this session went over the activities of the various geographies. it was quite interesting to hear of the different scales. they ranges from Poland, which has a target of becoming a road economy like the US to China which has a clear expectation to become multi-modal. There are over 40 major urban rail projects in planning and construction so that by 2020, there will be 100,000 km with 13,000 km of high speed lines in place.

Malcolm Gibson - MTR - gave a really interesting talk. there is an evolution of expectations in HK as far as comfort is concerned. this has reduced the total capacity of the lines from 85,000 per hour to 70,000 per hour. they have a good bit of money and will be investing $HK120,000,000,000 over the next ten years. he described the express rail link that is being built to link to Shenshen and on north to Shanghai and Beijing. This is being built without knowing he ultimate capacity, but as he said, they know it is the right thing to do. the amount of the work which the MTR are planning is absolutely phenomenal.

he noted that as part of the design management they have arrangement in which the design team much be co-located in the MTR offices; preliminary design is generally based on time charging and detailed design on a lump sum.

their selection of consultants is based on :
1. best team for the job
2. fair assessment of proposals
3. focus on the technical expertise and ability to deliver
4. appropriate fees
5. low bid excluded
6. no cut throat proposal accepted
7. understanding of the projects
8. team structure and its commitment to the job
9. organization and staffing
10. interview of the team is the MIOST important - we want to know if we like them or not

Chairman LM Lui opened talking about the constellations. they are there only because we make them real. they are essentially dreams which become real thru our imagination....you need to be able to 'free your heart' from what you assume to be real.

Colin Stewart, chair of the sector, gave an opening on the business stats. it has been a good year and looks to be another good one. he noted that all of the carbon emissions for this event would be offset. he presented the New Rail Business framework. it looks really impressive. I had not idea that our offer and skill sets were so wide and varied. he spoke of many things and focused on the results of an internal competition: the common results that appeared were: freedom of choice, carbon footprint, alternative power, technologies, personalization, economics, integrated journeys, information and IT, urban context and planning.

Peter Broch - Asian Development Bank [ADB] [http://www.adb.org/] - he has a special focus in southeast asia. he presented some amazing figures. the poverty in asia has been dropping drastically. the number of statistically poor has dropped to about 50% today. the challenge is that this group has also grown by 1 billion to about 2 billion. this is an interesting fact. the main objective of the ADB to lower poverty. he noted that Viet Nam has the most most liberal rail laws in the world. anyone can come in an build and operate a new rail line. anyone. this not fond anywhere else in the world. they provide funding at very favourable rates to develop, the most iportant thing for us, is to contiue to give good advice that is culturally appropriate.

TG Chew - Bombardier [http://www.bombardier.com/en/1_0/1_19/index.html or http://www.bombardier.com/index.jsp?id=1_0&lang=en&file=/en/1_0/1_0.jsp]

Their vision for mass transit systems in the future should include the following:
1. 24 hour operation with no down time
2. greater frequency and capacity
3. energy efficiency with low resource consumption
4. improved security and safety
5. comfort and more facility for passengers
6. driver-less and integrated systems
7. attractive design that blend with the city
8. fundamentally sustainable development

he described some of the innovations that they are implementing. however, it does seem that they are playing catch-up to both the automotive and airline industries as far as the utilization of information is concerned. hard to understand, really, how their model works. one idea that they have is to have load weighted fresh air introduction in winter in cold areas. most important is the driver style on energy consumption. he noted in an aside that the ideal scenario would be for the entire side of the car to zip/flip open to allow loading all along the length rather than at single apertures....and then to roll/zip closed..... could we design this? another challenge is to fundamentally lower the weight of the carriage. every ton has to be carried....so the biggest challenge is to safely reduce the overall weight of the carriage, including the drive train. he further noted that the industry needs to take a good hard look at how to use what they have better. this does not imply radical change [of course he would not be interested in that as this is an amazingly conservative industry] but rather an effective utilization of the things that the industry already knows.

he was a pretty good salesman.

