Editorial

Citation

Hoxley, M. (2011), "Editorial", Structural Survey, Vol. 29 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2011.11029eaa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 29, Issue 5.

RICS COBRA Conference and Stephen Brown

By the time that this issue of Structural Survey is published, the RICS COBRA Conference will have been held in mid-September 2011 at the University of Salford. As I write this editorial at the beginning of August, it is my intention to attend what will be my 16th consecutive COBRA Conference. There have only been 17 conferences and the only reason I missed the first, held at Herriot Watt University in 1995, was because my submitted abstract for a paper was rejected! I had just moved from industry to academia at the time and clearly did not fully understand what an abstract should look like. Any way, I am delighted to have been asked to present an award to Stephen Brown at this year's conference. Until last year Stephen was the Research Officer for RICS and was largely responsible for organising all of the first 16 COBRAs. In undertaking this and his other research duties for the RICS, Stephen has provided a great service to surveying academics and the wider surveying professional world. I will also be presenting a best paper award sponsored by this journal, at the Salford Conference. The conferences have mainly been held at universities in the UK but in more recent times they have been held in Australia (2005), the USA (2007), South Africa (2009) and Paris (last year).

Papers in this issue

Last year's winner of the outstanding paper award for Structural Survey, Alan Forster has written another paper for this issue. His paper “A framework for specifying natural hydraulic lime mortars for masonry construction” is co-authored with K. Carter and provides an interesting conceptual framework of the subject. A fascinating case study is presented by Abdul Lateef Olanrewaju, Arazi Idrus and Mohd Faris Khamidi of the building maintenance practices of a Malaysian university. Adaptive reuse of heritage buildings from an Australian perspective is considered by Peter Bullen and Peter Love of Curtin University, Perth. Perth was supposed to be the venue for this year's COBRA Conference but for some reason it was moved back to the UK. Carbon monoxide alarms and the question of whether they should be provided in all new dwellings is discussed by Stephanie Power and Peter Wynn. The authors make a compelling case for current government thinking on the subject to be over-turned. Finally, identifying an appropriate approach to judge low carbon buildings is considered by Chinwe Isiadinso and her three co-authors (one of whom is your humble co-editor). This paper stems from research funded by the RIBA and the East Midlands Development Agency. Steve Goodhew until recently an Associate Dean for Research at Nottingham Trent University is the second named author of this paper. Steve has recently returned to the University of Plymouth and I would like to wish him all the best in his new role there. Mark Shelbourn my co-editor has also started a new job recently, at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and I would like to take this opportunity to wish him the best of luck “down-under”.

Mike Hoxley