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Examines the equipment and skills necessary for the survey of building engineering services in existing buildings, and outlines their uses. Argues the necessity in a survey to extrapolate from the conditions found to those which will probably apply during the whole year, often in a very short space of time. Recommends the methods best used to achieve those ends.

This paper aims to examine the role of sustainable buildings in providing healthy workplaces in physical and perceptual terms.

The paper takes the form of a literature review, considering the history of sustainable development in the built environment and its rationale, then widening the scope to consider sustainable, healthy and productive workplaces.

Sustainable construction has focused on environmental sustainability but this may have contributed to improved health, satisfaction and wellbeing amongst building users. Sick building syndrome and poor indoor air are contributory factors to ill health and reduced productivity but this paper suggests that sustainable building practices will reduce these effects, improving the quality of buildings for their occupants.

This paper argues that building performance measures need to take account of people factors such as employee perceptions and also that the design of workplaces should be regarded as a strategy for productivity enhancement. Management issues should be considered in the design of workplaces. The paper concludes that further research is required into the role of sustainable construction in providing healthy buildings.

The paper makes practical suggestions for corporate real estate and facilities management teams as well as those involved in the design of the buildings. Additionally, it opens suggested avenues for further academic research.

The paper aims to identify and demonstrate the benefits of plants in offices in contributing to employee health and well‐being by applying the study to a working office.

Via comprehensive literature reviews, the paper identifies the importance of indoor plants in office environments, firstly through physically improving the air quality and removing pollutants and secondly in improving employee well‐being through psychological benefits.

It is argued that plants are important in removing indoor air pollutants and in increasing employee perceptions of well‐being. The paper identifies, through literature review, plants with the ability to remove common office pollutants. It shows that there is a general preference for plants in offices through a perception survey and that occupants of planted offices feel more comfortable, more productive, healthier and more creative and feel less pressure than occupants of non‐planted offices.

The empirical research presented was limited to one office building. Research is now continuing, with the survey currently being completed by occupants of various offices throughout the UK.

The paper argues that indoor plants should become an integral part of corporate real estate strategies and that they have potential to alleviate sick building syndrome symptoms.

This paper provides an insight into how plants can be incorporated within corporate real estate strategies to improve employee health and well‐being and improve perceived productivity. It brings together two separate strands of research into the benefits in physically improving air quality and the psychological benefits of plants to humans.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the indoor environmental quality benefits of plants in offices by undertaking trials using live plants.

Using two offices in the same building, one with plants and one as a control, daily tests were undertaken for relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Results were analysed to identify any differences between the office with plants and the one without.

Relative humidity increased following the introduction of plants and more significantly following additional hydroculture plants being installed, taking it to within the recommended range. Carbon dioxide was slightly higher in the planted office for the majority of the trial, although there was an overall reduction in both offices. Carbon monoxide levels reduced with the introduction of plants and again with the additional plants. VOC levels were consistently lower in the non‐planted office.

It would be useful to extend this research in a greater range of buildings and with more flexible VOC‐monitoring equipment.

This paper suggests that plants may provide an effective method of regulating the indoor environmental conditions within buildings. This can potentially lead to performance gains for the organisation and a reduction in instances of ill health among the workforce.

The majority of previous studies have relied on laboratory work and experimental chambers. This research aims to apply previous findings to a real working environment to determine whether the air‐purifying abilities of plants have practical relevance in the workplace.

Presents analytical findings of sick building situations in Sydney’s open‐plan offices. Aims to ascertain facilities managers’ perceptions of sick building impacts on discrete aspects of workspace management, with a view to raising general awareness. A total of 100 open‐plan offices in the Sydney CBD were studied, and collated data analysed using partial correlation. Significant associations were found between sick building syndrome and certain aspects. However, management control played moderating roles in some of the associations. Concludes that, with management control, sick building syndrome may be perceived as critical to only a limited workspace aspect. The implication is for sick building syndrome to be largely generalised as inconsequential to many aspects of work environment in Sydney, probably following the Hawthorne management ideology.

Discusses the use of high alumina cement concrete (HAC) in the construction industry, highlighting both its advantages and disadvantages. Outlines its strengths and uses, and analyses the materials science of HAC concentrating on composition, hydration and attempts to avoid conversion. Examines the Imperial College experience with HAC and its implications for surveyors.

Public Health Engineering Services can be briefly defined as providing:

In the Court of Appeal last summer, when Van Den Berghs and Jurgens Limited (belonging to the Unilever giant organization) sought a reversal of the decision of the trial judge that their television advertisements of Stork margarine did not contravene Reg. 9, Margarine Regulations, 1967—an action which their Lordships described as fierce but friendly—there were some piercing criticisms by the Court on the phrasing of the Regulations, which was described as “ridiculous”, “illogical” and as “absurdities”. They also remarked upon the fact that from 1971 to 1975, after the Regulations became operative, and seven years from the date they were made, no complaint from enforcement authorities and officers or the organizations normally consulted during the making of such regulations were made, until the Butter Information Council, protecting the interests of the dairy trade and dairy producers, suggested the long‐standing advertisements of Reg. 9. An example of how the interests of descriptions and uses of the word “butter” infringements of Reg. 9. An example af how the interests of enforcement, consumer protection, &c, are not identical with trade interests, who see in legislation, accepted by the first, as injuring sections of the trade. (There is no evidence that the Butter Information Council was one of the organizations consulted by the MAFF before making the Regulations.) The Independant Broadcasting Authority on receiving the Council's complaint and obtaining legal advice, banned plaintiffs' advertisements and suggested they seek a declaration that the said advertisements did not infringe the Regulations. This they did and were refused such a declaration by the trial judge in the Chancery Division, whereupon they went to the Court of Appeal, and it was here, in the course of a very thorough and searching examination of the question and, in particular, the Margarine Regulations, that His Appellate Lordship made use of the critical phrases we have quoted.

IN order to be able to discriminate with certainty between butter and such margarine as is sold in England, it is necessary to carry out two or three elaborate and delicate chemical processes. But there has always been a craving by the public for some simple method of determining the genuineness of butter by means of which the necessary trouble could be dispensed with. It has been suggested that such easy detection would be possible if all margarine bought and sold in England were to be manufactured with some distinctive colouring added—light‐blue, for instance—or were to contain a small amount of phenolphthalein, so that the addition of a drop of a solution of caustic potash to a suspected sample would cause it to become pink if it were margarine, while nothing would occur if it were genuine butter. These methods, which have been put forward seriously, will be found on consideration to be unnecessary, and, indeed, absurd.