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Property management has often been described as the Cinderella of the landed professions. It has had the image of being dull, pedestrian and undemanding. Bright and ambitious surveyors have often avoided property management work, believing that success and satisfaction are to be more readily found in property development or investment. This year, I shall complete twenty years in property, the last seventeen closely involved with property management. At no time has it been dull and often it has been very demanding.

I suggested in the first part of this paper that the key issue which has inhibited property managers from functioning in a positive and creative way is their traditional role as agent for the landlord. It will be helpful to examine the form and extent of the inhibitions deriving from such a relationship before considering what changes are desirable.

In this paper an attempt is made to propose and prove some fundamental principles of estate management, a phrase which has a familiar ring to many professional estate managers today, who well remember Michael Thorncroft's unique textbook, ‘Principles of Estate Management’, first published in 1965 and out of print since 1972.

This article is primarily concerned with professionals, their institutions and their relations with the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), from a British point of view. It will be argued that professionals in Europe are not simply affected by European Union (EU) legislation, they help formulate it and they administer it to an extent bounded by the Commission.

An institutionally acceptable lease is one which will enable the investor to secure the best return from the property leased. This means that the landlord should be without residual liabilities. The obligations of both the landlord and the tenant, particularly the latter, should be certain and precise as to such vital matters as repairs, user, alienation, rental payments, rent reviews, insurance and service charges. The rent review is the device by which the landlord endeavours to protect himself from the ravages of inflation. Hence periodical upward rent reviews are required, usually upon a five yearly basis. Interest should be payable in the case of late rental payments (or delayed rent reviews) at a rate, in our case 4 per cent, over a leading clearing bank's base rate.

Trade centers are operationally run by a property manager as a delegate of the property owner. The dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL), which include tangibles, assurance, empathy, reliability and responsiveness, are vital to be implemented as the duties of property managers when providing service to tenants to maintain tenant satisfaction and property reputation. This study aims to understand the effects of the SERVQUAL dimensions, the role of property management and the quality of rental value on tenant satisfaction and property reputation.

The sample was gathered using the purposive sampling technique with the criteria of being a tenant and kiosk owner in trade center properties in Surabaya. Data were gathered using questionnaires, from which 100 respondents were acquired. It was then analyzed using the partial least square structural equation model (SEM) in the SmartPLS 3.0 program to test the hypothesis.

The results of this study prove that the SERVQUAL dimensions – assurance, empathy and responsiveness – significantly influence tenant satisfaction with the mediating variable of the role of property management. Moreover, the SERVQUAL dimensions – empathy, reliability and responsiveness – significantly influence property reputation with the mediating variable of the role of property management.

Property managers are expected to proactively map out different service measures related to the dimension of satisfaction by conducting service training programs for their employees. In fact, in the post-pandemic period, property managers require new marketing strategies, such as leaseback, to effectively carry out renovations of the trade center’s public facilities and restructure the tenant mix.

Trade centers as trading areas experience management limitations because of the prohibition of mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a limited number of onsite trading. Tenants who have entered into a long-term contract experience loss and rely on the aid of property management to survive. The role and quality of service of property management influence tenants’ satisfaction post-COVID-19 pandemic.

Elsewhere in this issue details are given of the requirements of the Meat Products Order, 1952. Certain minimum meat contents have been increased with effect from March 16th last, without the issue of any prior warning, and at the time of writing, twenty days after the Order came into force, the Public Analyst has received no official notification of the changes. This type of ill‐considered arbitrary action by the Ministry of Food can only breed distrust amongst those whose duty lies in complying with or enforcing whatever the Ministry decrees.

