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The paper aims to apply social practice theory to clarify the process of innovation design and delivery from one successful digital innovation: the building information modelling (BIM) risk library. The paper clarifies the practices surrounding construction innovation and provides a schema useful for practitioners and technology designers through a social practice analysis.

The paper applies Schatzki's “organisation of practice” concepts to a construction project innovation to clarify how the practice of innovation revolves around understandings, rules and teleoaffectivities (emotive behaviours). Sources for the study include notes from meetings, workshops with experts and the shared artefacts of innovation.

The practice of innovation design and delivery are clarified through a social practice analysis: a distinct “field of practice” and a “schema” of generalisable prescriptions and preferences for innovation delivery being presented.

The paper informs the practice and process of innovation design and delivery; the insights clarify how collective understandings and rules of use evolve over time, becoming formalised into contracts, agreements and workplans. Practically, processes whereby innovation “sayings” evolve into innovation “doings” are clarified: a schema detailing prescriptions and preferences of practitioners and developers being presented.

The social practice analysis of one successful construction innovation is an original contribution to the body of knowledge, adding a level of detail regarding innovation design and delivery often missing from reported research.

This paper aims to examine how client requirements undergo representational and transformational shifts and changes in the design process and explore the consequence of such changes.

A series of design resources relating to hospital departmental configurations are examined and analysed using a social semiotic framework. The findings are supplemented by practitioner opinion.

Construction project requirements are represented and transformed through semiotic resource use; such representations deliver specific meanings, make new meanings and affect project relationships. Requirement representations may be understood as socially motivated meaning-making resources.

The paper focuses on one set of project requirements: hospital departmental configurations from a National Health Service hospital construction project in the UK.

The use of semiotic resources in briefing work fundamentally affects the briefing and design discourse between client and design teams; their significance should be noted and acknowledged as important.

The findings of the paper indicate that briefing and design work may be understood as a social semiotic practice.

This original paper builds upon scholarly work in the area of construction project communications. Its fine-grained analysis of briefing communications around representations of specific requirements is novel and valuable.

I think that the rationing of food will affect the general question of food supervision, but it is very difficult to foresee its effect with any degree of certainty. We must be prepared for changes in our prewar procedure. Our standard of living will be reduced and here the financial aspect enters into the question. In many cases, even in normal times, the poorer classes did not buy much bacon, excepting shank ends and the cheaper cuts, and consumed very little meat and butter, simply because they could not afford them, and it may easily happen that the effects, in view of rising prices and of this economic factor, may be reflected in the case of rationed perishable foods. This will probably lead to conditions such as I referred to in my earlier remarks, viz., deterioration of stocks in the retail shops and stores, owing to the poor keeping qualities of certain of the rationed foods. Already Inspectors have been called in by the Food Executive Officer to decide whether bacon in shops which has proved surplus to requirements owing to its not having been taken up by the registered customers, is fit for release or sale otherwise than by way of ration coupons.

There is an old saying to the effect that every one is destined to eat a peck of dirt before he dies. So much is probably inevitable, but by taking pains in the selection of our milkmen, butchers, bakers, and other purveyors, by refusing to buy jams, preserves, potted meats, and pickles manufactured by other than reputable firms, and above all by giving support to the various movements which have for their object the improvement of the law relating to adulteration of food, we can at least see that we are called upon to swallow no more than the maximum provided by the adage.