Bob - renewed focus on built environment; sustainability being brought together at a strategic level
Dan - what will happen post-Daly? sub-prime concerns; is interested in rapid-transit that is not publicly funded
Rod - increasingly focused on carbon footprinting; 40% of projects using BIM whether owner wants it or not; $11 billion in back-log
Neil - VACATIONS SHOULD NOT FEEL LIKE PAROLE - talent drain will continue and the mid-level dearth will continue to grow. they are more ambitious than the jobs that the profession is offering.
Jim - a year of transitions. globalization is the biggest challenge; Gensler is investing heavily in the 'Gensler University' very similar to the Arup programs. projects are so complex now that we seem to see the real challenge is in the organization and risk. it seems to be much easier to engage the 30 yr old group than the 40 year old group. they seem to be passionate and enthusiastic for contributing to the company.
Arol - he sees that the integration of building information and design coming into more prominence. he sees that there will be many more 'objects' integrated into Revit and similar. the goal is to empower the architect and designer as early as possible in the design process. he also noted that only 7% of architects identitfied that buildings contribute 40% of the Greenhouse gasses.
Gordy - IDP will be restructured. there will be a 6 month reporting requirement.

construction document phase replaced by a virtual construction phase.

Barry - integration within the new parent continues. sustainability remains important.
Carrie - committed to use San Francisco as a laboratory for sustainability. no commissions will be taken unless sustainability as part of the project. she brought up the issue of water....and the recognition of the pharma water problem.
Scott - overseas increasing importance. kids are great at video's but know nothing about making a building.
Karen - need to tranision from hourly to value billing
Clark - we know that the future is not about growth for the sake of growth. it must be a by product. introducing live energy consumption at each workplace into their offices.
Ralph - successfully working thru fourth generation ownership issues. internally focusing on technology and education - especially on healthcare. 30% of revenues now coming from US. 1% solution is part of their practices and it gives the youth opportunities to follow passions. real challenge is to manage civic and corporate responsibilities.
Peter - market south of the border is growing significantly. integrated practice is working well. it is at about 40% now and it seems like clients are now looking for this as a solution to break the current standard. they went to 100% Revit last year.
Jack - sustainability has been increasing in the management meetings, and cradle-to-cradle is now permeated into the firm. it seems that it is now at silent action. he talked about the 1979 Design Festival here in Aspen. especially that the DFC have the name that is recognized.

The day began with a series of five parallel sessions in which a selected number of papers were presented by Belgian researchers. The event was held at the grounds of the military academy, so camo was evident thru the windows at all times. I opened the afternoon session with a talk on Innovation and Global context. It included some new thoughts on innovation in our now globalized local economies. i left almost immediately afterwards for the airport so i could meet my planes to get to Singapore.

a day of discussions about the year ahead for the construction industry. the speakers were:
David Wyss, Chief Economist, Standard & Poor, who was awesome. he gave a very stark overview of the housing market and its impact in the US. he anticipates that the housing market will bottom out over the next year [maybe] and then not recover.

CHL made a new talk on future trends around STEEP.

Then, Howard Mager, Sr VP, McGraw Hil, opened a panel with a group of manufacturers.
Mark Johnson, Whirlpool. [http://www.whirlpool.com/home.jsp]
now using sketch-up to create a repository of product. one worry is that as we head into a tougher economy our products could be commoditized. his concern is that free-trade will be challenged by new president. this guy likes to throw numbers around without any real understanding of the context. he needs to get a passport and take a trip around the world.

Susan Kennedy, Sloan Valve Co [http://www.sloanvalve.com/]
they purchase renewable credits to cover their energy costs. biggest challenge will be cost of metals and global competition

Brad Haeberle, VP Siemens Buildig Technologies [https://www.buildingtechnologies.siemens.com/]
great opportunities for new wireless. biggest challenge is to get skilled labour. a good marketing person.

