equity increases, the fees gradually reduce over time.

Doma was set up by former students of Moscow’s Institute for Media, Architecture and Design. Its co-founder, architect Maksym Rokmaniko, explains: “We are building a community of people who understand that housing can be both an asset and a service. We want to reverse-engineer the system so that the user pays to live somewhere and generate equity without having to worry about saving up to buy an apartment. The most important factor is to reduce their spending.”

The platform is still in development, but the plan is to purchase housing units in urban areas that have experienced a dramatic growth in rental prices. A pilot on a property in either Berlin or Kiev, involving local users already signed up to the network, is slated to launch this summer. In the absence of banks, conveyancers and mortgage agreements, the system would be powered by blockchain, using smart contracts to keep track of each user’s share of equity on the network. The decentralised system would provide every stakeholder with transparency of each transaction. Rokmaniko says: “The key benefit of using blockchain is the security of transactions, which are stored in a decentralised ledger that’s impossible to alter or override. As with traditional real estate, the equity transfer must be done via a trustworthy interface, and blockchain is one of the most secure methods.”

However, there are legal obstacles to overcome, as most cities are governed by laws that prevent the use of smart contracts to transfer property or shares – Berlin and Kiev are exceptions. And questions remain over the public’s willingness to engage with the concept – many people will be wary of a system they see as “intangible” and based on investments in a decentralised network.

“We have a community of supporters and an initial test case, the plan is to keep showing people precedents of it working in practice to build support in the longer term,” Rokmaniko concludes.

Find out more about the impact that advances in technology are having on our profession at rics.org/surveyingtechnology

CHAIN REACTION: THREE OTHER BLOCKCHAIN-BACKED REAL ESTATE INITIATIVES

W H A T W E C A N L E A R N F R O M …

A Moscow-based proptech startup has developed an affordable model for shared home ownership based on a blockchain network of “dwellers”, smart contracts and accumulated equity, writes Stephen Cousins

N E W D I G S O N T H E B L O C K

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In an age where products and services have become commoditised, memorable experiences are everything. They turn the everyday, the “just OK” into something much more powerful – something that people will pay more for, and will become much more loyal toward.

Brands such as Apple, Sonos and Uber offer more than just convenience; they provide customers with a journey and a connection. Open the beautiful packaging of your new iPhone, or experience the cashless smoothness of using an Uber, and you’re seeing this in action. And just as the consumer world continues to morph into a conduit of experiences, the business world has witnessed a seismic shift in expectations on the part of employees.

The business-to-consumer societal shift has reset the employer-to-employee relationship, and employees are starting to judge internal service levels based on what they can get externally. And yet, workplaces are not keeping up.

Fifteen years ago you went to work and found better IT, furniture and coffee than you had at home. These days, most of us are able to have a better conversation via FaceTime than we can over the office’s second-rate teleconferencing system. Our work computers are slow, with software that seems intent on actively stopping us from doing our jobs, while our own laptops perform with metronomic efficiency. As for the kitchen facilities, many of us would today rather head for the nearest Starbucks.

As a result, real estate teams now have more things to think about if they hope to create an experiential workplace that ticks the modern-day employee’s many boxes.

Experience is, by definition, subjective. But an employee’s perception of their experience is very much their reality at that point in time. And their opinion of their employer – and therefore to a great extent their motivation levels and productivity – is grounded in those perceptions.

We have to find a way of understanding what governs employee sentiment if we

are to provide workplace solutions that surpass employee needs, wants and desires, especially in the face of fierce competition.

As we have found in our work assessing more than 3,500 workplaces for the report The Workplace Experience Revolution, there are countless examples of how this is manifesting on the ground. For example, one client with similar-sized buildings across its global property portfolio delivers a virtual IT helpdesk in some locations and a face-to-face solution in others. The proportion of employees satisfied with the virtual service is half that of the face-to-face helpdesk.

This example is not isolated. The virtual helpdesk may have offered the cheapest, most efficient solution, but it was not the customer-centric solution. While reducing cost within one part of the business, the virtual helpdesk has negatively impacted a form of value that is much harder to measure than hard currency, but is often ultimately worth a great deal more.

This points to value engineering too often engineering out value for the employee – because the things that go first are the very things that employees are measuring their experience against.

We must develop a deeper detailed understanding of the nuanced impact of workplace services on the engagement and performance of the employee. A positive workplace experience shouldn’t be an “add on” or a “nice to have”. It should be front and centre of any workplace strategy.

Download Leesman’s Workplace Experience Revolution at leesmanindex.com/research, and visit rics.org/natureofwork to read the World Bank’s Changing Nature of Work report

“A POSITIVE WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE SHOULDN’T BE A ‘NICE TO HAVE’”

O P I N I O N : B E T T E R W O R K P L A C E S

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MAY 2019 / MODUS / 9

Following reports of children in the social housing element of a London apartment block being denied access to the scheme’s on-site playground, we asked Twitter who should be responsible for ensuring mixed- tenure housing is socially inclusive. It is clear from the responses that a joined-up approach is required.

C H A R T E R E D T E R R I T O R Y

#RICSMODUS ON TWITTER

@CONSTRUC RAINBOW8 AprilA rainbow edition of #RICSModus this month. Now that’s my kind of professional institution … Our industry is all about people, and we have some brilliant people who design, construct and run amazing buildings.

@HAYDON20113 April

I like this survey, but the real question is what interest groups have been at work, this includes the cabinet office

@GWILSON9015 MarchInteresting reading in #ricsmodus about infrastructure and the career paths within.

@MARK_HURRELL15 MarchIf any other sector ran on the same business model [as infrastructure], we’d be in a world of trouble. Time to harness tech to deliver on time and within budget #infrastructure #ricsmodusIL

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GREEN ENERGY

MAY 2019 / MODUS / 11

Tidal power has the potential to deliver reliable renewable energy, 24 hours a day. Can we ever build the infrastructure to make it work?

WORDS BY DAVID ADAMS

ILLUSTRATION BY KAROLIS STRAUTNIEKAS

Renewable energy will overhaul fossil fuels as our primary source of electricity within the next 20 years, according to a rather surprising source: the oil company BP. Research

it published in February 2019 suggests that by 2040, wind, solar and other renewables will provide 30% of the world’s electricity.

But if wind and solar are to provide a greater share, they will need support from more advanced energy-storage technologies, because the sun is not always shining and the wind does not always blow. This is one reason why another potential source of renewable energy may be in use on a larger scale by 2040 – a remarkably reliable one, to boot – albeit one that has proved very difficult to harness on a large scale up to this point: the tides of the sea.

“Tidal energy has the massive benefit of being completely predictable,” says Alisdair McLean, executive director of Canada’s Offshore Energy Research Association (OERA). He notes that although tidal power would also need to be supported by energy-storage technology, that energy would only ever need to be stored for around six hours, until the tide turned, whereas it may need to be stored for longer periods to support wind and solar.

But deployment of both wind and solar power has accelerated hugely in recent years, helping to ensure that costs associated with these energy generation methods has fallen significantly. By contrast, use of the various techniques and technologies used in different forms of tidal energy generation are far less widespread, and few have been used in a genuinely large-scale commercial project – yet. Were such a project to be constructed, costs would be much higher than for a project using wind or solar.

There is certainly a lot of energy available in the sea, in theory. The EU estimates that 100GW of marine/tidal energy generation capacity could be in operation around the globe by 2050, equating to about 100 conventional power stations.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to exploit tidal energy. Tidal range energy projects use hydropower turbines, built into tidal lagoons or barrages. The other method, tidal stream energy generation, uses arrays of individual devices, either attached to the sea bed or floating in the water. Progress towards construction of large-scale projects of either kind has been slow for three main reasons: the engineering challenges involved in using the tide to generate electricity, availability of finance; and the direction of government policy.

One recent example of government policy turning against tidal energy was the June 2018 decision by the UK government not to support construction of the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project in Wales, a planned tidal range facility backed by the devolved Welsh government. Construction of the lagoon would have cost £1.3bn, but the 16 turbines housed within a 9.5km breakwater would have added 320MW of generating capacity to the UK’s electricity grid; enough to power 155,000 homes.

The developer seeking to build the lagoon, Tidal Lagoon Power (TLP), made some bold – and disputed – claims about the economic benefits the lagoon would bring, claiming it would contribute £316m in GVA to the Welsh economy during construction, then £76m of GVA per year thereafter.

TLP sought a 90-year contract for difference (CfD) with the UK government, with an average guaranteed price for electricity generated of £89.90 per megawatt hour (MWh), falling from £123 in the first year of the contract to £43 by its end. But the government decided this did not represent good value, with business secretary Greg Clark saying the cost “would be so much higher than alternative sources of low- carbon power that it would be irresponsible to enter into a contract with the provider.”

Despite the government’s misgivings, it is reasonable to suppose that the project would have worked as intended. There are already examples of similar projects elsewhere. EDF’s tidal energy plant in the Rance estuary in northern France has been in operation since 1966, has an installed capacity of 240MW and produces 500GW of electricity per year. At Sihwa, on the west coast of South Korea, a 254MW tidal energy facility has been in operation since 2011, generating more than 550GW a year.

Those arguing for greater investment and government support for tidal stream energy projects say they would stimulate job creation, while providing work for professional services such as surveying, along with the opportunity to export equipment and expertise. Research produced by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult suggests the UK’s tidal stream industry could generate net benefits of £1.4bn and support 14,500 jobs by 2040.

Slack waterUnfortunately, UK government policies to date have failed to provide a huge amount of support for tidal power. Ringfenced subsidies for commercial-scale projects were removed in 2016, which means UK tidal energy projects can now only bid for contracts for difference against other renewable energy projects. In practice, they cannot compete at present with the much lower cost of energy offered by wind or solar generation.

But if there were significant changes in UK government policy, ORE Catapult claims that a successful roll-out of commercial-scale tidal stream projects would yield significant cost reductions, from about £300/MWh to less than £100, comparable to the price of offshore wind. These reductions would be achieved through economies of scale, accelerated learning, and a fall in the cost of capital as a maturing industry became more attractive to debt finance. Investors are also likely to find such projects increasingly attractive as the green bonds market develops, and sustainable investment becomes a more important topic for investors.

