UK Construction Journal

V18 NO11

NINE ELMS SUPPLY CHAIN TAKES STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Construction (Design & Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM2015)

Callsafe Services Limited are pleased to announce that we have recently achieved accreditation of our Certificate in the Management of Pre-construction Health and Safety by the Associated for Project Safety (APS).

This accredited course now joins our other APS accredited courses, CDM2015 Awareness and Design Risk Management and CDM2015 for Designers.

All of these courses have been developed against a professional and benchmarked standard, as set by the APS.

Certificate in the Management of Pre-construction Health and Safety 3 Day Course 02 - 04 February 2016 (Staffordshire) (Ref: MPHS160202) £810.00 per delegate, plus VAT This course is aimed at those persons who will be performing the duties of the Principal Designer on behalf of their employer, who has been appointed to this role by the Client.

It provides knowledge on the requirements, methods that could be used to achieve these requirements and the personal qualities necessary. The course also provides for the additional services that could be offered by the Principal Designer, or as a separate commission, for advising and assisting the client with the Client’s duties.

On completion of the course, delegates should: • Understand the principal designer’s duties under the CDM regulations 2015; • Know how to ensure effectively cooperation, coordination and communication during the design; • Be familiar and confident in the supply of information and production of evidence; • Be able to advise and assist the client with the client’s duties.

Design Risk Management and CDM2015 for Designers 2 Day Course 27 & 28 January 2016 (Staffordshire) (Ref: ADRM160127) £620.00 per delegate, plus VAT This course is aimed at Designers and Design Risk Managers, providing a full understanding of the Designers’ duties under CDM2015 and the options that are available for achieving these obligations.

The course could also be suitable for Principal Designers if they are experienced in the design requirements of CDM2007.

Discussions and debates are encouraged throughout this course.

On completion of the course, delegates should: • Understand the principal designer’s and designers’ duties under the CDM regulations 2015; • Know how to effectively reduce risk by design; • Be familiar and confident in the supply of information and production of evidence.

CDM2015 Awareness 1 Day Course 18 February 2016 (Staffordshire) (Ref: CDMA160218) £300.00 per delegate, plus VAT This course is designed to provide all persons involved in construction projects, including current and potential clients, project managers, principal designers, designers, principal contractors and contractors with a broad overview on the CDM Regulations 2015.

On completion of the course, delegates should: • Understand the need and application of the CDM regulations; • Appreciate the framework of the regulations and the interfaces between the key parties; and • Understand the duties and responsibilities of the client, principal designer, designers, principal contractor and contractors.

Additional courses to the above will be planned for later in 2016, plus other more sector specific courses, such as CDM2015 for Facilities Managers. All of our public courses, plus other courses, are available to be presented as ‘in-house’ courses, where the trainer presents within the client’s premises.

Further details of these, and other, courses can be obtained by contacting Gemma Esprey at: gemma.esprey@callsafe-services.co.uk or by phone on: 01889 577701

NEWS 6 Latest news

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COMMENTS 19 Comment – Construction industry mediation panel launched.

20 Comment – Peter Vinden of The Vinden Partnership looks at construction finance the swings and roundabouts.

22 Comment – Kasia Dickson at Thomas Eggar LLP, discusses interim payments.

23 Comment – Peter Sheridan at Sheridan Gold LLP looks at payment notices following the Henia case.

24 Comment – UK immigration options for the construction industry.

26 Comment – The new Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 28 Comment – Considerate Constructors Chairman, Mike Petter, puts the spotlight on Occupational Cancers.

30 Comment – The importance of Perimeter Protection, BSIA. 31 Comment – Ten years of NHBC’s Land Quality Endorsement.

32 Comment - Ben Dyer of Powered Now gives tips on competitive quoting.

33 Comment – Build UK launch – Barry Ashmore of Streetwisesubbie.com 34 Comment – Construction in the Education sector 36 Comment – Driving Apprenticeships – ACE 40 Comment – Future Cities, Sara Smith, BROXAP 41 Comment – International Arbitration, White & Case 42 Case Study: Neighbourhood Planning Powers.

43 Case Study : Grange Wind Farm

Publications Editor Victoria Maggiani Designer James Ormerod Publications Officer Robert Atherton Approvals Beka Patterson Sales Administrator Alecia Rowe Credit Control Carol Ryan

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ANNUAL REPORT 44 Annual Report 2015 48 Annual Report 2015: Auto Enrolment 52 Annual Report 2015: Digital Construction Week review 58 Annual Report 2015: Exclusive Interview with BIM Guru, David Philp 62 Annual Report 2015: CDM Regulations review 76 Annual Report 2015: Rail – Networks for the next generation 80 Annual Report 2015: Unlocking regional economic growth through infrastructure investment.