John Mothersole talked about materials pricing. he feels that there will be a 2% rise in overall price. he continued to give a bunch of numbers about the coming year. he believes that prieces will be fairly steady due to overall glob al demand icreasig. he also points ot that non-residential markets will look good.

spent the afternoon being shuttled from one group to another within the National Geogrpahic Society here in Washington DC. This was all courtesy of Susan Reeves who is in Charge of Missions and Special projects an di met at PopTech. I met with really great folks who deeply believe in the new mission of helping to enhance pubil literacy on the state of the globes natural treasures. it was a great afternoon.

spent the last 36 hours with a group of really amazing people. they are all part of what is called the Monitor Network [http://www.themonitornetworks.com/]. this group can be found at [http://www.monitortalent.com/]. it was really great to connect with Ethan Zuckerman [http://ethanzuckerman.com/] whose blog [http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/] is really a must read!

i also met
sherry turkle [http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/] who was incredibly insightful.
Margo Strom - who helps us look at the past in new ways
Jim Bower - who seems to question everything in a good way
John Kao - who just finished a book on Innovation in America...soon to be a must read for everyone!
Dean Esserman - police chief from Rhode Island who believes the future lies in our streets
Stewart Brand - who sits back and listens alot
Paul van Riper - retired Maine Corps general who is incredibly wise and UNDERSTANDS complexity.

it is really wonderful to be in a room where everyone else is smarter!

Session 05
David Adamson, who was the head of writing the rules for procurement of the built environment for the UK Treasury. He Talked about the transformation of the UK gov’t procurement from a cheapest total capital cost to the best whole life cost as it is. It is a fundamental move to the Quality Agenda. There has been a Mandate for Focus on Whole Life Value at national, regional and local levels.

‘I knew more about this building before we started before most buildings when we are finished.’ quote from a contractor.

Ratio between capital costs and long-time value was articulated....
.1 design
1 building
3 running premises
20-30 cost all university activities

There is now a new ISO 15686 which lists what one does and does not include for whole-life costing.

Common-sense context for definitions
'The Best' is the enemy of the Good Enough

For healthcare the most important is the position of fenestration and the second most is the position of the power points; better architecture means reduced pain drug intake at hospital.

Every project over £2 million is now required to have a post-occupancy evaluation with the design team after two to three years. This is/has been crucial to the success of the new whole-life method.

We find that undergraduates are calling the shots as far as sustainability is concerned.

We know that there must be both a ‘carrot and stick approach’

Session 1
Scott Simpson opened by asking each of the panellists to review what has happened in their company over the past year. Reponses were as follows:

Beck Group. It is the younger staff that is driving the issues within the firm…a real bottom up approach has evolved that is fully supported by the owner of the company. We have a checklist that has three aspects – issues that are project based, issues that are technology add-ons and the last is a list for LEAD certification. We also have a program that allows us to take a look at both early cost impacts of our design decisions and impacts on longer-term energy use. We are also working on getting more out into the political arena as far as influencing new decisions.

Gensler. We see that this is incredibly challenging to get sustainability innovation into the mainstream.

Four tiers of sustainability: we are hearing more and more from clients that we want to be ‘beyond platinum’. We most importantly took this last year as an opportunity to look at our own footprint. We are seeing an increasing desire for performance metrics for energy and water and finding it very difficult to find consultants who are interested in stepping up to the plate. We are also going to be measuring all of our projects even if our clients are not interested so that WE know what is going on.

Durrant. We have just about completed the accreditation of our professionals to get them LEAD accredited. We are also aware that this is different at different offices around the Durrant family. From a NCARB perspective, we are working with the other sister organizations to rewrite the criteria for accreditation of programs to incorporate sustainable design to a much higher degree. We can see there is a real convergence amoungst NGOs. Interesting issue is how to bring sustainable design BACK into mainstream of both education and pro-actice. How long till the next ‘THING’ will come.

Its not about technology – its about collaboration.
Survey – 7% of voters know about greenhouse gases. 40% of voters think that it cars and trucks are the largest contributors. Buildings produce 48% of greenhouse gasses;
Buildings consumer 71% of energy produced at power plants.

Education and evangelism on these issues is SOOOO important.