In the meantime, progress continues to be made by tidal stream technology companies, including some working with the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) at Orkney, off the northern coast of Scotland. Across

ALISDAIR MCLEANOFFSHORE ENERGY RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

“ TIDAL ENERGY HAS THE MASSIVE BENEFIT OF BEING COMPLETELY PREDICTABLE”

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Clockwise from left: Orbital Marine Power raised £7m through peer-to-peer ethical investment company Abundance for its 2MW tidal stream turbine; the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project has floundered in the face of the high start-up costs, as the UK government balked at its £1.3bn construction cost; Sustainable Marine Energy’s PLAT-1 has been deployed in Nova Scotia with the support of the local government; completed in 1966, the Rance power station in Brittany is a rare example of a successful large-scale tidal range project – although it took 20 years to pay for itself

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DUE A SEA CHANGE?The current installed capacity of marine energy globally pales into insignificance

compared with hydropower, and the rate of adoption is far outstripped by wind and

solar, which benefit from cheaper start-up costs and standardised technology.

2001792 ,07023 ,9021 ,349239.3

20111 ,061 ,576

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20121 ,094 ,278

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20151 ,213 ,766416 ,739225 ,033512.7

2000784 ,66116 ,9301 ,234237.8

2004848 ,45447,6543 ,462242.3

2005873 ,62758 ,3374 ,918240.3

2006897,54773 ,1116 ,521239.3

2007928 ,59891 ,6329 ,191241.6

2008962 ,062115 ,36515 ,210244.6

2009996 ,169150 ,09623 ,242244.3

20101 ,030 ,519180 ,80240 ,327249.6

2002804 ,878

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2003824 ,97338,645

2 ,374243.3

20141 ,178 ,168349 ,103174 ,139512.7

20161 ,248 ,087467,488297,019518.7

20171 ,273 ,565513 ,547389 ,572526

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the Atlantic, the other prime location for testing the technology is the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where a number of companies are working towards deployment of commercial- scale arrays, helped by subsidies from the provincial government of Nova Scotia.

The key engineering challenge that these companies have to face is a harsh operational environment. Some early prototype tidal stream devices were simply destroyed by the sea. An effective turbine must somehow combine a high level of operational efficiency with exceptional durability. But there is not yet complete agreement on the best way to do this. Andrew Scott, CEO and director at tidal stream device company Orbital Marine Power thinks the fact that the basic design of a wind turbine was settled at an early stage helped accelerate the development of wind energy. “That kind of convergence helps focus research and development and investment,” he says. “With tidal, R&D efforts are still focused across a range of solutions.”

Tidal partyNonetheless, the scale on which some of those solutions are being deployed is increasing slowly. SIMEC Atlantis is building the MeyGen tidal stream array on the sea bed between the island of Stroma and the Scottish mainland. The first turbines installed have a generating capacity of 2MW, but further planned phases would eventually deliver a capacity of 400MW.

Other tidal stream technology companies have taken a different approach. Orbital is deploying a 2MW turbine at the EMEC that floats on top of the sea and can power 1,500 homes. Minesto’s, by contrast, is driven by an underwater “kite” (box, right). The company has received Welsh government support to submerge 20 of the units off the coast of Anglesea – enough to power every home on the island.

There is also activity under way in France. In November 2018, SIMEC Atlantis formed a joint venture with the Normandy regional government to build 20 2MW tidal stream turbines, which could eventually add 2GW of generating capacity to the French grid. The first phase of the project is due to be completed in 2021.

Back in south Wales, in February 2019 TPL claimed that several companies, among them LandSec, the Berkeley Group and Cardiff Airport, had expressed an interest in signing power purchase agreements to finance the Swansea Bay project. But there has been no further news on a possible resurrection of the plans, and none of the companies listed above would comment on this article.

LET’S GO FLOAT A KITEOne company’s quest to power up ocean currents

If large-scale tidal energy does become a mainstream proposition, attention may then turn to another, more difficult method of power generation: putting turbine-type devices into ocean currents.

Tidal energy technology company Minesto is investigating this possibility, because its Deep Green turbine could be used to harness energy from slower moving bodies of water. A kind of underwater “kite”, the turbine is anchored to the sea bed and swirls through the tide in a figure of eight pattern, increasing the speed at which water passes through it.

“Harnessing the ocean currents is the Holy Grail, because they are constant, 24 hours a day,” says Minesto communications manager Magnus Matsson. “The ocean currents flow too slow for any other technologies to exploit, so we are the only ones addressing this potential source of energy.”

Among the locations that might prove suitable for this sort of energy generation are the sea bed south of Florida, and the coasts of Taiwan and Japan. Currents there are particularly predictable and stable, and the topography of the sea bed might be conducive for building an array of devices capable of drawing energy out of the ocean.

It’s a state of affairs that frustrates those who wish to promote renewable energy generation, of all kinds. David Clubb, director at Renewable UK Cymru, is among those who have criticised the government’s decision to withdraw support for the lagoon. “I would be very surprised if you don’t see significant tidal range developments in my lifetime,” he says. “If that’s the case, why are we not going ahead now, and capturing the benefits of the supply chain?”

There is a great deal of technical activity under way in relation to tidal energy in the UK, Canada and France, but this is coupled with frustration about a lack of full-blooded support from central government. Some of those working for UK-based tidal energy generation companies contrast this with the huge amounts of money the UK government has committed to the construction of new nuclear power stations, a programme not without problems and risk. They also draw comparisons with the UK’s failure to invest in wind energy at an early stage of its development, which meant the country lost an opportunity to become a world leader in the technology, allowing other countries to take leading roles in what is still a rapidly expanding industry. They warn that something similar could happen with tidal.

That would be good news for those countries, of course. Ultimately, as we seek to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, the further development of tidal energy in any form and any location will surely be good news for everyone. There is a growing sense, that the day will come, in the not too distant future, when the tide finally turns in favour of this form of energy generation. n

RICS has published guidance on the valuation of assets in the commercial renewable energy sector. Go to rics.org/valueofassetsIM

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Maritime infrastructure worldwide requires urgent investment. Can governments attract that money while still keeping control?

P O R TW I T H O U TA U T H O R I T Y

Hambantota in Sri Lanka serves as a cautionary tale of how not to develop an emerging world port. Most of the $1.3bn it cost to build came from Chinese state banks, part of roughly $8bn in development loans that flowed into the country from Beijing following the end of a long and brutal civil war, in 2009.

A Chinese firm – China Harbour Engineering Company, one of the country’s largest – did the work, which was completed in 2010 and formed part of a wider development plan for the sleepy town on Sri Lanka’s south coast, roughly 200km from the capital, Colombo. It was set to include a large industrial zone, an LNG plant, a cement plant, an international airport, a world-class cricket stadium and a tourism centre.

In theory, the port – more than an hour closer by sea than Colombo to the busy shipping lanes that cross the Indian Ocean, connecting Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal – was well placed to take a chunk of the business from the 60,000 or so commercial vessels plying the route. In practice, it was ill prepared to do so. There was no deep-sea port, and firms in Colombo balked at the high costs of relocating, the dearth of domestic cargo and the poor connectivity with the rest of the country. Aside from ro-ro ships – which transport cars and other vehicles that can “roll on-roll off” – which the government forced to divert to the new port from Colombo, the big shipping firms and associated businesses stayed put.

Hambantota’s industrial development had been almost completely neglected, meanwhile. “It’s not an industrial town. There was a proposal to provide more land to develop processing industries, but the opening of the port was rushed and few facilities were in place. [The

WORDS BY HUGO COX

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government] had no economic plan to recover the money they had spent,” says Asela Gunatilake, an investment analyst at JB Securities, a stockbroker in Colombo.

In addition, the project was mired in allegations of corruption, with the New York Times reporting that a government investigation had uncovered large payments from the Chinese port construction fund to aides to then-president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, during the election campaign of 2015. Hambantota was the home province of Rajapaksa, who had engineered the bilateral agreements with China in a tilt away from the country’s historical reliance on India following the war, and many saw the port development as his personal vanity project.

By 2017, the port was handling roughly one ship a day, a rate that failed even to make the UN’s 40 largest ports list. Fed up with heavy losses operating the port, in the face of swingeing interest rates on the original loans, and in the face of stiff local protests over selling off a key national asset to the mightiest regional power, the new government sold the port to China on a 99-year lease.

The terms were a long way short of favourable, reckons Gunatilake. “We were in this debt trap and desperate for foreign currency,” he says – $5.9bn of foreign loans are due for repayment this year, while Sri Lanka’s GDP is $87bn. “The government had very little bargaining power.”

The Chinese way As China continues to invest in the world’s ports, cases like Hambantota have focused attention on the best way these vital pieces of infrastructure can bring prosperity to the countries in which they are based. In particular, they raise questions of how best to balance the need for private investment – without which development plans will flounder – with the need for national control.

Chinese firms now have stakes in nearly two-thirds of the world’s 50 largest container ports, reports RWR Advisory Group, a Washington-based consultant. The spending is a pillar of its Maritime Silk Road strategy, aiming to link ports in Asia, Africa and Europe that are either funded by Chinese investment, managed by Chinese firms, or both. The sector has taken a decent chunk of the $1.12tr that the country has ploughed into 87 countries across the world since 2013 as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (see opposite). Shipping is the fourth largest investment sector of the plan, consuming more than $75bn.

But those seeking such finance should be aware that their interests and those of their deep-pocketed investors may not be in alignment.

“China is a private party in these deals, most interested in controlling its supply chain, with little concern for the social and economic side of their investments [for the host]. If they are involved, they want to have [a country’s] natural resources and its ports, and to extract the first via the second,” says Arènso Bakker MRICS, a port expert from the Netherlands who has worked with the Panama Canal Authority to expand the Panama Canal.

Ports matter in Asia, not least because their neglect is proving a big sticking point in the region’s economic expansion. A 2017 World Bank report noted that, despite

South Asia recording the second-highest economic growth in the world, it was still a relatively small player in world trade. Thanks to the high costs and slow process of getting a shipping container in and out of South Asia, the market commands less than 3% of global container port traffic. If the region’s ports were as efficient as the world’s best, this number would double, the report noted.

Improving efficiency means involving private firms to create a market for services and drive demand, says Bakker. But this requires a delicate balancing act: keep too tight a grip on the ownership and management of a port and private companies will lack the flexibility to shape the services they need to satisfy their customers. Hand away too much control and – as with Hambantota – you give away a key plank of your economic strategy and surrender a key strategic asset.