82 Annual Report 2015: Construction Products Association 84 Annual Report 2015: Utilities – Dealing with Cryptosporidium 85 Annual Report 2015: Utilities – Rising developer standards 88 Annual Report 2015: What makes a young person pursue a career in construction?

86 Annual Report 2015: Utilities – AMP6 - a watershed moment.

92 Annual Report 2015: NHBC Building Control – celebrating 30 years and looking ahead to the new building regulations.

ISSN 1461-1279 UK Construction Media Stirling House Ackhurst Business Park Chorley PR7 1NY T: 01257 231900 E: admin@ukconstructionmedia.co.uk www.ukconstructionmedia.co.uk

© Copyright UK Construction Media. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of UK Construction Media. Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the publisher.

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UKC NEWS

Major safety improvements to Westminster Bridge proposed Improved cycle facilities, with an option for segregated lanes on Westminster Bridge, a new crossing for pedestrians and a new cycle and pedestrian-friendly junction at the southern end of the bridge are included in plans being consulted on by Transport for London (TfL).

The improvements would open up safer cycle links from Waterloo station and south London to the new East-West Cycle Superhighway, currently under construction.

It would give cyclists a high quality route from Waterloo to Parliament Square, the Embankment, Marble Arch, Paddington, Blackfriars and the City.

There would also be a link to the new “Central London Grid” cycle route along the South Bank.

Almost a third of morning peak-

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hour traffic on the bridge is bikes, according to TfL’s 2013 cycle census.

Leon Daniels, Managing Director of Surface Transport at TfL, said: “London is rapidly changing and that is why we are modernising our roads to keep pace with it. We can turn a potentially hazardous junction into a safer place for cyclists and pedestrians by redesigning this area. Our proposed safety improvements would benefit Londoners and commuters of London’s busiest railway station, Waterloo, who would have better walking and cycling links to and from the station.”

The proposed changes would create a new pedestrian crossing on the south-east arm of the Westminster Bridge South roundabout by the Park Plaza hotel, segregated cycle lanes, and separate traffic signals for cyclists at the junction, reducing

conflict with motor vehicles, where most serious cyclist collisions occur.

A new trial 20mph limit for all traffic is also proposed on the bridge, on part of Westminster Bridge Road, Addington Street and York Road.

The existing bus and general traffic lanes on the bridge would remain.

The work forms part of TfL’s Road Modernisation Plan, a £4Bn investment in the Capital’s vital road network which will ensure London’s roads are able to meet the needs of a growing population.

It complements other proposed local improvement schemes from Lambeth Council and other organisations.

Subject to the results of the public consultation, which is now open, work could begin as early as summer 2016.

NEWS UKC

Cardiff Business School wins national H&S excellence award The Cardiff Business School scheme, delivered by ISG for Cardiff University, has been named as winner of the National Constructing Excellence Health & Safety Award 2015.

Designed as a world class centre for training global business leaders, the seven-storey, 60,000sq ft new build facilities combine high-tech lecture theatres, executive study zones and a ‘trading room’ to further enhance teaching accommodation at Cardiff Business School, which is ranked 4th in the UK. The Constructing Excellence Award highlights best practice within the built environment sector to encourage continuous improvement and promote better ways of working. The award recognises the outstanding health and safety performance of the project delivery team in raising

levels of health and safety for the site team, staff and students on campus along with the wider community.

safety strategy was underpinned by the integrated and collaborative team working established on site.”

An innovative health and safety app was specifically developed for the project and distributed to the supply chain to help manage safer travel and deliveries to site. ISG has since successfully used the app on other projects and received a merit from the International Safety Council for the development and use of this technology. ISG also worked closely with local cancer charity Tenovus to provide on-site health screening sessions for college staff, members of the site team and the local community.

Jon James, ISG’s Western Regional Director, commented: “Competing and winning this award at a national level is a major achievement for both the project team and ISG as a business.

We have an unwavering focus on eliminating risk from the construction process and to receive such notable industry recognition validates our zero tolerance stance on unsafe practices.

The Constructing Excellence judging panel commented: “This year’s winner has achieved outstanding levels of health and safety, not only among the workforce but with the general public. The successful health and

“As a Cardiff-based business, we’re delighted that the Cardiff Business School scheme is now a showcase for health and safety excellence and we are determined that the initiatives we developed for this project have a wider application across our business and the industry as a whole.”