MAGIC WAND QUESTION
Gordy – now that the politicization of climate change has been achieved we have an enormous opportunity for the reintroduction of regional planning. With my want, I would reinstitute the regionalization of our thought process.
Rives – I want to have a way in which every action has an immediate feedback consequence. It has to effect cable TV.
Betsy – I want to see regional groups to get together the issues of transit and mixed use development.
Phil – professional silos are just bullshit. I feel that we suffer deeply from silo mentality and the only way we can move forward is to break these silos. [BUT I sure want to have great specialists!!!!]
Scott – I am going to share about my meeting with Jack Warnikie – he noted that we all have to go to the bathroom. We have to use our power as designers to focus on our humanity.

The Design Futures Council has held its sixth leadership summit. this one was in Austin, Texas. The 115 participants included a new group of young leaders and students. the other delegates represented the entire supply chain. the program was designed by Jim Cramer, of Greenway Consulting, with his team in Atlanta. the presentations ranged from the master plan for the Beijing olympics to integration of technology in facades. the participants were really wonderful. I hosted the event and gave a talk after dinner at the end of the first full day.

more will come on the specific sessions.

B Giussani
S Kish
A Lange
M Cattaui
D Mehta
J-L Constanza

The session was packed. It was opened by the facilitator by allowing each panel member to make a comment. They are as follows:

BG Second life is a platform that socializes the interaction with information.
AL – Facebook.com and similar sites are not really about extending ones circle of friendships; rather it is about building new types of relationships. These networks are really for generation Y, they are the first group to really utilize this to its fullest potential. 60% of all teenagers are a part of a social network, 80% of all 18-20 year olds are on Social networks.
SK - the reality of all human interaction is networking. The real question is what is the role of networking for the enterprise. Today we are potentially at a new point of inflection as far as the relationship between transaction cost and implementation cost. How this will play itself will play out will be very interesting.
MC [Moderator] – what is the relationship between trust and authenticity? This will be an important issue for us to talk about.
DM - I wish to share a bit of my Tsunami experience. When it hit, we started to take up SMS messages and posting them onto our blog. This was really helpful as all telephone lines were down, but not the wireless. We were able to broker international assistance. The blog was not enough and we had to migrate to a WIKI. During the Tsunami Skype did not work. During Katrina, Skype worked and we were able to use it; we essentially manned the ‘skypephonelines’ for a month during the fiasco..
JLC - we now see that internet time has surpassed TV time. This is really incredible.
BG –Pointed out that the issue of secod life and linear life are irrelevant. To prove his point, he asked how many had checked their phones or blackberrys while listening….this is a manifestation of the combination of virtual and linear.

Comment from Bloomberg.com. – this new disaggregation is coming at a cost. How can newsgathering continue to be free? At some point someone must pay as we need to have the means to live.

BG noted that Bloomberg understands the difference between content and
distribution.

AL said that she does not want to change society. Machine connectivity is only going to increase. How will we be able to domesticate the machine?

Comment – my son told me that I need to think like a computer….

Question – is it easier to make a social network in a certain continent? What will our kids do with this?

Lets come back to the questions of trust, confidence and social networks…..
BG – the internet is continuing to grow exponentially and will most likely continue to do so. We have to think about this and how it will impact all of us. He told us about the ‘hole in the wall’ project that has taken place around the world. This was a project where a screen was built into a wall and the kids learned thru it. They learned English etc….the point was that this was a deep domestication of mature technology.
AL – we do advise our customers to create social networks. She also noted that the closer the network is to the individual’s interest, the more effective and strong the network will be.
SK bill of right – own your own information. You should be able to control with whom you share it with. You should be able to dictate with whom the information is shared externally.
BG pointed out that the trust is an important issue. You can get a good idea about the ‘trustworthyness’ of an individual is easy to check out by the references on the web….ie facebook friends, google etc.

Great session.

How increasing women's integration is changing the competitiveness picture

The most interesting thing for me from this session was the statement that when will finally have to make the case for non-diversity rather than diversity? When will we see a film about the need for men at all?’ a bit provocative, but the constant issue of rationalizing the case FOR diversity is tiring. IT seems soooo obvious that i canot imagine that anyone does not see this.