Reserving the power to shape a port’s development is essential, says Darwin Marcelo, senior infrastructure economist at the World Bank in Singapore, who until recently worked on a trust fund providing finance to developing world ports.

He points to the success of Singapore and Rotterdam, both ports that have prospered despite limitations on their space imposed by the large cities that contain them. The level of forward planning required to provide this type of integrated growth requires “strong government institutions that are technically capable and have low corruption levels” – features which are rare in most emerging countries, he notes. Without the discipline these impose, he says, it is difficult to create the sort of stable incentives – reliable infrastructure, tax incentives and so on – required to attract the private sector.

The spillover benefits from port-mediated trade mean that new ports are often located adjacent to, or within, cities; in such cases both the economic opportunities and the hazards are greater. In the first case, co-location can be essential to a port’s long-term economic impact. Access to the industrial capacity

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that is typically available in a city is a pre-requisite for this. It will help develop a port from a place where boxes are simply shuffled for forward transit – a so-called transshipment port – to one where their contents can be refined or assembled before being sold locally or sent back on their way by sea, which brings larger and longer-term economic benefits.

Bakker points to the example of Tanger-Med in Morocco, where savvy government infrastructure spending helped the port to evolve from the first type of port into the second. “It was initially a transshipment port, with the reshuffling of containers providing few jobs. Now there are several car factories about 50km away and a railway connecting the port to these, so private firms have come, bringing much greater economic benefit to the country,” he says.

In the absence of this type of government planning, haphazard growth among port cities can save up future problems for even profitable ports.

Across Latin America, in locations such as Lima, San Salvador, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, unplanned development has put ports and cities in competition for key infrastructure services – notably transport – and seen cities suffer from pollution and congestion. “As these ports have grown they have overloaded the city infrastructure until the growth of the city has become constrained by the port and vice versa,” says Marcello.

With port authorities in most cases owned by national governments, these problems are exacerbated when the economic benefits of hosting a port are not enjoyed by the host city. In Mombassa, Kenya, the negative impact of the port – noise, pollution and the cost of maintaining the roads under heavy use from lorries serving the port – fell squarely on the city, says Marcello. “The benefits, however, in the form of port taxes and associated revenues, flowed to the Kenyan government.”

The local labour market found itself similarly unrewarded, he says. Private companies operating the terminals and associated facilities favoured skilled labour from abroad for jobs such as operating terminal cranes and warehouse machinery. For unskilled jobs – maintaining the buildings, keeping the facility clean – the national government encouraged Kenyans from other parts of the country to settle in the city.

Rotterdam (or anywhere) One group of partners that might help steady the ship when it comes to developing world ports are European operators, who are increasingly competing in the sector.

“They have expertise, not only in how to run a port but in the link between the private and public sectors that can ensure progress on societal challenges such as decarbonisation,” says Isabelle Ryckbost, secretary general of the European Sea Ports Organisation.

The Port of Rotterdam International has owned 50% of Oman’s Sohar Port and Freezone since 2002, in which time capacity has grown from 4m to over 60m tonnes of pass-through cargo a year. Today, 50% of Oman’s trade goes via the port, it has attracted accumulated investment of $23bn and employs 25,000 people.

The Omani government has provided the public investment for basic infrastructure such as breakwaters and roads, while the Sohar Port and Freezone has served up customer-related infrastructure such as jetties. Commercial introductions have helped the port develop. René van der Plas, director of Port of Rotterdam International, reckons 10 private firms and entities from Rotterdam now provide port-related services in Sohar, including break-bulk and ro-ro stevedoring, dry-bulk terminal operations and container handling.

As importantly, Port of Rotterdam has provided skills that are being transferred to its government partner. “Initially we held most of the management positions; now most are held by Omani government employees,” says van der Plas.

With Chinese firms active users of Rotterdam’s port, and Chinese investment funding its expansion, van der Plas is keen to defend the country’s record. “I don’t think other countries should be scared of Chinese investment or the involvement of their private companies,” he says, stressing that one declared objective of the Belt and Road initiative is to develop local economies.

However, he concedes that the Hambantota example does little for China’s reputation as a steward in this type of development model. “A lot of infrastructure has been created without ever providing a benefit for the Sri Lankan economy.” This, he believes, runs contrary to ports’ fundamental purpose: “The only reason to start port development is socio-economic value. Of course you need commercial value, too, but if it doesn’t create jobs, education and local growth in balance with the local environment and community, there is just no point.” n

Investment in infrastructure to meet growing global demand is a key focus of RICS’ World Built Environment Forum. Visit rics.org/wbef to find out more

A long-term government vision has enabled Singapore’s port to prosper despite the surrounding city curtailing its growth (above); a success Hambantota in Sri Lanka has failed to replicate despite not suffering the same limitations (left)

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Development on the shoreline pits the irresistible force of the sea against the immovable object of steel and concrete – and it’s a fight neither side is winning

Dawlish Warren beach in south Devon is one of the most popular in Britain. Thousands of holidaymakers head there each year to enjoy its golden sands and pristine waters. But

although the shoreline looks natural, it is, in fact, artificial. Since mid-Victorian times, when Isambard Kingdom Brunel engineered a railway line along this stormy, wave-lashed stretch of coast, people have tried to “defend” Dawlish and its beach from the sea with ever more elaborate projects.

The original sea wall of 1843 has been heightened and strengthened at least four times, and wooden groynes, breakwaters,

stone revetments, concrete and steel gabions and rock “armour” have all been deployed to stop the beach eroding, the cliff crumbling and houses flooding.

By the early 2000s, Dawlish’s famous sands were disappearing, leaving rock pools and shingle in places. The foreshore was much lower and narrower than it had been, and waves were frequently topping the sea wall during strong winds and high tides. Disaster struck on 4 February 2014, when storms dramatically collapsed the railway line that runs atop the wall, battering the defences and forcing evacuations. The government put up £35m for repairs to the

track, and £14m for stronger beach defences.Higher, stronger concrete walls, longer

timber groynes and breakwaters and a new 460m sandbag defence were constructed. In addition, 250,000 m3 of sand was dredged from the nearby Exe estuary and pumped on to the beach, raising it 3m in places.

But five years on, the problem is far from being solved. Storms again washed away much of the sand last year, and new plans to raise the sea wall a further 2.5m to 7m were submitted in February this year.

“It’s still a beautiful beach, though. It’s possible much of the sand will return over time”, says an optimistic Suzanne Papanicola,

spokeswoman for the Hazelwood Holiday Park, which lies just behind the beach.

As sea levels rise, storms get stronger and the world’s coasts become lined with development, cash-strapped governments and communities from Spain to Brazil and Australia to California are grappling with what to do with their crumbling sea defences.

The old assumption that stronger, higher walls can hold back the waves is being challenged by marine geologists who argue that building “hard” defences and removing natural barriers such as sand dunes and mangroves leads only to the disappearance of beaches, worse flooding and an endless cycle of expensive repair and reconstruction.

“The sea wall itself is the problem”, says Andrew Cooper, professor of coastal studies at the University of Ulster. “It cannot absorb the energy of the sea. Sea walls cause beaches to steepen, which means that bigger waves

with more energy reach the remaining beach, scouring out the sand and undermining the defences. The more that we build sea walls, the more we destroy our beaches.

“If you build a sea wall to protect the shore, the inevitable consequence over time is that the beach will [eventually] disappear. When you build the sea wall, that is the effective end of the beach”, he adds.

“Sea walls are the deadly enemies of beaches. We are obsessed with building and defending property right next to the beach and trying to hold the beach in place”, says Orrin Pilkey, author, with Cooper, of The Last Beach and professor of earth and ocean science at Duke University in the US.

Pilkey, now in his 80s, has long advocated natural beaches where possible but says that the future of the world’s coastlines is uncertain because the coast is inherently dynamic and changing. He despairs of the

situation in the US, where beachfront developments mushroom and engineers lock cities into expensive projects to continually strengthen their defences. The only solution, he says, is to move development back from beaches altogether: “In its efforts to hold the shoreline still, today’s society is engaged in a costly and ultimately futile battle. On the one side is the coastal engineering fraternity and on the other the inexorable forces of nature. Many beaches on developed coasts have been transformed into long, thin engineering projects. These strips of sand that we call beaches were once a precious natural environment that has been destroyed in a misguided view of the good of humanity.”

Beach wear The price paid for trying to hold the sea back with steel and concrete is seen all along American, European, Australian and increasingly, Asian coastlines. In Japan, where nearly 40% of the coast is now lined with massive concrete walls to guard against tsunamis, beaches are disappearing at an alarming rate. The government’s Institute for Environmental Studies forecasts that a combination of rising sea levels and seawall construction threatens to completely wash away 60% of Japan’s sandy beaches.

Some of the worst coastal erosion in Asia is taking place in Vietnam, where developers have rushed to build coastal holiday resorts. The result, in places such as Unesco World Heritage Site Hoi An, and cities like Da Nang, has been beaches disappearing and defences crumbling, and projected revenue losses to the tourism industry of nearly $30m.

In the US, where the government estimates there are around 350,000 structures located within 150m of the sea, nearly 14,000 miles (22,500km) – 14% of the entire coastline – has been fortified with concrete, according to a 2015 report from the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University. What were wide stretches of sand just 30-40 years ago are often now narrow strips of beach sited below high walls. Meanwhile, research published in June 2018 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection found that almost half of the state’s 820 miles (1,320km) of coastline are now “critically eroded”. Most of the state’s coastline is “defended” behind sea walls, which are partly responsible for the beaches’ disappearance.

The worldwide response to eroding beaches has been to replenish them with dredged sand. This temporarily widens them and maintains beachfront property values,

After spending £35m repairing the track at Dawlish in Devon, which was washed away in February 2014, the UK government committed £15m to developing a long-term resilience plan for the vulnerable infrastructure

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but is expensive and must be done frequently. Beach “replenishment” is now a booming global industry, with one academic study suggesting $100bn a year is spent restoring US beaches alone. Hundreds of US barrier islands off the coasts of North Carolina, New Jersey, Texas and Florida now need massive, regular supplies of sand. On Galveston Island in Texas, the beach has been raised up to 5m, and the ground floors of some buildings have been turned into basements.

