Well it’s finally the year of the Olymics! It’s the culmination of a massive construction programme that has promised a great sporting and housing legacy, mainly to the Stratford area but around the country too. The Olympic Park Legacy Company’s 5,000-page document details the future of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park development; up to 11,000 new homes will be built on the site, generating up to 10,000 jobs. It’s always the ‘up to’ that makes me wonder what the actual figures will be. There were ‘up to’ 7,000 construction jobs generated for the building of the 2010 World Cup stadia, with ‘many’ of those kept in construction employment afterwards... I’m such a cynic!

As we go in to typical wet British winter, in this issue we cover SuDS in both Voice of the Industry and Drainage, and in Roofing we look at how housing can be discreetly roofed, by incorporating the Yorkshire Moors as a building material! And we have some lovely case studies from Wilkinson Eyre’s fantastic new Earth Sciences building for the University of Oxford, Cockington Court in Torquay, where a manor house re-development has created a craft centre situated within the grounds following a £2.8 million investment, and the Institute of Transplantation opens its doors to patients, a ground breaking facility unique to the UK.

So - new year, new start! This is the last issue of FC&A I’ll be working on as I’m off to pastures new. Over the last four years we’ve seen FC&A develop from the trade ‘Constructor’ through to new ownership with MMI and become a much wider architectural reference journal. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the changes as much as we’ve enjoyed making them!

We wish you a great 2012!