Liswood continued with making an observation that there is no such thing as a glass ceiling, it is just a thick layer of men. The sooner we recognize this and then strategize how to get thru this layer, the sooner the layer will thin out.

She continued with a description of the Ark and what is known as cognitive diversity.

She challenged the notion that only having women in a company makes it better. She suggested that the real underlying notion is that those firms which have more women have better processes as a whole and are fundamentally better run, so therefore there is more diversity anyway. I find this one of the most compelling statements so far. If we think about running a company well, then the other bits that SHOULD be, will be.

I wonder why Arup, which has an average of 30% female staff, does not have 30% senior leaders as well.

the main plenary room was set with 65 tables. i slid over to a table on the left side which had a few participants already siting and asked if i could join. no objections, no invitations. introduced myself to the other three. I was siting next to the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazsine who writes about beauty and hair. She was from Paris. On the other side a young executive from ABN AMRO from Brazil sat down. We had a really interesting discussion about the role of HR and sustainability, which is one of the things that she was responsible for. We also talked about how differnt companies deal with 'trailing spouses' issues. And, how cultures clash or resonate. good food as well.

Princess Astrid of Belgium spoke about her experiences as the head of the Red Cross of Belgium.

The conference opened with a lovely musical interlude by Vera Tsu, a violinist from the Beijing National Symphony. What a different way to begin. The room was full of tables with six or seven chairs per table placed on one side so that the stage could be seen. After the interlude, the Chair of the Women’s Forum, Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, officially opened the event. She noted that this year there are over 1200 participants from over 70 countries with 15% men. Her goal is 30% male, but it is fine as it is. She noted that this year they have moved to a new business model that now allows for long-term partnerships and thus the founding of six specific projects aimed at women. These ranged from a global award for business entrepreneurship to schoolgirl educational programs. Her focus was on the role of TRUST in all of our social systems that are the basis of social institutions.

Long Jiang Wen, General Director of the All-China Women’s Federation, was inited to speak. She had a nice slide show in which everyone was smling about the Chinese voyage over the past fifty years which included some very trying times for women in China. The most fascinating thing that she spoke about was that the migration of male workers to the cities for construction has left women in the primary role in much of the countryside. This is an incredibly interesting issue when we look ahead. AND it brings up the response to my question of another one of the Chinese delegation about the one-child policy and its impact on the nation’s demographic profile. She responded that the policy as an important part of the nation getting into its position and said with total confidence that the one-child policy will be changed in 2010. I am not sure exactly who she was, but the response was striking.

The first person to take the theme was Anne Lauvergeon, Chairman of the Executive Board of Areva. She spoke about the relationship between the shareholder and the Board of a company. She indicated that this relationship is an important one. And often difficult unless there is a high degree of transparency; both in good and bad times.

Ayo Obe, chair, Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy from Nigeria spoke on the role of trust in African nations. She pointed out that there is a critical role of the citizen to make discerning choices. And, that this power of choice is not just in the way that officials are chosen, but in the way one lead’s their lives. She gave some examples from the current situation in Nigeria.

Q Is there a difference between popularity and trust?
Laura Liswood, Senior Advisor at Goldman Sachs NYC, response started with a short rhetorical dialogue regarding the CEO of Arriva who had opened the panel…
Do I trust her because I agree with her, or do I agree with her and therefore I trust her. Does it matter? She continued, noting that surveys show that there is a fundamental decrease in trust in government and other institutions today. This is across the board. There is an increase in trust of NGOs; even an increase in trust in certain armed forces in some parts of the world. There is a slight increase in trust of business….although this is a mystery to her. Part of the challenge today is the incredible amount of information. It has become too darn hard to discern between the ‘facts’ from the chaff. It has become so complex that one ‘throws up their hands’ and says ‘I like the colour of that guy’s tie, so I will vote for him’. And this is why representational governments in the older democracies is beginning to fail

It seems like democracy has a fundamental problem. As a system of representation it expects that there is transparency, and then as the individuals who are elected do not meet aall the expectations across ALL categories, then they loose their trust totally. IT takes years to build trust and just moments to loose it. She talked about what she calls her Crumbling Cliff Theory – when all else fails, when the cliff is crumbling beneath us, then a women is often shoved forward since nothing else has seemed to have worked. This is happening more and more and women are succeeding to keep the cliffs from collapsing.