Many cities now replenish their beaches every year to keep the tourist industry alive. California is estimated to have pumped 300m m3 of sand on to its beaches over the past 30 years, and Florida 230m m3. But as storms increase and demand for sand grows, the cost of replenishment is spiralling. The wealthy residents of Malibu’s Broad Beach in California received approval last June to add 300m m3 of sand to their short length of

coastline at five-year intervals for the next 20 years. It is expected to cost them $31m.

They might be wasting their time. Geologists warn that sand replenishment actually worsens the erosion. “These artificial beaches usually erode at least twice as fast as natural beaches and can only ever be a temporary solution. As time goes on and as the sea level rises, the interval of replenishment will get shorter because the beach becomes less stable,” says Cooper. “Beach replenishment is only a plaster that must be applied again and again at great cost. It doesn’t remove the problem, it treats the symptoms. Eventually and inevitably beach replenishment will stop, either as sand or money runs out.”

Replenishment also smothers all life on the beach, adds Pilkey. “The near-shore food chain that originates with the tiny organisms living between grains of sands

and surviving on occasional influxes of seaweed is now gone. The whole ecosystem is out of whack. Habitats for turtle and bird nesting are being destroyed.”

The powerful American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA), the leading advocate of beach replenishment, condemns both sea walls and letting nature take its course. “Centuries of coastal development and engineering coastlines and inlets have caused much of the coastal erosion we see today. Sea-level rise will only make this worse. There is no way to now let nature take its course without reversing the events of the past 300 years,” says ASBPA director Derek Brockbank. “Replenishing the sand that is lost is a critical tool to maintaining healthy coastlines. It costs money, but it is preferable to the cheaper – but ecologically destructive – alternative of building sea walls to protect coastal property.”

Among the proposals for Dawlish is a new sea wall, 2.5m taller than the present one, plans for which were submitted in February. It remains to be seen how long term a solution this is, both for the beach and the railway

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The National Trust, Britain’s greatest coastal landowner by far with more than 780 miles of mostly wild shoreline, is one of the world’s leading advocates of letting nature take its course.

“Hard coastal defences such as concrete walls have major drawbacks and a limited lifespan. They will be increasingly prone to failure,” says Phil Dyke, the Trust’s coastal and marine adviser.

“As they fail we need to make decisions about whether or not to replace them. We must also acknowledge that sea defences often cause unwelcome side

effects, such as beach lowering in front of sea walls.”

The Trust has more than 80 coastal sites experiencing rapid erosion, many with historic structures that are likely to be lost to the sea in the next 50-100 years. The answer, it says, is not to try to protect them behind high sea walls but, wherever possible, to let the sea create new wetlands, salt marshes and habitats. It also proposes moving buildings such as cafes, beach huts and even homes back from the coast.

“For many years, the default response to flooding and

erosion along the coast has been to ‘hold the line’ and build our way out of trouble. The assumption was always that we could engineer solutions. [But] this endless cycle of ‘construct- fail-reconstruct’ makes little sense,” Dyke argues.

“Increasingly we must view adaptation as having an equal role in the long-term health of the coastline. We are not against coastal defences, but they are not appropriate to us. They are very important for towns and cities but the way they are funded [by government] is that every £1 spent on sea

defences has to demonstrate it can protect £8 of assets. This means there will be a lot of small coastal communities where the numbers don’t add up”, says Dyke.

“There is far better understanding of coastal processes compared with 30 years ago, but the public still expects that sea defences should be hard engineered.

“Progress is still equated with hard defences. It is quite understandable”, he says. But, Dyke adds, coastlines were never intended to be static, and new thinking is needed.

WILL TRUST IN NATURE PAY OFF?The UK’s biggest coastal landowner has decided to work with the tides, not against them

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To protect against tsunamis, nearly 40% of Japan’s coast is now lined with huge concrete barriers. As well as being a blight on the landscape, the walls are also contributing to the washing away of the country’s beaches

British beaches are some of the most heavily eroded in the world. Government subsidies to maintain hundreds of miles of sea walls, groynes, artificial beaches and breakwaters cost more than £750m a year. But this has not stopped flooding, or beaches in places like Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, Lowestoft in Suffolk and Aberystwyth in Wales being eroded. The Welsh Environment Agency calculates that there are 220,000 properties, housing 357,000 people, at risk of flooding in Wales. Just to maintain this level of risk would require spending on defences to be tripled in the next 15 years.

That’s ecologicalIncreasingly, an ecological mindset is being adopted. “The traditional approach of engineered sea defences locks us into ever increasing costs of replacement and maintenance. The alternatives are nature-based solutions to flooding and erosion, which work with natural processes to reduce flood risk and incorporate ecosystems into flood defence”, says Iris Möller, deputy director of the University of Cambridge’s Coastal Research Unit. “Rather than seeing the coast as a static line, these alternatives rethink coastlines as zones with valuable habitats such as beaches, dunes and wetlands that act as carbon stores, places for recreation and natural buffers against the waves”.

Möller cites the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ flagship Wild Coast Project at Wallasea Island in Essex, which has restored 1,655 acres (670ha) of land that had been reclaimed for agriculture years earlier back to salt marshes and lagoons. “The tide and waves now regenerate salt marsh where it had been embanked and drained. If designed well, such schemes create new habitat which can reduce the height and intensity of storm surges and lower flood risk.”

It is now UK government policy to manage coastal retreat, sacrificing land to the natural process. With hard defences costing as much as £10,000 a metre, and beyond the means of local authorities, sea defences along more than 80 miles of Britain’s east coast and much of west Wales may not be maintained within a few decades. As a result, it is likely that hundreds of homes, nature reserves, valuable agricultural land and even villages will be lost to the sea over the next 50 years.

“We are just one of about 50 communities on the Welsh coast which expects to be abandoned,” says Matt Burrows, a flood monitor volunteer in Fairbourne, Gwynned. “The village has a low, deteriorating sea wall and it needs to be at least 2ft higher. The sword of Damocles hangs over us. In about

five years’ time they will stop improving the defences here and the government will start to let the village of about 400 houses go back to the sea. We are fighting the decision on every front but we are not winning yet.”

Abandoning farmland and communities to the sea is expected to be emotionally traumatic but it is necessary on economic and ecological grounds, argued the UK parliament’s committee on climate change in its October 2018 report, Managing the coast in a changing climate: “Building ever bigger defences to protect all coastal communities in the future would be prohibitively expensive. It would also detract from the coastal landscapes that people treasure and further interfere with the coast’s natural adaptation to sea-level rise. Facing up to inevitable change requires difficult decisions.

“At risk are not just beaches,” says the committee, “but 7,500km of road, 520km of

railway line, 205,000ha of good, very good or excellent agricultural land, and 3,400ha of potentially toxic historic landfill.”

“Sea walls used to be the big thing in the toolbox. But we know flooding will get worse. On current sea-level rise projections, sea walls that are waist high now would have to be head high by 2100 and about 18ft high by 2200. Long-term thinking is needed,” says Hamish Hall, a director at global engineering consultant WSP. “I’d like to see sea defences set right back. We have a mentality to just rebuild everything after a storm. The simplest solution would be to move the infrastructure back. The problem is the obsession with building property right next to the beach, and with trying to hold the beach in place.” n

How do we ensure our built assets are more closely attuned with the natural environment? Find out more at rics.org/naturalenvironmentIM

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FLOODING

For many, flooding has become a fact of life. Rapid urbanisation and poorly planned development have pushed the edges of numerous cities across the globe into flood-prone areas, leaving them vulnerable to torrential and deadly downpours.

What’s more, these problems show no signs of abating. In fact, a recent report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests they will only worsen in the years to come.

Finding innovative solutions to the “new normal” of flooding, then, has never been more pressing, and an increasing number of countries are looking to the built environment to help them find the answers.

We’ve profiled three projects from around the world that are implementing a series of anti-flood measures – from innovative architecture and materials, to smart design and construction – to tackle the issue head on.

Tokyo’s “floodwater cathedral” regulates overflow from the city’s smaller rivers, and pumps it out at a rate of 200 tonnes per second

JAPAN“FLOODWATER CATHEDRAL” REPAYS TOKYO ’S FAITH IN ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS

The vast underground network of tunnels and pillars that lie 50m below Tokyo’s surface are a flood control system like no other. Completed in 2006, this mammoth ¥221bn (£1.5bn) scheme protects the Japanese capital from being inundated during heavy rains, which is no easy task when you consider

how vulnerable the low-lying city is to such events. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s latest flood map risk

assessment puts one-third of the city within a risk zone, which is why it went to great lengths to protect its citizens – 6.3km in fact, comprised of a network of tunnels and chambers 22m beneath their feet. Known officially as the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, the scheme works by diverting overflowing river water through ducts, which collect in five massive concrete silos – each big enough to fit the Statue of Liberty inside.

“These are huge reservoirs that can collect billions of gallons of storm water,” says Dr Cecilia Tortajada, a water management expert from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She explains how this water then flows through a 10m-diameter tunnel and into a cavernous water pressure regulation tank –an engineering feat of such scale, it has made the scheme world famous. Nicknamed “the floodwater cathedral” on account of its awe-inspiring 59 concrete pillars, each weighing 500 tonnes, the tank regulates the volume of the water and then safely releases it into the Edo river.

Critically, though, Tortajada explains how the regional government has also integrated flood risk training into people’s daily lives to complement the underground defences. “In Tokyo, for example, the government has published leaflets that tell people where to go in the event of a flood, as well as training people from a young age in school,” she says, adding that after years of experience of natural disasters the country has gone to great lengths to learn from its past.

“Japan’s approach is it tries to address what the problems were so next time they don’t happen, both in terms of the infrastructure but also in regard to teaching people,” she says. “When it comes to things like smart cities, we tend to focus on planning and infrastructure and ignore the people. What Japan has done very effectively is train its residents, because cities are built for people, and we forget this in the built environment.”

Although a vital piece of infrastructure today, the project had difficulties getting off the ground due to concerns over its cost, says Tortajada. “But from the moment it was built to now, the amount of floodwater that has come through the system has been such that if you compare the cost of the damages that would have been created within the city then it’s already paid.”

The Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) director for innovation and resilience, David Kelly, agrees, adding that countries around the world should study Japan’s investment track record. “Lessons can be learned from countries such as Japan, where greater levels of investment in infrastructure and resilience have been deployed for decades, thus delivering greater levels of confidence to the development and insurance industries.” TO

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China’s rate of urbanisation since 2000 has been the most rapid that any culture, or any society has ever experienced,” explains Arcadis’ global cities director, John Batten.

“But this urbanisation was carried out in such a way that buffers and green spaces were not incorporated to the extent that they should have. So, what you had was an extreme amount of asphalt, concrete and glass that didn’t allow water to drain naturally into the water table and a lot of Chinese cities, through intensified rain events, would flood.”

Realising the severity of the problem, the Chinese government launched a ¥20.7bn (£2.4bn) “Sponge City” programme in 2015 to undo many of the urbanisation practices that had been put in place. This ambitious project aims to have 80% of the chosen cities constructed to a sponge city standard by 2030. Among the 16 pilot cities selected was Wuhan in the central Hubei province.

CHINAGREEN THINKING HELPS WUHAN ABSORB IMPACTS OF UNCHECKED URBANISATION

With 11 million residents, Wuhan is the most populous city in central China. It’s also one of the most flood prone, lying at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers. Flooding from the two waterways has been reduced by the construction of levees and upstream reservoirs. However, urbanisation had reduced the retention capacity of the city, resulting in a lack of surface water and green space. So severe was the issue that in 2016 during summer monsoon, torrential downpours killed 14 people in Wuhan, and a further 22 in neighbouring provinces.

That same year Arcadis was appointed to redevelop parts of the city using a series of green infrastructure techniques, with a goal to manage 60% of the city’s rainwater. This involved creating new garden cities, bioswales, artificial ponds and wetlands, as well as vegetative buffers, which increased water re-use and gave space back to the rivers, rather than attempting to fight

against the overflow. Permeable pavements, which allow water to flow through them rather than across the surface, were also installed, as were upgrades to the city’s urban drainage system, water storage and purification facilities.

The programme has also yielded several side benefits, says Batten, the most interesting of which is a drop in temperature during the city’s extremely hot summers. “By providing green canopies and reusing storm water, the sponge city approach helps to cool the city down.” It has also spurred on developers to start incorporating green vegetation in their buildings as part of “closed-loop water management”, which retains and reuses rain fall from storms.

Batten adds that property values have risen in the sponge city areas of Wuhan as a result of the improvements in green infrastructure, something that he believes can be easily transferred to other flood-prone cities.

“Sponge City” initiatives such as artificial ponds, wetlands and vegetative buffers have helped Wuhan, which sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers, to mitigate the effects of regular flooding

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Numerous developers had tried – and failed – over the past 15 years to make new development viable at 61 Shipston Road in Stratford-upon-Avon. The brownfield site, which backs on to a floodplain for the nearby river, regularly finds itself under water at times of heavy rain fall. The land is

classified as flood zone 3, which means it has a greater than 1 in 100 probability of flooding every year.

Still, given that Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s Local Plan requires the construction of 3,500 new homes in the town by 2031, the developer, Holloway Property Development, felt it worthwhile to find a solution. The group appointed Baca Architects, which specialises in building on or near water, to come up with anti-flood designs for 11 new homes. “We design with water in mind from the very beginning,” says Richard Coutts, Baca co-founder and director. “So rather than try to shoehorn water and push it around the development, we embrace that as a constraint from the beginning.”

In practice, this takes the form of elevating the homes on piles to allow flood water to pass underneath them. “If this was to be on a solid mound, then you wouldn’t be able to provide the water storage on site,” explains Coutts. “The way we’ve managed to do that is to take a very gently sloped road from the highway and raise it at a very gentle gradient, into the site. And most of the houses are accessed off that spur.” This enables safe movement in and out of the main properties in the event of a flood and provides level access to most of the plots, which is required by building control.

The team has also connected a raised walkway to a footpath on a historic elevated tramway at the back of the site to provide a through route from Shipston Road, which gives two means of escape where there’s flood risk. Coutts says this will also enable residents to continue with their working day regardless of the conditions.

In addition to the piled construction, removable louvred screens around the base of each dwelling allow water to flow unobstructed, while preventing not only rubbish and debris from washing up under the homes during floods, but also vermin infestations when the waters recede. Permeable paving will then be used on all hard-standing surfaces, with large below-ground storm water tanks that will help reduce pressure on the existing sewerage system.

The designs are the perfect example of how, as the BRE’s Kelly puts it, “new developments should not only reflect the immediate risk but demonstrate creative solutions that mitigate the effects of climate change”. And with the latter becoming an ever-more pressing issue, Coutts believes other flood-prone parts of the UK could use similar techniques to unlock land.

“This is a clear strategy to unlock those brownfield sites located within floodplains or next to rivers to provide homes at the heart of city centres,” he says. “It’s good sustainable development in terms of transport and locating people where the jobs are, but it’s also another way of resisting urban sprawl into the green belt.” n

To register your interest for the forthcoming RICS Water Conference, go to rics.org/flagship-events

Baca’s plans enable residents to move around the site regardless of flood levels – working with water, rather than trying to resist it

RICHARD COUTTSBACA ARCHITECTS

“ THIS IS A CLEAR STRATEGY TO UNLOCK SITES ON FLOODPLAINS OR BY RIVERS TO PROVIDE HOMES ”

UKSTRATFORD-UPON-AVON GOES WITH FLOW AND APPROVES DEVELOPMENT DESIGNED TO FLOOD

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MAY 2019 / MODUS / 35

W A Y T O G O

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“Construction and property can be quite adversarial, but it doesn’t have to be that way ”JANE HENSHAW MRICSPROJECTS DIRECTOR, CADOGAN

Building surveyor Jane Henshaw is responsible for property restoration and development across the Cadogan family’s 300-year-old west London estate, including Sloane Square, Sloane Street, King’s Road and Duke of York Square.

What’s it like to work on a portfolio like this?Challenging. It’s 93 acres in Chelsea and has a value of more than £6bn. It has lots of different components: there’s the Saatchi Gallery, three churches, King’s Road, 300 directly let flats, offices and shops. So it’s lots of different property types.

I love the attention to detail in our work. For example, we’ve commissioned a particular type of door for the development of

a former mews stables, three metres high on huge hinges. It’s the same with the Cadogan Hotel’s stained glass. It’s wonderful to go to the factories where these elements are made.

Did you always know you wanted to work in property?From my teens. I remember reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and loving the description of the house, Manderley. It was the careers master at school who first suggested this job. I’m still in touch with him now – he loves that I’m a building surveyor.

Has your interest always been in older buildings?No, I love modern buildings as well. Earlier in my career I did a lot of work with GlaxoSmithKline, on science laboratories. That was good fun, and very exacting.

What’s the biggest challenge with your job?Construction can be slow in order to get the results that are right for the environment. With buildings, you have to really understand what you’re proposing and how it’s going to fit into the immediate context. You have to understand the team that you’re working with, and where the strengths and weaknesses are in that team.

So it’s really about people?It’s a cliche, but it’s true. It’s very important to be kind and understanding. Construction and property are often about deals and can be quite contractual and even adversarial, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you adopt a “best friend” approach to difficult situations you end up with a smoother solution.

What are you most proud of?The Cadogan Hotel has been a good one to get over the line. It’s a significant landmark on Sloane Street: 54 rooms, originally composed of five townhouses all on different levels, higgledy- piggledy. It’s a historic place – where Oscar Wilde spent a great deal of his time, as well as many other historic figures – so it needs to be treated with respect. What I’m most proud of is creating a legacy for future generations.

Is technology having an impact on what you do?Significantly so. On my phone I’ve got apps that notify me of how much noise there is from sites, so that if we get a complaint I can find out what the cause is straight away – sometimes it’s just a supercar going down the street.

I’ve been in meeting rooms with a VR headset on, standing at the base of the structure and looking up to see it in detail. But nothing can replace the feeling of being there. You’ve got to really feel it to understand what you’re doing. I’ve visited the Cadogan Hotel hundreds of times and it still takes my breath away.IN

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Changing lifestyles, better technology and more enlightened employers are fuelling some big changes in what occupiers expect from their offices. How are property professionals responding to the challenge of ensuring our workplaces are not just relevant today, but fit for the future as well?

If you want to ensure your office buildings remain fully flexible and aspirational for the next five, 10 or 15 years, you’ve got to make sure you have the right infrastructure and power resilience in place to support the technology. We help landlords get under the skin of what’s wrong with their buildings and how the situation can be ameliorated.

For instance, the glass that is used in modern construction has been developed for energy efficiency, but has the side effect of blocking mobile phone signals. This will really start to have a user impact with the advent of 5G. Landlords who are prepared for this are already starting to offer “Connectivity as a Service” to their tenants, which not only provides wifi in amenity spaces and plug-and-play internet for the length of the lease, but also dedicated in-building mobile coverage.

There is an even bigger futureproofing story with cloud computing, which enables CEOs to flex their technology and software requirements and, importantly, spend to constantly match their business needs. Traditionally this flexibility couldn’t be reflected in a CEO’s control of their office space. However, landlords are seeing the benefits of providing space-as-a-service offerings such as business-related amenity space in their buildings, as they enable tenants to become more flexible in how they spend their real estate allocation.

THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY IS USELESS IF A BUILDING CANNOT SUPPORT IT

Tom Redmayne MRICS is a senior director at WiredScore, a digital connectivity rating service

As employers respond to a growing requirement for a work-health balance, there is an increasing focus on wellness in the workplace. We spend most of our time indoors and there’s now much more data on the impact of the physical working environment on wellness and productivity. Research carried out by Gallup in 2017 linked wellness with high levels of employee satisfaction, and a 21% rise in productivity.

There is also a race to attract and retain talent. If employers are to get the best value from their most valuable assets – 85-90% of operational expenditure is people, after all – then they need to extract the optimum level of performance from them. Factors such as thermal comfort, air quality and good acoustics are key – our data suggests there is a 66% drop in productivity when people are exposed to disruptive noise.

You can promote wellness in the office by encouraging people to use the stairs rather than the lift – at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, for example, there is art on the walls of the stairwells. Aside from encouraging different fitness activities, simply improving the ways that people interact can aid wellness. Chiswick Park in west London is a good example of a productive workplace – its buildings face a lake and landscaped gardens, there is retail, a gym, restaurants and a range of pop-up and street food vendors.