The following is a brief outline of what seem to us the main points of the Act:—

According to Truth the War Office has selected Mr. C. C. DUNCAN, F.I.C., the Public Analyst for the County of Worcester, for a special post, in which “ he will be responsible for the examination of the water supply for the troops.” “It might be supposed,” our contemporary observes, “that the services of this scientific expert would be worth at least the pay of a Captain. The War Office thinks differently. It is giving Mr. Duncan the pay of a private soldier, a piece of parsimony in no wise excused by the fact that the difference between his military pay and his regular salary will be made up by the Worcestershire County Council.” It appears that MR. DUNCAN has been selected for the post in question on the recommendation of a body described by Truth as “ The Institute of Analysts.” As no such body exists we presume that either the Institute of Chemistry or the cumbrously‐named “ Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemists” is referred to. It would be interesting to know what the Councils of either or both of these concerns have got to say about the treatment of this member of the profession which they are supposed to represent and whose dignity and interests they are supposed to maintain. The monstrous advertisement issued by the Woolwich Arsenal authorities about a year ago in which scientific chemists with University degrees were invited to apply for appointments at the munificent remuneration of £2 per week is a sufficient illustration of the value put upon scientific attainments by Government Departments in this country. But even this example of fatuous ignorance and inane parsimony has been eclipsed by the present arrangements for the employment of scientific chemists in the Royal Engineers, in which they are invited to enlist with the rank of Corporal and with Corporal's pay and “allowances.” The sulphuric acid scandal recently exposed by The Globe makes it once more abundantly clear that where scientific advice even of an elementary kind is needed no attempt is made to obtain reliable guidance. The wrong people are invariably applied to for advice and the wrong men are appointed to fill responsible posts. The following remarks appear in The Globe of September 23rd :—“We have evidence of the incompetence of the High Explosives Department which thought it fitting to appoint as the comptroller of the shipment of oleum” (i.e., a form of sulphuric acid shipped from America) “a young man, wholly inexperienced, at a handsome salary, his only qualification apparently being that he was the son of his father. This young man was completely ignorant of the properties of oleum. His first introduction to the acid was when he was called upon to advise as to the best method of shipment.” According to the facts stated in The Globe the result of this bungling has been a loss of some hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxpayers of this country.

At a recent meeting of the Manchester section of the Society of Chemical Industry, Professor F. Gowland Hopkins, in an interesting paper entitled “Some Chemical Qualities of the Living Cell,” referred to the important part which vitamins play in foods, and to the dangers arising from the continual ingestion of chemical preservatives in foods. Professor Gowland Hopkins observed that the conception of a vitamin had certain encrustations about it which prevented everybody accepting what were really said to be very important scientific facts. He had not attempted to define a vitamin. In an adult community, under good economic conditions, the need for something other than a supply of energy did not seem to assert itself, because the vitamins were always present in all natural foods. Special circumstances were required to make their importance obvious, or they would have been discovered many years ago instead of in the past ten years or so. Being connected with the subject of diet they naturally attracted the attention of quacks, and therefore a good deal of nonsense had been written about them; while, on the other hand, it was equally true what was written about vitamins gave a great opportunity for trade stunts. Vitamins had not yet been isolated, so that their chemical composition was unknown. What he wished to urge was that the facts known about vitamins were important. You may feed an animal upon a diet consisting of the most excellent protein and really superior fat and best carbohydrate in the market, and supply it with the necessary salts in the right ratio. So long as those materials were pure and not mixed with traces of any other ingredients the dietary would be eaten, enjoyed, fully digested, thoroughly broken down in the body and its energy extracted, and yet any animal continuing to eat it would inevitably die. In order to convert that dietary into a perfect one for the maintenance of life materials must be added which acted in almost infinitesimal concentration within the cellular structure of the living organism. The only present definition of a vitamin of a definite constitution was that it was a substance of extreme nutritive importance which acted in infinitesimal concentration. In the case of Fat Soluble Vitamin A. 0·004 mgms added to a synthetic dietary made just the dilference between certain death and excellent life in the case of a rat weighing 100 grms. They must not despise the rat; it was, in all essentials, of the same physical constitution as human beings. In the case of a 70 kgm man 2½ mgs would be required to bridge the difference between health and death. Only under exceptional circumstances, such as a state of war, did the lack of vitamins intrude itself in respect of adults, but the feeding of infants must be placed in a different category.

It was stated by a philosopher of very early days that the Gods sell their choicest goods in the cheapest market; and, it may be added, if it is necessary to impress such an obvious truism, that the greatest poverty may often be found in the midst of riches. The herring well illustrates the truths of the above paragraph.