UK-India partnership on energy and climate change agreed As part of the visit by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the UK, the UK and India reaffirmed the importance of addressing climate change and promoting secure, affordable and sustainable supplies of energy.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd said: “The UK and India’s partnership on energy is going from strength to strength. We share world class expertise in research and innovation. The UK’s experience in green finance and technology in particular makes us well – placed to work together to promote secure, affordable and sustainable supplies of energy and address climate change.

“The upcoming talks in Paris will be a crucial moment in the fight against climate change and I am pleased to

be able to work closely with India to ensure that the deal we secure helps to keep the below two degree limit on global warming within reach.”

The two Prime Ministers welcomed a comprehensive package of collaboration on energy and climate change that will support economic growth, energy security and energy access.

The package encompasses £3.2Bn of commercial agreements, joint research programmes and initiatives to share technical, scientific, and financial and policy expertise. This will encourage the research, development and eventual deployment of clean technology, renewables, gas and nuclear. As part of the package, the government is announcing the UK Climate Investments joint venture with

the Green Investment Bank. This will invest up to £200M in renewable energy and energy efficiency in India and Africa.

The two countries also agreed on the need for an ambitious and comprehensive global agreement to tackle climate change in Paris and that the agreement should signal to investors and innovators the long term commitment of governments to clean and more sustainable economies.

The Prime Ministers also welcomed the completion of negotiations for a Nuclear Cooperation Agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding related to closer civil nuclear collaboration between the UK and India. This signals a growing relationship in this sector.

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UKC NEWS

Transport Secretary sees Crossrail progress in southeast London Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin visited Crossrail’s Canary Wharf, Woolwich and Abbey Wood stations to view progress on Europe’s biggest infrastructure project and to see first-hand the regeneration taking hold across southeast London.

The Transport Secretary visited Canary Wharf station to see Crossrail’s most progressed station in the heart of London’s fastest growing business district. Mr McLoughlin viewed the recently completed ticket hall and platforms, and the preparations taking place for the installation of the systems needed to operate the station from 2018. The arrival of Crossrail at Canary Wharf and Custom House will support further growth and development in Docklands and the Royal Docks.

Mr McLoughlin then travelled to Woolwich to view the significant regeneration taking place in the area, including the first of a thousand new homes which are now under construction above the Crossrail station.

In the station itself, the 250m long platforms, lift shafts, and floor slabs are nearing structural completion. From early next year, the fit-out of the station will begin, including escalators, wall cladding and electrical systems, to turn the structure into a fully operating station.

The final stop on the trip was Abbey Wood where Network Rail has recently started to build the new station. The foundations of the station are currently being installed and the building will soon become visible above ground for the first time. The station, which will be built over two new dedicated Crossrail tracks and those used by North Kent services, will open at the end of 2017.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: “The progress that Crossrail is making is truly impressive, and it is great to see how the project will not only provide better journeys for passengers across London but will also support

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massive regeneration in the surrounding areas. Rapid transport links to the City and the West End will unlock investment and jobs, supporting further economic growth and local development.

“Crossrail is proof that our plan to build a rail network fit for the 21st Century is firmly on track.”

Crossrail will significantly reduce journey times and improve connectivity between southeast London and the capital’s key employment areas. From Abbey Wood and Woolwich, journey times to Canary Wharf will reduce to less than 11 minutes and shave up to 40 minutes off the journey to Heathrow.

Mr McLoughlin also travelled on the Jubilee line and the Emirates Air Line to see how London’s newest railway will integrate with the existing network, linking some of London’s fastest growing residential areas to key business and leisure districts.

Crossrail is nearly 70% complete and is being delivered on time and within budget. More than 10,000 people are currently working directly on Crossrail at around 40 construction sites. 485 apprenticeships have now been created on Crossrail and nearly 12,000 people have been trained at the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy in east London, the UK’s only tunnelling academy. Crossrail’s job brokerage service has also employed over 4,000 local people onto the project, one in four of whom were previously not in employment or training.

Crossrail will add ten per cent capacity to central London’s rail network. It will serve 40 stations, connecting Reading and Heathrow in the west with Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. TfL-run Crossrail services through central London will commence in December 2018.

An estimated 200 million passengers will travel on Crossrail each year.

Drake Circus Leisure moves closer to development British Land is closer to kicking off construction of Plymouth’s £40M Drake Circus Leisure scheme as the Company serves notice on Plymouth City Council to vacate Bretonside Coach Station. Under the Development Agreement with the Council, British Land will commit £2M to the construction of the city’s new coach station on Mayflower Street.