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H O W T O …

FOCUS ON WORKERS’ WELLBEING TO MAKE BIG PRODUCTIVITY GAINS

Despina Katsikakis is international partner and head of occupier business performance at Cushman & Wakefield

MAY 2019 / MODUS / 37

Be it flexible working, wellness, or biophilia – the human need to interact with nature – the greater emphasis that employees are putting on their lifestyles is driving the change in what workplaces provide. It also dictates how landlords will need to respond to occupiers’ preferences in the future.

Whether or not a building is aiming for full LEED or BREEAM accreditation, greening the office for the future and incorporating elements of sustainability or biophilic design are increasingly important to occupiers. Although removing older facades might reduce the internal area of a building, and putting in new air and water filtration systems might be expensive, there are other, cheaper, improvements that can be made. These include installing LED lighting, fitting low-flow taps or more efficiently flushing toilets.

There is also the question of how you can incorporate more outdoor space. Again, there are a few options such as making a ground-floor garden accessible to occupiers, adding balconies, or opening a roof terrace so that staff can have a bit of fresh air.

Increasingly staff are looking for access to local amenities or choosing to work where, for instance, gym membership is offered. Futureproofing is all about choice. But for this cultural shift to really be effective, the driver must be the actions of those at the top, leading by example.

Our office spaces are becoming quite cool, “Instagrammable” environments. It’s about centring things on the user and their experience. One of the big shifts we’re going to continue to see is recognising more flexible working patterns.

We recently worked on a project for the Office Group and, because the coworking market is so competitive, our brief was to design-in features that hadn’t been done before. So we incorporated elements such as a wellness room, yoga studio, spaces for meditation, library, recording booths for YouTube, as well as an open-plan ground floor with spaces for eating, meeting, working and events. It was a seven-storey building with a grand, Regency-styled facade, which we contrasted with a minimal and calming interior that was on a more human scale.

Futureproofing is not just about using the latest technology, it’s about having an architecture proposition that gets the basics right and allows flexibility. Even with new-build projects, be prepared for best laid plans to evolve as it could be up to five years from when drawings are created to when a project is actually built. We’re very mindful of future trends but, at the end of the day, people just want to be able to open a window or have a real light switch rather than it being controlled by an iPad – keep things simple!

To futureproof our offices, facilities management (FM), real estate and design have got to work together with IT and human resources (HR) departments to flesh out what occupiers require. Clever companies will ask for all those views.

You don’t need to have one workstation per person anymore, and there is the opportunity for space efficiencies, sometimes one-third of the floorplate can be removed, which is a monumental cost saving. This can then be re-invested in more agile ways of working, such as homeworking. Business requirements also have a much shorter time span these days, often of two or three years, and real estate strategies need to accommodate this.

As part of the futureproofing process, we look at the demographics for the average employee, where they commute from and, as certain cities have become more expensive, that has become a factor, too. Our geotech team uses visualisation software to work out where people are going to live in the future to help us narrow down the best location of an office.

At Arcadis, FMs are involved in the design of the buildings, using intelligent building information management systems and other volumetric data sources, which enable us to take into account the running of the building over its whole lifetime. This is not yet a common practice in our industry.

GREEN FEATURES FUTUREPROOF BUILDINGS AND THEIR OCCUPIERS

Daniel Wright MRICS is a senior associate with construction consultant Bruceshaw

LONG-TERM SUCCESS STARTS WITH GOOD OFFICE DESIGN

Russell Potter is a director of architectural practice Soda Studio

CONSIDER THE WHOLE LIFECYCLE OF THE ASSET FROM THE OUTSET

Stephen Shallcroft FRICS is a director at Arcadis and a member of both the RICS FM and IFMA boards

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Manage the relationship with your broker Use a broker with a demonstrable understanding of the surveying sector. This will help achieve a better deal at renewal and ensure you get the guidance required in the event of a claim. Although price is important, it’s more important to ensure you’re fully aware of what you’re buying. Invest time in the renewal process and manage the relationship with brokers and insurers sensibly.

Be responsive Be prepared for additional questions from insurers and respond promptly and accurately. Ensure any claims or circumstances are reported to insurers ahead of renewal, and provide as much information to your broker as possible. Remember, failure to notify insurers of a matter that might lead to a claim could be ruinous for your business. If the claim is subsequently challenged by insurers, the costs will be borne entirely by you.

How Howden can help Howden is RICS’ preferred insurance broker for PI insurance because we understand the working practices, risks and reputations of surveyors. We place more than £30m of premiums on behalf of the industry, and look after several of the UK’s top 10 firms.

For more information, visit rics.org/howden, contact us at +44 (0)117 911 6813, or email info@howdengroup.com

RICS-regulated firms have, for some time, enjoyed access to competitively priced professional indemnity insurance. Market conditions have been favourable, capacity plentiful, and renewing PII has been straightforward for most. However, conditions are changing, and the market is hardening for the first time in many years.

With several specialist PI insurers withdrawing from the market and others declaring they are closed to new business, more firms are now experiencing a delay in receiving quotations, suffering unexpected premium increases or greater restrictions. Firms should therefore not assume their PII renewal will be a formality. There are, however, steps buyers can take to mitigate the effects of a hardening market.

Give yourself time PII can be the second biggest expense after payroll, yet renewal is often left to the last minute with speed and price the main focus. Prepare well and submit your proposal form in good time, so your insurance broker has time to negotiate more strongly on your behalf.

Stay informed Buyers need to remain in contact with their broker so they can stay up to date with changes in insurance rate and insurer appetite. This should help budgeting for any rise in premium.

Show good form The proposal form is a representation of your business. A poorly completed form is unlikely to result in a favourable response from insurers.

With the market for professional indemnity insurance the toughest it’s been in years, don’t assume your renewal will be a formality

A h a r d a c t t o f o l l o w

M E M B E R R E W A R D S

Benefits Plus is the member rewards programme from RICS, with a range of exciting special offers, discounts and incentives for RICS professionals. For the full line-up of benefits, visit rics.org/benefits

“ PII CAN BE THE SECOND BIGGEST EXPENSE AFTER PAYROLL, YET RENEWAL IS LEFT TO THE LAST MINUTE ”

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224-232 St John Street, London EC1V 4QR | +44 (0)20 7825 1299 www.tracesolutions.co.uk | sales@tracesolutions.co.uk

Putting the Mojo back into property management

That’s the problem with making the

UK’s most powerful, most reliable

property management software.

It takes an expert to get the most

out of it.

So when we were adding an online

interface to our system, we didn’t just

stuff the whole of our desktop package

into the Cloud.

(Unlike some we could mention).

Instead, we created Mojo: an ever-

growing family of web apps, each of

which performs a single business process

just perfectly.

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All prices exclusive of VAT or local taxes

For details of conferences, training sessions and CPD seminars near you, go to rics.org/events

T R A I N I N G & E V E N T S

RICS Digital Built Environment Conference 5 June, Etc. Venues St Paul’s, LondonLearn how technology can enhance your practice, helping you to meet changing client demands, and achieve efficiencies in cost, time and resources. CPD: 5.5 hours £265 rics.org/digitalconference

RICS Integrated Property Services Conference1 July, Cavendish Conference Centre, London CPD: 6 hours £260 rics.org/propertyservices

INTERNATIONAL

RICS Summit Africa29-30 May, Maslow Hotel, Johannesburg CPD: 6 hours R2,700-R2,995 (£144-£160) rics.org/summitafrica

RICS Summit of the Americas 5 June, Los Angeles CPD: 8 hours $395 (£300) rics.org/sota

UNITED KINGDOM

RICS Construction Conference23 May, Etc. Venues St Pauls, London CPD: 6 hours £265 rics.org/constructionconference

APC Prep Days11 June, Bristol; 3 July, Manchester; 10 July, Birmingham; 24 July, London; 6 August, EdinburghCPD: 6 hours £110 rics.org/apcprepday

RICS Rural Conference 19 June, Royal Agriculture University, Cirencester CPD: 5.5 hours £175 rics.org/ruralconference

RULES FOR REGISTRATION AND USE OF RICS LOGO UPDATED

The RICS Regulatory Board has approved changes to the Rules for the registration of firms, and the Rules for the use of the RICS logo and designation by firms. The key changes include: the requirement for at least 25% of a firm’s principals to be RICS members; the introduction of the Responsible Principal role; and the clarification that only RICS members and registered firms can use the RICS logo. Regulated firms must be compliant with the new rules by 1 April 2020. RICS will notify all firms before any actions are required. Review the guidance on the rule changes at rics.org/firmchanges.

BOOST YOUR APC AT ONE OF OUR SUMMER PREP DAYS

RICS Training has announced summer dates in Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Edinburgh for its APC Prep Days. These courses combine informative sessions and pathway-based workshops to cover each stage in the APC process, and help candidates to network and prepare for the final assessment. Find out more at rics.org/apcprepday.

FIND OUT HOW WE’RE RESPONDING TO FUTURE CHALLENGES

RICS is thinking seriously about how we need to evolve as a modern and inclusive professional body, fit for the 21st century. We’ve been listening to you – our members – to understand how you are responding to advances in technology, increased availability of data, societal shifts and other drivers of change. We’ve also been engaging with the industry to gain insights into how RICS professionals

can use and adapt their expertise to seize opportunities, win business and shape the future of this profession. Visit future.rics.org to see how this is happening in the sector today.

ICMS 2: STILL TIME TO HAVE YOUR SAY ON STANDARD’S 2ND EDITION

Following a successful first round which garnered extensive comments, the International Construction Measurement Standards Coalition (ICMS) has launched a second public consultation on the second edition of ICMS. The second edition responds to industry feedback suggesting that construction stakeholders will benefit from a reporting system that provides internationally comparable lifecycle cost data. ICMS 2 will include renewal, operation, maintenance and end-of-life costs, and will expand the civil engineering scope to include mines and quarries and dams and reservoirs. Visit rics.org/icmsconsult to take part in the consultation.

COUNTDOWN IS ON TO WORLD BUILT ENVIRONMENT FORUM SUMMIT 2019

This month the RICS World Built Environment Forum Summit reconvenes in New York to debate the future of investment in real assets. The event will focus on how we can harness technology to mobilise the investment needed to meet the growing global demand for new infrastructure, new real estate, and the renewal of existing assets. Headline speakers include: blockchain entrepreneur Joseph Lubin; best-selling author Parag Khanna; former US senator Jeff Flake; the OECD’s Lamia Kamal-Chaoui; and Jennifer S Vey of the Brookings Institution. To find out more, visit rics.org/wbef.

