Using Peter Borsay's idea of an English Urban Renaissance, alongside other ideas including the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, this chapter discusses the context within which Baskerville and other provincial printers worked during the eighteenth century. The Printing (Licensing) Act had restricted printing to London, Oxford and Cambridge; its lapse in 1695 allowed printing to develop in other provincial towns, though London continued to dominate the trade. Birmingham, as a manorial town, was free of the trade restrictions which operated in incorporated towns and printers and other businessmen were free to set up in business without formality. The context of Birmingham as a developing industrial town is outlined and cultural aspects of the town's history are discussed.

This chapter explores British book trade index (BBTI)'s evidence for the systematic study of the English provincial book trade. In attempting to identify the scale of book-trade activity in the provinces between 1700 and 1850, BBTI records have been used to create a series of comparative 'snapshots' at twenty-five-year intervals for twenty-eight selected English provincial towns. This chapter shows the ratio of printers per thousand population in Bristol and Liverpool, and the development of printing in two medium-sized East Midlands market towns, namely, Leicester and Nottingham. Clearly, in order to understand the apparent surge in printing activity in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, one needs to delve beneath the broad term 'printer' to discover what exactly the traders so described were doing. Valuable evidence for the day-to-day work of the 'jobbing' printer has been presented by John Feather who cites, for example, the specialist box printer John Varden and the printer Cheney in Banbury in 1790.

In recent years many efforts had taken place in order to develop process and IT maps within the construction sector. However, the subject of co-maturation between IT and the process has not been given enough attention. This has resulted in the development of impractical solutions because of an apparent lack of balance between the IT and process capabilities. For instance, some organisations in the construction sector have adopted the rapid prototyping concept which is widely used within the manufacturing sector without even investing in 3D modelling and VR technologies which are the most appropriate for this task. Paradoxically, some organisations have invested in these technologies, but rapid prototyping is non existent. This paper addresses the issue of co-maturation between the process and IT in order to establish a balanced profile. The work is based on the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) model which was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in order to develop software for the US government, particularly to be used by the Department of Defence. The CMM is a five-level model which include ad-hoc, repeatable, defined, managed and optimised stages. The model is designed so that capabilities at lower stages provide progressively stronger foundations for higher stages, reducing the change management risks. Each development stage - or "maturity level" distinguishes an organisation's process or IT capability. This paper builds on the work achieved within the generic design and construction process protocol (GDCPP) which is being undertaken at the University of Salford. The main contribution of this paper is a conceptual model of co-maturation between IT and process. A synchronised IT/process model will be presented and discussed. This model is being developed through knowledge obtained form the industrial collaborators of the GDCPP project.

This paper reports on research undertaken on behalf of three UK-based facilities management client organisations. It surveys 12 service provider organisations of these three clients to understand the conditions for facilities management service provider (SP) organisations to innovate. The study has been undertaken in two parts. The first part addresses SP’s view on: criteria for a successful relationship between client and SP, best practice examples from SPs clientele, the differentiating feature of the best practices. The second part explores the relationships, firstly between contract duration, contract phase and innovation, and secondly between four pre-identified procurement options for facilities management and their relations to innovation.

A study of the history of the book trade (printing, bookselling, stationery and publishing) in Leicester, from the medieval beginnings of the trade (parchment making etc. ) up to cl 850. The development of the book trade is examined in its local, regional and national contexts, including cultural, social and economic aspects, with the aim of contributing to the growing corpus of historical study of the provincial book trade in England, which has developed considerably over the last thirty years. Extensive use has been made of primary source material, not least the Borough Records of Leicester including the registers of freemen and apprentices, newspaper advertisements, extant locally-printed books and other material. More than three hundred book-trade individuals have been identified. The activities of the leading practitioners are explored, including the stock and services they provided, the economics of their trading activity, their standing in the town (many held civic office), and their interaction within the business community. The impact of the book trade and the printed word in Leicester are discussed, as are other significant aspects of the trade such as the importance of family businesses, the role of women, and the handing on of trade skills from master to apprentice. In the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth, the striking contrast between the conservatism of the old Corporation and the strident radicalism, and religious dissent, of many Leicester people provides a vibrant setting for the activities of booksellers, printers and newspaper publishers. Many of the town's leading book-trade practitioners were politically radical - an interesting and historically important dimension to the later development of the book trade in Leicester, to a degree seldom found elsewhere.