Earlier this year planning permission was granted by Plymouth City Council for the 100,000sq ft scheme, located next to Drake Circus Shopping Centre. In October British Land exchanged contracts with Cineworld to anchor the development. The new cinema will incorporate state-ofthe-art audio and visual technology, and will have 12 screens ranging in size from a 63-seat to a giant 450-seat IMAX auditoria. British Land has received strong demand from a number of restaurant operators for the 14 restaurants proposed, many of which currently have no presence in Plymouth.

Construction work is expected to start in summer 2016 and the scheme is due to open mid2018. This development is part of British Land’s focus on growing the leisure provision across the retail portfolio reflecting changes in the way people shop today.

British Land signed the Development Agreement with the council in September 2014, and received planning permission in April 2015.

Drake Circus Leisure will create 350 permanent jobs for local people, in addition to a number of temporary construction jobs, and will be a great benefit to the city’s night time economy.

David Pollock, Retail Development Director for British Land, said: “Once complete, Drake Circus Leisure will be the most significant leisure scheme in the South West and we are delighted to be one step closer to delivering the project. The recent letting to Cineworld and interest from restaurant operators has allowed us to accelerate our plans, and we are excited to be working with the Council to enhance the city centre.”

Construction work at Angel Court, Mitsui Fudosan UK and development partner Stanhope’s 300,000sq ft prime London City office building, has reached the half way mark ahead of completion in Q4 2016. The 24-storey building, which occupies a unique core City location next to the Bank of England, is one of only two office buildings set to complete in the City of London next year which will offer floorplates larger than 18,000sq ft. Construction at Angel Court commenced in August 2014.

Angel Court will provide 140,000sq ft of new Grade A office floor space across its six ‘Garden’ floorplates, which range between 18,000sq ft and 27,000sq ft, in addition to a further 160,000sq ft over 18 upper ‘Sky’ floors, each comprising 8,750sq ft.

NEWS UKC

Angel Court half way to easing record London City occupier demand Four thousand extra people are expected to be employed in the finance, legal, professional and tech, media and creative sectors in the City of London by the end of 2016, which could result in a demand for as much as 400,000sq ft of floor space. Mitsui Fudosan UK and Stanhope’s advisors Cushman & Wakefield, who act as joint agents alongside GM Real Estate, have found that whilst demand is set to grow, the choice of high quality office space in the Square Mile is decreasing. Only 1.2 million square feet of new or newly refurbished space is currently available, the lowest level since the peak of the last property cycle in 2007. With Angel Court now past the half way mark, the building is well on track to supply much-needed high quality space in the City in 2016.

Locks Heath Junior School ready for the next generation Locks Heath Junior School is celebrating the completion of brand new extension of the school, to improve the school environment.

teaching space, new toilet facilities and an external hard play area. Two existing classrooms and a resources space have also been refurbished.

Councillor Peter Edgar, Hampshire County Council’s Executive Member for Education, cut the ribbon to formally open the new facilities and was joined by the Mayor of Fareham, Councillor Mike Ford, at the official opening of the school extension.

Head Teacher, Kevin Parfoot, said: “This project has been a real team effort and has replaced three very old temporary classrooms that were less than ideal as a space to learn. We have had marvellous support from the whole school community and these new buildings will ensure our school is fit for purpose for many years to come.”

Cllr Edgar said: “I was honoured to officially open the new extension at Locks Heath Junior School and see first-hand how the County Council’s multi-million investment programme in schools is making a difference. The high standard and thoughtful design of these new facilities are a testament to the hard work of the school community and County Council staff in both Children’s Services and Property Services.

“Hampshire has a strong track record of planning and providing high quality teaching and learning spaces for pupils and their teachers. We want all children to have the best possible educational environment facilities in which to enjoy their learning.”

Additionally, a time capsule was buried close to the Centenary Stone sculpture,

erected on the school grounds in 2007, to mark 100 years of the school. At that time a time capsule was buried but this was unearthed during the school improvement building works. A new time capsule was buried as part of the celebrations and created to commemorate the new era in the school’s history.

Prior to the event, ex- and current pupils and members of the Locks Heath community had the opportunity to buy a brick with their name etched in to it, to celebrate their time at the Warsash Road based school. More than 300 bricks have been permanently laid around the Centenary Stone.