MAY 2019 / MODUS / 41

E X P E R I E N C E

O B I T U A R I E S

Please email obituary notifications to contactrics@rics.org or call +44 (0)247 686 8555

rics.org/regulatorysupport

R E G U L A T I O N

EASTERN Richard Dymoke Colt FRICS, 1955-2018 St Albans John Christopher Hunt MRICS 1944-2018, Norfolk John Forrester Reid FRICS, 1935-2019 Watford

EAST MIDLANDS Frederick Phillips Blacklee FRICS 1919-2019 Northampton Eric William Knighton MRICS, 1928-2018 Burton on Trent Frank Lund FRICS 1922-2018, Matlock Simon Richard Wright (APC Candidate) 1957-2019, Kettering

LONDON Robert Appleyard FRICS 1938-2019, London Raymond Derek Budd FRICS 1929-2019, London Alec T Dolby FRICS 1952-2018, London

NORTH EAST David Wood FRICS 1931-2019 Chester-le-Street

NORTH WEST Michael David Idris Davies FRICS 1923-2019, Stockport Harry York MRICS 1927-2018, Warrington

SOUTH EAST Francis James Bailey FRICS 1934-2018, Jersey Peter Burns FRICS 1937-2019, Fareham Timothy John Goodhead FRICS 1953-2019 Portsmouth Ronald Cooper Kenyon FRICS 1928-2018, Uckfield Ian Michael King MRICS 1948-2019, Oxford Bernard Edwin Latter MRICS, 1944-2019 Maidstone Geoffrey Puttock FRICS 1917-2019, Kent Ryan Benjamin Smith MRICS, 1977-2019 Sevenoaks

SOUTH WEST Anthony Travis Carden FRICS, 1930-2019 Cullompton John Chiswell FRICS 1934-2019, Cornwall Peter Burford Goodhart FRICS 1951-2018, Bath Malcolm Perfect MRICS, 1921-2019 Plymouth

YORKSHIRE & HUMBER Michael Craig Curtis MRICS, 1963-2019 Harrogate Peter Stephen Hornby MRICS 1960-2019, Lincoln

William Robert Smith FRICS, 1955-2019, York

SCOTLAND J Gordon Hood FRICS 1929-2019, Aberdeen

WALES Nicola Eleanor Williams MRICS1963-2018 Carmarthen

NORTHERN IRELAND Herbert D Montgomery MRICS, 1945-2017 Londonderry

EUROPE Victor Mashkov MRICS 1954-2018, Moscow

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Michael John Applewhite MRICS 1957-2019, Craighall

SOUTH ASIA Dr Kalyanasundaram Ramamurthy FRICS 1949-2019, Gurgaon

If you are facing hardship after the loss of a family member, or considering leaving a legacy, please contact LionHeart, the charity for RICS members and their families. Call +44 (0)24 7646 6696, email info@ lionheart.org.uk, or visit lionheart.org.uk.

MR GILL WINFIELD, TORQUAYDISCIPLINARY PANEL HEARING – 19.02.19A Disciplinary Panel imposed that Mr Winfield be expelled from his membership at RICS. The Panel also made order that Mr Winfield makes contribution to RICS’ costs.

MR M HADLEY [1255609], WARWICKSHIRE, CV37APPEAL PANEL HEARING – 07.03.19At a Disciplinary Panel on 6 November 2018, the Panel heard six charges against Mr Matthew Hadley. All six charges were found proved. The Panel expelled Mr Hadley from membership of RICS.

Mr Hadley appealed the decision of the Disciplinary Panel and this was heard by an Appeal Panel on 7 March 2019. The Appeal Panel dismissed Mr Hadley’s appeal and awarded costs in favour of RICS. PARC PROPERTIES MANAGEMENT LIMITED (THE FIRM), LONDON E14DISCIPLINARY PANEL HEARING – 14.03.19On 14 March 2019, the Disciplinary Panel heard one charge against the Firm. The Panel found the charge proved. The Panel imposed a reprimand on the Firm and a fine of £15,000. The Panel also ordered the Firm to contribute towards RICS’ costs. MRS NICOLA HORNER [5026268], OXFORDSHIREDISCIPLINARY PANEL HEARING – 22-23.01.19 AND 04.03.19On the above dates a Disciplinary Panel heard two charges against Mrs Horner for failure to comply with Rule 3 of the Rules of Conduct for Members 2007. The Panel found both charges proved in part. The Panel imposed a Reprimand, a fine of £4,000 and ordered Mrs Horner to contribute towards RICS’ costs.

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Connells Survey & Valuation are seeking Residential Surveyors.

We are looking to recruit RESIDENTIAL SURVEYORS in the following locations

BournemouthBristolBurnleyCardiffDarlingtonDerby

DorsetFlintshireHerefordLeeds/BradfordLeicester/Loughborough

NE LondonNewportNorfolkNorth CambridgeshireNorth Devon

Transparent Commission &

Bonuses

Latest Technology

Career Progression

Working with new diverse markets

IT’S TIME TO AIM

HIGHER?

NorthamptonshireScarboroughSheffieldSouth Doncaster/ WorksopSwindon

TO BOOK, PLEASE EMAIL SAMG@WEARESUNDAY.COM

The next issue of Modus will be published on 1 June 2019 RECRUITMENT COPY DEADLINE: 14 May

First call

RESIDENTIAL SURVEYORS & VALUERSAll the best jobs with premier employers, including

lenders, financial organisations, large corporate and smaller non-corp surveying firms. Full and part time, employed & self employed opportunities. If you are AssocRICS/MRICS/FRICS and a registered valuer, ideally with relevant experience then call us first.

Immediate positions throughout London/M25, Avon, Beds, Berks, Birmingham, Bucks, Cambs, Cheshire, Derbys, Devon S, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Hants, Herts, Kent, Lancs, Leics, Lincs, Gtr Manch, Mersey, Middx, Norfolk, Northants, Notts,

Somerset, Staffs, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex E, Teesside, Tyneside, Wales S&N, Warks, Wilts, Worcs, W.Mids, Yorks.

Also, Staff Surveyor positions, Desk Top Valuers, Senior Compliance and Private Survey Only opportunities.

Call for latest locations and package details.

Email your CV in confidence to apply@mlarecruit.com or speak to the industry’s most experienced

recruitment team, Graham Johnson 07821 708131 or Jeff Johnson 07940 594093

MAY 2019 / RICSRECRUIT.COM / 45

Unrivalled Property Recruitment Expertise.

Chartered Residential Surveyors: Within both corporate and panel appointed, non-corporate practice-based environments. Remuneration includes a basic salary of £45-60k (depending on location), bonuses (based on fee income), a car (or allowance), healthcare and pension. Excellent opportunities for those seeking better remuneration or improved work / life balance.

Locations for experienced surveyors with immediate starts are available across the UK: Examples of areas with immediate needs include: EX, B, B/DY, BB, BB, BD, BH, BL, BS, CA, CB, CF/SA, CH, CM, CV, DA, DE, DT/BA, E/IG/RM, EH, EX/PL, GL, GU, HU, IP, LE, LL, LS, M, ME, MK, NG, NN, NP, NR, PO, RG, RH, S, SG, SN, SO, TA, TN, TS/DS, TW, WA.

Opportunities within the Residential Sector - UK Wide

Andy Welham 0208 514 9177 Andyw@BBLproperty.co.uk

James Irving 0208 514 9120 Jamesi@BBLproperty.co.uk

For our full range of residential opportunities including freelance and consultancy roles please visit: www.bblproperty.co.uk

Unrivaled Property Recruitment Expertise.

For well over 20 years now, we’ve been placing surveying professionals in positions across the country, at some of the most prestigious companies around.

Whether you’re a Chartered Surveyor or AssocRICS, a Commercial Valuer or Building Surveyor – we’ve got your next job.We are happy to discuss and potentially offer contrast to your current situation, or provide advice on the best move to maximise your career path.

We currently have numerous and immediate vaccancies for experienced surveyors and those seeking cross-training across the UK. Some current locations include: Residential Surveying:London & Counties / Midlands / The North (East & West)Staff Valuer:North & East London / South West LondonCross-training:WR / CV / B / DY / NG / NR / PL / EX / LBuilding Surveyor:London / Leeds / Newcastle

Andy Welham 0208 514 9177 Andyw@BBLproperty.co.uk

For our full range of opportunities alongside helpful career & CV advice please visit www.bblproperty.co.uk

With many more vaccancies available please do call should you be interested in having an informat chat about the opportunities in your own location.

Consultant Residential Surveyors: Valuation on a freelance / consultancy basis for both panel derived and privately instructed workload. Good average fee values. Payment based on up to 60/40 split. PII provided in all circumstances. Opportunities availible across multiple locations within the UK.

Call us first on:

Our reputation and success is growing our business, meaning we need more customer focused surveyors in our team.

In this role, you will not be undertaking lender work, only working for house buyers. Imagine, no more PVQ’s ever again.

Assoc RICS and MRICSGREATER MANCHESTER

We pride ourselves on looking after our customers, providing Homebuyer Reports to private clients, to help them make informed decisions on their house purchase.

Applications in confidence to recruitment@edwardmellor.co.uk

edwardmellor.co.uk

We’re recruiting VRS registered, AssocRICS, MRICS, and FRICS surveyors today.

SDL Group is an equal opportunities employer and encourages a diverse range of talent to apply.

Get in touch today:07881 008594recruitment@sdlgroup.co.ukwww.sdlsurveying.co.uk

You’re more than

just a number

to us

We’ll support and train you.

A clear path to complete your

APC

Supportive culture & team

Regular social events

Expansion...Growth...OpportunitiesEstablished in 1873, Tyser Greenwood Chartered Surveyors have over 100 years’ experience providing surveying and valuations across the Residential and Commercial Property Market.

Following our successful recruitment drive last year, we are still looking to add to our rapidly growing network of

home based surveyors, to service our expanding client base, utilising the latest iPad technology.

