Peter Wilson’s Wrap

It’s taken a while, but the search is now on for the next Chair of A+DS, or to be more precise, advertisements for the post have appeared in the press over the past week or two. This, as Wrap readers will appreciate from previous reports on this curate’s egg of an organisation’s approach to matters managerial, may not necessarily be one and the same thing. I wouldn’t for a minute suggest the job is a shoo-in for someone already identified, but the authors of the ads clearly believe the kind of talent necessary to front Scotland’s “national champion for good architecture, design and planning in the built environment” and deliver the quango’s ambitions is available for 200 quid a day (before tax). Yes, more money has been allocated to the cost of the ads than to the actual job and even in a downturn, this simple fact says a great deal about the level of importance placed upon the health of the country’s built environment by politicians and civil servants alike.

To be fair, the task demands only four days a month of someone’s time over a four-year period, so it’s not exactly intensive input that’s being looked for - think of it as a minor form of social security, since its value is inevitably greater to a retired civil servant or professional jobsworth from some area vaguely peripheral to the practice of architecture and seeking to augment their recession-diminished pension. This scenario could anyway be a substantial improvement on the current invertebrate arrangement, especially as the thorny question of a replacement for S+AD’s chief executive still has to be addressed. Oh, silly me, we already have a retired civil servant in that post, albeit temporarily, but in the strange way that these things have, I wouldn’t count on ads for the job appearing too soon since there’s a whole four years to go before that outfit can be honourably dispensed with and why waste too much money?

Given S+AD’s somewhat-less-than-astounding impact to date, it can hardly be a surprise to anyone that there’s been no noticeable uplift in the organisation’s performance since the previous CEO was ceremoniously despatched to sleep with the fishes and, without significant change to S+AD’s modus operandi as set down by its political masters, I’m prepared to wager that this 4-year voyage to oblivion will remain entirely undiverted by new hands on the tiller.