The £2M project, funded by Hampshire County Council, has created four new classrooms, a learning hub, a multi-use

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UKC NEWS

£15.2Bn worth of BCI award winning projects built on NEC contracts NEC contracts underpinned projects worth a total of more than £15.2Bn at this year’s British Construction Industry Awards (BCI Awards), reaffirming the suite’s reputation as a bedrock of UK built environment success.

More than 1,100 of the industry elite recently gathered at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London to celebrate the UK projects that exemplify construction and engineering excellence over the past 12 months.

The combined total value of the 16 winning schemes stands at nearly £16.9Bn, with the six winning projects using NEC representing £15.2Bn. The prize winners included three schemes, of hugely diverse sizes, which used the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC) option C, reinforcing the format’s popularity, simplicity and suitability for a wide range of projects.

This year, Transport for London’s flagship £14.8Bn Crossrail scheme, on which all Tier 1 contracts have been let under the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC) option C, won the ‘BIM Project Application Award - Civil Engineering’.

In addition, the £250M Crossrail Liverpool

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Street and Whitechapel Station Tunnels project, which is being built by BBMV joint venture, received the ‘Product Design Innovation Award - Civil Engineering’.

On the building front, the ECC-based Procure 21+ NHS procurement framework won the ‘Production Design Innovation Award – Building’ for its ‘repeatable rooms’ concept, which have already been adopted in 18 NHS trust hospital projects in England totalling over £100M. The ‘Project Management Award’ went to the £252M Center Parks Woburn Forest holiday village development, where project manager Edmond Shipway used ECC to procure the main infrastructure works.

Other NEC winners included the £4.3M Herne Hill Flood Alleviation Scheme, designed for Southwark Council by Mouchel under the NEC3 Professional Service Contract which won the ‘Sustainability Award’.

Elsewhere around London, Jackson Civil Engineering was engaged under ECC to deliver both the £8M QEII Bridge joint replacement project for Connect Plus at Dartford, which won the ‘Temporary Works Award’.

Rekha Thawrani, General Manager for NEC, said: “It’s fantastic to see NEC recognised as the contract suite of choice across this array of inspiring projects which represent the pinnacle of the UK built environment sector.

“The unprecedented success of the NEC3 contracts, coupled with the critical importance of maintaining the continued growth of the UK construction sector, has successfully delivered some of today’s biggest infrastructures and frameworks. We are delighted that we have been able to play a vital role in delivering more than £15Bn worth of award-winning construction projects.

Interest and uptake of NEC products and services is continually growing.

“On the back of its multi award-winning success last year, it is particularly pleasing to see Crossrail - Europe’s largest construction project and the biggest ever to be procured by NEC3 contracts – continue to be recognised and to win the ‘BIM Project Application Award’ and the ‘Product Design Innovation Award – Civil’. “We are also extremely proud of our work alongside the NHS Trusts, Center Parcs, Southwark Council and Thames Water and Connect Plus.”

NEWS UKC

Bradford’s £150M urban village gets the green light Bradford Metropolitan District Council has given the green light to the construction of the hotly anticipated £150M New Bolton Woods development.

The ground-breaking scheme, which covers more than 30 hectares of land on the outskirts of the city centre, will deliver 1,000 much-needed homes, a new local centre comprising shopping facilities, a primary school and health centre as well as sports facilities and landscaped open space, over the next ten years.

The first 50 homes have already been delivered and are fully occupied and earlier this year planning consent was granted for a new Aldi food store at the development. Work to deliver the next residential phase, of the new sustainable ‘urban village’, will start as soon as housebuilder delivery partners are identified.

The granting of planning permission for the complete New Bolton Woods development is the culmination of three years of extensive urban design work and public consultation carried out by Canal Road Urban Village Ltd (CRUVL), a joint venture partnership created by regeneration specialists Urbo and Bradford Metropolitan District Council. Urbo has worked closely with leading designers Urbed to produce the innovative masterplan for New Bolton Woods, which was highly praised at the planning committee meeting after consent had been granted.

that local people realise the benefits of the regeneration as soon as possible.”

Councillor Susan Hinchliffe commented: “I’m really pleased that the application has gone through. It’s a long term vision for the area which has an accompanying thought-through plan of what infrastructure the area will need in the future as well. We all now have to work hard to deliver that vision so

With Bradford’s economy forecast to grow to more than £9Bn by 2016, making the district the third largest in Yorkshire and Humber, the New Bolton Woods development will be an important contributor in providing new homes for employees of major companies choosing to invest in the city.