She went on to talk about the issue of trust of institutions. It seems that women trust institutions more because they feel that they need the institution to provide them with a safety net. Men have the perception that they can be more self-reliant and create their own wealth. Women do not have the same feeling, in general, and this must change.

Q is the question of trust right for this conference???
Ayo – yes. It is really more about how we project ourselves.
Someone who has confidence must also have self-doubt. There is paradox. To take risks with both feet on the ground. You need to be able to look at yourself from outside. If you think about the 1960’s, there as an imposed political system. There is a totally different world today. Now, we need to make sure that we are able to ask ourselves very hard questions with honesty…perhaps this is the yin-yang of being able to push and pull.
Liswood – it is a combination of the two views. We need to be able to trust ourselves. ‘men feel that they are fully confident to make a decision when they have 25% of the knowledge, women feel that they can make decisions when they have 75% of the information.’

The summary : a few issues have come up
Self-doubt vs self-confidence. Risk vs consensus. And, a real big issues with the concept of openness in leadership by the few and the needs for transparency of the many.

The moderator concluded by stating:

We have to learn to love and embrace complexity.

Do you have any idea where Deauville, France is? I had no idea until today. It is on the 'Northern' coast of Normandy, France just south of Le Havre. It is essentially a well known beach resort that built a convention centre a while ago to house the American Film festival in Europe. Most of the centre of town is shuttered up since the properties are really summer holiday residences. It is a bit spooky actually. That being said, it is very Normandy. Lots of half-timber and highly articulated expressive architecture.

I am staying in the Barriere Royal Hotel. It is one of those timeless edifices built around the turn of the century [this one actually in 1912...and considering what happened in the area immediately after it is amazing that it is still here]. I think James Bond could have strolled around and felt very much at home....my room is tiny, but has a corner view of the ocean. Thankfully shutters will block out the all-nightfacade lighting. It has an ginger-bread-like top two floors which sits upon a great piano nobile with fivefloors of room stacked between them. Great wooden revolving doors whisk you in and out.

I was picked up at the airport by a woman who is a 'gazelle' - which is a group of women who have been doing rally's in Morocco for the past 18 years - in a great big Renault Transit. [A bit of a beast of a 'car']. We struggled a bit at first with our mutual understanding of Franglish, but the two hour drive dissipated rapidly. Catherine now lives in a small town in south west France after too many years in Paris and this is her annual regeneration of all things global. Good on her for doing this and choosing her lifestyle. I was dropped off at the hotel, checked in and scooted off to the evening's reception.

The reception this evening was everything that I had expected. It was held at wonderful local 'residence' which is used for such events. It was very and well appointed in every way; Great decoration, nibbles and drinks. AND, no one was remotely interested in speaking to me. I was like I was a see-thru alien. Fortunatly I met the Gazelle women again and was able to stroll around the room with them until they had to head back to Paris to pick up more participants. The mayors wife chatted with me only because I had made my way back to the entrance and was standing there a bit like a stranded fish [I think she took pity on me]. Turned out that she is an interior designer and very interested in the future of cities as was her husband. She pulled him over from the pictures routine with the Chinese delegation and we chatted about his frustrations in delivering change in his town. It ended up being a fascinating conversation....and still have not yet met any of the delegates. I wonder if this is the way women are treated when they attend conferences which are mostly male dominated? Are they ignored?

I think my experience at the lift at the hotel summes up my first impression. I was waiting for the lift to arrive with two other participants. one turned to me and aggressively asked 'So, What are you doing here?' I replied, "I was invited to come and speak about the future of cities'. That seemed to be OK with her. Silence as the lift came and deposited me at my room.

end of day naught.

spent the day with ten other 'users' of the UK EPSRC research funding. very interesting to see the directions that they are considering. energy high on the agenda. good news. i hope that they are strong enough to encourage the gov't to contiue to focus on fundamentals and not try to imitate silicon valley.