Facilities management (FM) is often seen as the management of cost‐efficiency rather than as a method of achieving the multi‐dimensional enhancement of business competitiveness. If the role of FM is to be recognised for the literally facilitating strategic mechanism that it represents, organisational structures must be constructed in an enabling rather than a disabling form. This paper argues that existing organisational structures tend to repress the need for the integration of the functional and strategic dimensions of FM, through the practice of physically separating responsibilities for the various aspects of supporting the business operation, and this is compounded by the general failure of management to look at property issues broadly. The paper proposes the existence of barriers to the operation of the facilities property management interface and suggests that an improvement in effectiveness is possible by the incorporation of facilities managers into strategy management through subordination to strategy as opposed to management.

The value of the consultant project manager is questionable when the recent track record of project delivery within the UK construction sector is examined. Clearly, a new building which does not adequately satisfy a client’s business needs (in relation to time, cost and quality objectives) is not capable of contributing optimally to a client’s core business function. The business process expertise that the facilities manager should possess, together with the core skills related to managing operational building assets, mean that it is reasonable to suggest that the facilities management role could be extended to include responsibility for project delivery. Some facilities managers are presently undertaking this role. This paper explores this issue, concentrating upon the failure of the project management discipline to perform adequately. A review of literature is presented and a number of case studies are appraised. These are used to contrast the management of project delivery when conducted by the project manager with that conducted by the facilities manager.

The paper discusses the potential impact of videoconferencing on practices and processes within the construction industry, based on analyses carried out on its use and impact in the healthcare sector – which like construction involves technology‐intensive processes which are dependent upon cross‐professional and cross‐disciplinary relationships and communications, operate within an increasingly regulatory and litigious climate, and involve organizationally fluid, virtual, teams spanning several subindustries. Recently published research evidence from the healthcare sector suggests that whilst videoconferencing and other advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) have pervasive capabilities, successes in their application may be shortlived and modest in achievement. In use, their actual uptake and application have been found to be fundamentally affected by a range of social and operational issues, such as fears over a new formalization and trackability of previously informal conversations; a rebalancing of power relationships (between professionals using the ICTs as well as between doctor and patient); pressures on social/cultural and procedural alignment between participants; and personal and corporate attitudes to the technologies (including simply disliking the ICT). There is also evidence from the healthcare sector to suggest that ICTs increase the complexity of the delivering healthcare, and that the limitations of the technologies emphasise an existing dependency of communications and processes on tacit knowledge which is not readily formalized for communication via ICTs. However, the paper also notes an increasing pressure on the construction industry to respond to the globalizing potential that ICTs offer for the supply and delivery of knowledge‐based services, and discusses the implications of the issues found in the healthcare sector for the use and potential abuse of ICTs in the construction industry that will have to be successfully addressed in order to avoid ICTs being perceived as threatening and to allow their use to help organizations address the globalising marketplace.

As extranet and video conferencing technologies become increasingly accessible and affordable, the possibility arises of globally-based virtual organisations entering and operating in geographically-remote, knowledge-driven, markets – a globalising of competition by virtue of the elimination of regional and national communications barriers. The paper commences by considering the possible future implications of this for the delivery of knowledge-based services at distance. It then discusses whether such developments in virtual working represent a threat or opportunity for the professional knowledge-based sectors of the Construction Industry. It also considers the potential implications for the way of working of the Construction Industry and its global supply and consumption of knowledge-based services and research. The paper speculates whether the prospect of increased availability of standard services by virtual means will be matched by the globalising of the market for non-standard professional services delivered-at-distance by electronically-enabled virtual teams. The paper concludes with recommendations for a research agenda on knowledgebased e-Construction issues.