A circular letter addressed by the Local Government Board on the 27th October, 1913, to Authorities administering the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, is printed as an Addendum to a recently issued Report by DR. MACFADDEN, on the work of the Board's Inspectors of Foods during the year 1913–14. This letter relates to the administration of the “Public Health (Milk and Cream) Regulations, 1912,” and points out that by these Regulations “ a definite restriction ” has been placed on the use of preservatives by producers, retailers and others concerned in the milk and cream trade, that no preservative is to be added to milk in‐any case, that no preservative is to be added to cream which is sold as cream, and that the Regulations do not prohibit the sale of cream containing boric acid, borax, or a mixture of these preservative substances, or hydrogen peroxide, provided (1) that it is sold not as cream, but as preserved cream, and (2) that the vessel in which it is sold bears a declaration in the prescribed form, showing the amount and nature of the particular preservative added, the addition to cream of any other preservative substances than those mentioned being prohibited. It is further stated that the object of the Regulations in regard to cream is to secure that preserved cream sold in compliance with the Regulations shall be distinguished at all stages of sale from cream to which no preservative has been added, and that this distinction is important in the interests of the public generally, and particularly in the interests of children and invalids. The italics are ours. In view of this pronouncement by the Board it is pertinent to enquire as to the fate of the extraordinary recommendation made in one of the Board's recent official reports to the effect that a much larger maximum amount of preservative should be allowed in cream during the six warmer months of the year than during the other six months. If a maximum limit is fixed for any period it is plain that the presence of an amount of preservative in excess of that limit is regarded by the Board as capable of rendering the cream injurious to health—at any rate in so far as children and invalids are concerned. It follows, therefore, that the adoption of the recommendation referred to would result in the sale of cream which, on the Board's own showing, must be injurious to health, during the warmer months of the year. The recommendation in question has been put forward as an argument for the defence in cases of prosecution for the adulteration of cream with preservatives, and in view of its official or semi‐official nature, has created unnecessary difficulties for the prosecuting Authorities. It is true that in the Sessions Appeal case of Whale v. Bennett, the character of this recommendation was thoroughly exposed and that the proposal was effectively disposed of, but it is none the less serious and inconvenient that such a suggestion should have been allowed to appear in a Government Report. We hope that we may now be permitted to congratulate the Board on the fact that they have officially repudiated the recommendation in question. The circular letter urges Local Authorities administering the Food and Drugs Acts to see that the “Milk and Cream Regulations, 1912,” are enforced in their districts “by the administrative procedure authorised under the Regulations, and, should necessity arise, by the institution of proceedings under the public health enactments referred to in the note appended to the Regulations.” It is, however, admitted by the Board in this letter that the action taken under the Regulations is independent of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts and does not affect the action which may be taken under those Acts and that it is open to the Authority “ on consideration of the report of a Public Analyst on a sample of milk or cream to take action either under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts or under the Regulations,” but the Board considers that “it is generally desirable that in cases in which it appears that the Regulations have been infringed, such action as may be necessary should be taken under the Regulations rather than under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts.” We are unable to agree with this view. The appeal cases of Cullen v. McNair and Whale v. Bennett have resulted in the decisive establishment of the fact that the presence of boric preservatives in cream to the extent mentioned in those cases renders the adulterated cream injurious to health, and, in all cases where samples of cream are found to contain such amounts of this adulterant, Local Authorities will be well advised to institute proceedings under the Third Section of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875. The Sixth Section of the Act of 1875 has been shown to be useless by the decision in the Sessions appeal case of Williams v. Friend, whereas under the Third Section notification of the presence of the amount of the adulterant affords no protection to the adulterator, and the law in this respect is not and cannot be over‐ridden by the “ Milk and Cream Regulations, 1912.” The principal blot on the Milk and Cream Regulations, 1912, is that under these Regulations any amount of an injurious preservative may be added with impunity to cream so long as the cream is sold as “ preserved cream ” and the amount of the preservative present is stated on the label—provisions which are perfectly worthless so far as the protection of the ordinary purchaser is concerned.

Virtual project teams are teams whose members use technology to varying degrees in working across locational, temporal, and relational boundaries to accomplish an interdependent task. Work in virtual project teams is a challenge for many organizations. Having studied the issue for several years, the authors propose in this paper to delve deeper into the question from the point of view of organizational support. More specifically, this paper seeks to focus on the organizational support systems and mechanisms provided by firms to their virtual project teams and their impacts on the components of these teams. The objective is to identify the structural factors and processes related to virtual teams that are affected by organizational support systems and mechanisms.

The paper reports exploratory empirical case studies of two Canadian‐based international high‐tech companies. In‐depth interviews were conducted with managers with experience in virtual project team management.

The same organizational support systems and mechanisms were found to exist in both companies. Functional processes were found to be the virtual team components that were most affected by the implementation of support systems and mechanisms. They are followed by communicational processes, which were substantially supported by various support systems and mechanisms in Company A but less supported in Company B. To a lesser extent, the relational processes of both firms were also affected, while structural factors affecting virtual project teams were almost entirely unsupported.

Virtual project teams require various kinds of commitments by corporate management. For example, we find that top management supports virtual project teams by means of human resources (HR), resource allocation, coordination, and communication support systems. These support systems facilitate project coordination and monitoring, information exchange and access, trust building and cohesion between team members. These findings enable practitioners to better understand the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual teams, so that greater attention is paid to the configuration of these components and support systems can be better designed to improve virtual project team performance.

Organizational support is considered to have a strong impact on project success. Few publications have examined organizational support for virtual project teams, and even fewer have focused on its effects on such teams. This paper should contribute to fostering a better understanding of the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual project teams.

Architects and engineers (AE) need to possess both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills. Soft skills are important because AE interact in organizational settings instead of working by themselves. Soft skills may be grouped under ‘conscientiousness’, ‘initiative’, ‘social skills’, ‘controllability’ and ‘commitment’. As part of a larger study on the selection of consultants by design‐build (DB) contractors in Singapore, a survey was conducted to gauge whether contractors felt that soft skills are important for consultants to carry out their design tasks in DB projects. From the literature, attributes relating to these skills were identified. Data were collected via mailed questionnaire. The questionnaire requested respondents to indicate on a five‐point scale the importance of various soft skills. It was found that all the soft skills, which were operationalized into 14 attributes, are important factors that contractors look for when selecting consultants. It is, therefore, concluded that contextual performance is important and relevant.