We are looking to increase our footprint and service offering by expanding our team with further vacancies in North West

(Manchester), South Yorkshire, Teeside, Tyneside, Midlands, East Coast Yorkshire, Hull, Bristol, Cheltenham and Gloucester.

There is an above average remuneration package available for successful candidates. You should be an experienced residential

surveyor with strong IT skills, who can offer high levels of expertise whilst being willing to develop new business across your territory.

Approaches from sole practitioners could also be considered.

Get in touch to find out more, call 01932 736 501 or email recruitment@tgsurveyors.co.uk

TGS_0001_AUG_Recruitment_Ad_173x111_FA.indd 1 06/08/2018 10:10

Following our extensive recruitment drive in 2018, we are still looking to add to our rapidly

growing network of home based surveyors.

We plan to increase our footprint and service offering further by expanding our team with opportunities in; North West

(Manchester), South Yorkshire, Teeside, Tyneside, Midlands, East Coast Yorkshire, Hull, Bristol, Cheltenham and Gloucester.

There is an above average remuneration package available for successful candidates. You should be an experienced residential

surveyor with strong IT skills (capable of using the latest ipad technology), who can offer high levels of expertise whilst being

willing to develop new business across your territory.

Get in touch to find out more, call 01932 736 501

or email recruitment@tgsurveyors.co.uk

Following our extensive recruitment drive in 2018, we are still looking to add to our rapidly

growing network of home based surveyors.

We plan to increase our footprint and service offering further by expanding our team with opportunities in; Blackburn,

Bradford, Teesside, Hull, Sheffield and Manchester.

There is an above average remuneration package available for successful candidates. You should be an experienced residential

surveyor with strong IT skills (capable of using the latest ipad technology), who can offer high levels of expertise whilst being

willing to develop new business across your territory.

Get in touch to find out more, call 01932 736 501

or email recruitment@tgsurveyors.co.uk

An opportunity to join the Projects Director, Jane Henshaw, and her team at Cadogan, to work on a portfolio in Chelsea that includes flats, houses, shops, offices, public gardens, restaurants and cultural attractions.

You will join a team of four Building Surveyors managing 70 prestigious developments worth over £450 million. You can look forward to working with leading principals and well-respected contractors, running multiple external teams and liaising with stakeholders, personally overseeing projects worth up to £5 million. You will be protecting and enhancing the character of one of London’s most distinctive neighbourhoods, placing integrity and customer service at the heart of all decisions.

You will be MRICS, have the presence to deal with demanding customers, contractors and colleagues, thrive on responsibility and be able to take the initiative, as well as direction.

BUILDING SURVEYORLONDON

If this sounds like you please contact Sue Prytherch 01767 677745 or sue@natural-talents.co.uk

www.cadogan.co.uk

The work on Her Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth has been one of our most important projects. It has been crucial and multifaceted to accommodate the size of the new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.

DIO undertook a range of major projects to get the base ready for her, including: • Dredging the approach channel• Installing navigation aids to mark the correct

approach into the harbour• Rebuilding and reinforcing the jetty• Building a sub-station and connecting to the National

Grid to power the ship

Upon removing around 3,200,000m3 of material from the seabed, a significant amount of ordnance was found, much of this dating from the Second World War. Over 20,000 archaeological items were discovered during the dredging of the harbour and approach channel, including: anchors, cannons, crockery and even a human skull.

The DIO covers an extensive range of disciplines spanning the whole of the UK, with opportunities to travel overseas. We understand the needs of our customers, articulate the requirement to our industry partners, commission the work and ensure it has been completed to the standards our customers expect.

Become part of our dynamic and forward-thinking organisation as it enters the next phase of its development. All our vacancies can be found at www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk. Register and create your online profile to view our latest adverts, set up job alerts and apply for our exciting opportunities.

Follow us on #DIOdelivers

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation plays a vital role in supporting defence by leading and managing the delivery of what the Armed Forces need to live, work, train and deploy.

Have a future that mattersBe proud | Be challenged | Be unique

MAY 2019 / RICSRECRUIT.COM / 47

HARGREAVES JONES RECRUITMENT 2019

Talented Quantity Surveyors (at all levels up to Director level) are sought with solid track record/experience in onshore/offshore windfarm projects

Location: Scotland Base Location with Excellent Salaries + Car/Car Allowance + Generous Pension + PHI

Hargreaves Jones is a commercial and Project Management Services Consultancy serving the Oil, Gas, Nuclear,

Utilities, including overhead Transmission Lines, Pharmaceuticals, Fast Moving Consumer Goods sectors (FMCG) and Commercial and Traditional Building sectors. We pride ourselves on delivering commercial and project services to

clients engaged in capital construction and engineering activities on both large and small infrastructure projects for Blue Chip clients, or their respective design and project management service providers.

The continued expansion and success of our growing business is reliant upon finding enthusiastic and motivated professionals. We provide APC training and support & opportunities to grow in an exciting professional environment.

Please send a copy of your CV and covering email to kim@hargreavesjones.comFor further deatils please contact www.hargreavesjones.com

BUILDING CONTROL SURVEYOR

At Milton Keynes Council we take great pride in our Community and we hope that you can help us grow and share our vision.

Milton Keynes is a rapidly expanding, vibrant and dynamic place to live, work and play. How better to contribute to that continued success than through a unique and rewarding career with Milton Keynes Council.

As a new and rapidly developing town the work in Milton Keynes is wide and varied, including villages mentioned in the Doomsday book, through to some of the country’s most modern and innovative developments. The roles will include plan checking, site inspections and investigations of unauthorised works and dangerous structures, and will also include some mentoring and supervisory duties.The post requires experience in the construction industry, an in-depth knowledge of the Building Act, the Building Regulations, and the Building Control function, with extensive experience of working in a Building Control team.For an informal chat about how we �t into your future please call Derek Hatt, our Building Control Manager on 01908 252202.

Closing date for receipt of applications: 17th of May 2019

Full time (37) £43757 - £48331

Interview Date: 4-6 June 2019To apply, please visit the Milton Keynes Council Careers website http://bit.do/milton-keynes-building-control-surveyor .

DEVELOPMENT AND ESTATES SURVEYOR - NORWICH

BULLEN DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED

Bullen Developments Limited has an exciting opportunity for a newly qualified

Chartered Surveyor.The role encompasses estates management

of our property portfolio, forward planning of existing sites, site acquisitions and disposals.

An understanding of the development process would also be beneficial; from site identification,

feasibility, acquisition and planning protocol through to build completion.

This is a new role within a highly skilled and professional team and would suit a committed,

hardworking team player looking for the opportunity of a diverse and interesting workload.

Submit your application to: steve.bastian@bullengroup.co.uk

Your future is bright with Miller Metcalfe.

Residential Chartered Surveyors Step into the Summer with us, with anexcit ing new career opportunity

Nationwide PositionsOTE £50k - £70k per annum

• Flexible working available• Full-Time, Part-Time & Consultancy opportunities• Home working

• Uncapped bonus, paid monthly

Miller Metcalfe Surveyors are a leading national supplier of Surveys and Valuations. We have opportunities available for home based, highly motivated MRICS/FRICS Residential Chartered Surveyors, who meet VRS registration requirements, have experience of producing RICS HomeSurveys and want to work across a mixture of both private and lender clients.

When you join Miller Metcalfe Surveyors you havethe opportunity to earn; a competitive OTE in the regionof £50 - £70k (uncapped bonus scheme - paid monthly). Also included; company vehicle choice or allowance, pension contributions, death in service, full administration/technical support and much, much more. Miller Metcalfe Surveyors has a very bright future, if you want to join a team where you are valued, there has never been a better time.

We believe in investing in our people and ensuring Miller Metcalfe Surveyors is a great place to work.

We want to hear from you whatever your location or work preference.

We are fully committed to developing our people and further enhancing their career.

Contact Us:Nicki Henderson, HR Director

Tel: 01204 917768

Email: nicki.henderson@millermetcalfe.co.uk

(All applications are dealt with in the strictest confidence)

Want to knowmore?Visit our careers page here:

www.millermetcalfesurveyors.co.uk/careers/

MAY 2019 / RICSRECRUIT.COM / 49

50 / MODUS / MAY 2019

Focusing on space standards would represent a failure to acknowledge the root cause of the issue, says Indy Johar

W H A T I F…

E X P E R I E N C E

“We have less of a house-size problem, and more a land problem”

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… t h e r e w e r e a m i n i m u m s i z e f o r n e w h o m e s?

Therefore, the question of how much space we need in homes should perhaps not be defined by a minimum standard, but on how we use design to unlock the full potential of the people using the space, and their ability to access public goods. Rather than just concentrating on unit size, what developers should consider more important is how we create sustainable buildings with healthy, air pollution-free interiors, tied to good access to affordable transportation and green spaces.

There is a danger that architects and surveyors are on the wrong side of history on this. We think we can control space standards, but the real issue is the structure and organisation of our land economy. Ultimately, if we don’t start thinking about space problems from a new perspective, we could end up accentuating long-standing inequalities in a way that we never intended.

Indy Johar is an architect and strategic designer at Jericho Chambers in London

The amount of minimum space one requires continues to be a subjective issue. There have been numerous attempts to introduce a minimum size for some types of home – such as for social housing – while in 2015 the UK government’s guidance suggested the minimum floor area for any new home should be 37 m2 (400 ft2).

But what if implementing such a one- size-fits-all standard is, strategically, the wrong way to look at the question? Because in many ways, we have less of a house-size problem, and more a land problem.

Architects are constantly trying to outdo each other in finding ways of squeezing homes into smaller and smaller spaces. Creatively, this is all well and good, but the value of this is nominal compared with the actual value of the land the home sits on, or the access to the “public goods” around it.

In our economy, land is the asset that hoovers up the most value, and we have a whole financial system that is geared to advancing the purchase of land. But if you own a piece of land, what do you actually own? If you took an area of land in the UK and the building on top of it, and moved it to Nova Scotia, it would not be worth as much. So where is the value of land coming from? Generally speaking, it comes from its monopolistic access to public goods.

This means that land values are directly affected by the inflation of value of the surrounding public goods, such as access to labour markets, public infrastructure, transportation and green space. I’d argue it’s not so much the house that goes up in value, but the value of the public goods. What we’ve been seeing is the privatisation of the public value that cities have been creating, going directly to land owners.

t: 0800 112 3878

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