Considers the state of benchmarking in facilities management and finds that most academic and practice literature is mainly concerned with measurement techniques, and a formal approach of reducing performance gaps. Limitations are discussed, and the orientation of facilities management performance priorities is questioned. Argues that benchmarking is limited by the ability to identify the priorities, or performance indicators, that can measure contemporary issues such as customer satisfaction to any benefit. Applies the search for benchmarking issues to the human environment, home of the much‐discussed knowledge worker. Research indicates that, far from being static measurable constructs, the environmental conditions in such offices rely on the influence of the market, the organisation culture, the type of users, and the external political conditions. Facilities and business managers often fail to consider these influences in the selection of the performance priorities. Concludes by suggesting that the tendency to rely on a general set of indicators leads to benchmarking issues that are often unhelpful in the pursuit of continuous improvement. Benchmarking issues are more clearly understood to need rich analysis that an investigative methodology could provide.

The 1970s and 1980s have witnessed the development of many technological advances in the construction industry. At the same time, IT has been perceived as a driver for many of the construction business and operational processes. The 1990s have seen a technological shift in the construction sector from IT driven solutions to IT enabling ones. The industry, however, has become frustrated with the failing of IT as many companies have invested in the wrong technologies without addressing business needs. This is now being rectified by developing IT systems that support business processes taking into account process, people and cultural needs. This paper describes how IT systems are being developed within a major EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) funded research project in order to help the construction industry develop feasible technological IT solutions. This is achieved by considering the co‐maturation of processes and IT within the context of process improvement.

This paper reports some interim findings from organisational research into site fire safety which looks at the relevance of Contractor and Facilities Manager attitudes to safety as a component of the overall safety process. Presents a discussion on some of the practical problems associated with Facilities Managers managing the maintenance of fire safety during alterations works. Commences with an illustration of the Facilities Management context of site fire safety that draws upon a number of relevant fire events. It is intended to provoke a wider debate on the relevance of the Facilities Management role in protecting the business. A Project Safety Plan checklist is suggested for Facilities Managers, based on the authors’ review of existing construction site fire safety guidance and codes of practice. Explores a broadening of the Facilities Management role, as interface manager, which in most cases of refurbishment and alterations will constitute the common managerial link to the core business.

The need to establish key performance indicators for facilities management (FM) is well recognised. However, difficulties in establishing universally‐accepted definitions of the FM function and its management process continue to confound the identification and application of a generic set of performance parameters. This paper describes the process of developing a management‐by‐variance tool for monitoring the performance of the FM function of a major financial services company. The dual problems of the absence of a standardised set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and the lack of existing data for performance evaluation were addressed using a Delphi group. The principle of management‐by‐variance is based on the monitoring and analysis of performance trends, which is done by monitoring changes in performance using a bespoke (rather than generalised) set of performance indicators. This paper describes the process of creating the pilot version of a management‐by‐variance tool in sufficient detail to allow the process to be replicated to create other sets of bespoke KPIs. The process and outcomes of the exercise to short‐list, rank, and weight a finalised list of 23 KPIs are discussed. The KPIs are analysed in the context of the method of their selection, prioritisation and weighting for their intended custom application.

The need to establish key performance indicators for facilities management (FM) is well recognised. However, difficulties in establishing universally‐accepted definitions of the FM function and its management process continue to confound the identification and application of a generic set of performance parameters. This paper describes the process of developing a management‐by‐variance tool for monitoring the performance of the FM function of a major financial services company. The dual problems of the absence of a standardised set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and the lack of existing data for performance evaluation were addressed using a Delphi group. The principle of management‐by‐variance is based on the monitoring and analysis of performance trends, which is done by monitoring changes in performance using a bespoke (rather than generalised) set of performance indicators. This paper describes the process of creating the pilot version of a management‐by‐variance tool in sufficient detail to allow the process to be replicated to create other sets of bespoke KPIs. The process and outcomes of the exercise to short‐list, rank, and weight a finalised list of 23 KPIs are discussed. The KPIs are analysed in the context of the method of their selection, prioritisation and weighting for their intended custom application.