Peter Swallow, a Director of Urbo and CRUVL said: “The granting of planning permission is a major milestone in the delivery of the residential phase of New Bolton Woods. We are now in a position to start talking to housebuilders and identify the right partners to deliver the scheme. We anticipate great demand given the excellent location of the development, its proximity to public transport and the demand for private housing in the area.”

Builders take it off-site as skills shortage continues Builders are increasingly turning to offsite construction and timber systems as the construction skills shortage continues to cause issues in the sector.

Stewart Milne Timber Systems, the UK’s leading timber systems designer and manufacturer, has reported that its factories in Oxford and Aberdeen are experiencing growing demand for its build systems, with enquiries up 70% in the year to date.

In its most recent survey of its 8,500 members, the Federation of Master Builders reported that two-thirds (66%) of small builders had turned away work because of a shortage of labour.

With an estimated 35,000 apprentices needed to meet market demand, only 7,000 completed their training in 2013.

According to Alex Goodfellow, Group Managing Director of Stewart Milne Timber Systems, more and more construction companies were enquiring about, and then adopting, off-site construction methods to reduce site labour requirements and take advantage of its speed of build benefits to meet growing market demand.

Alex explains: “There’s huge demand

for new homes and huge demand for skilled labour to build them. There is a serious lack of skilled tradespeople available in recent times and many clients are restricted in output or increasing costs to meet their build programmes.

“We’ve championed off-site construction as a building technique for over 20 years and our clients are seeing the real benefits to their businesses in using off-site to maintain build programmes and generate positive cash flows.

“Off-site also contributes to higher levels of quality and health and safety, with guaranteed performance built in.”

Off-site manufacture significantly increases the speed of build on-site as the build systems arrive ready to erect, often with windows and doors pre-fitted. Precision engineering facilitated by modern factory processes enables a high quality building to be erected quickly. The superstructure of a typical four bedroom house can be weather-proof within 72 hours.

It also has the benefit of exceptional environmental performance, which is one of the UK Government’s four targets in its Construction 2025 Industrial Strategy. The strategy calls for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 50% increase in delivery speed, a 33% reduction in costs, and a 50% improvement in exports.

Alex continues: “What the ongoing skills shortage does highlight is the need for constant innovation across the sector.

Ultimately, we still need to be able to build, and the industry has to find a way to meet demand quickly, costeffectively and at very high quality.”

The inherent flexibility of timber means it can be used for anything from residential housing to hospitals, hotels and office units.

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UKC NEWS

The Interlace crowned World Building of the Year 2015 The Interlace, a vertical village in Singapore, has been crowned World Building of the Year 2015 at the World Architecture Festival. The residential development, designed by OMA/ Buro Ole Scheeren, is a radically new approach to contemporary living in a tropical environment.

The Interlace is one of the most ambitious residential developments in Singapore’s history, generating an intricate network of living and social spaces intertwined with the natural environment. Instead of following the default typology of housing in the region – clusters of isolated towers – the vertical is turned horizontal, with 31 apartment blocks, each sixstories tall and 70m long. Stacked in hexagonal arrangements around eight large-scale open permeable courtyards, the scheme creates a network of internal and external environments that create a multitude of shared and private outdoor spaces on multiple levels.

World Architecture Festival Director Paul Finch praised the project, saying: “The Interlace is blazing a trail with an example of bold, contemporary architectural thinking. The project presents an

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alternative way of thinking about developments which might otherwise become generic tower clusters.”

The Interlace is now the eighth project to claim the illustrious title of World Building of the Year, since its inception at the annual World Architecture Festival in 2008. The home project win marks the culmination of the Festival’s four-year run in Singapore, before it moves to Berlin in 2016.

Other winners on the evening included Vancouver House, Canada, by Bjarke Ingells Group; Yanweizhou Park, China,

by Turenscape and Lidingövallen by DinellJohansson. Each was presented with WAF’s distinctive ‘W” award at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

Running alongside the awards programme, WAF also hosted a number of keynote speeches, live panel debates and building tours during the three-day festival. Arcaid images held a display of

shortlisted entries from its Architectural Photographer of the Year Award, now in its fourth year, which was won by Fernando Guerra for his striking image of the EPFL Quartier Nord in Switzerland.

The innovative thinking of global architecture students was also celebrated at the festival, with a live workshop running for the duration of the festival.

Seven universities were invited to reimagine our cities for the future, with students demonstrating their potential in front of the world’s leading architects.

City of Lakes by School of Architecture Planning, Bhopal, India, was judged the most exciting submission, beating stiff competition from universities in Spain, UK and across Asia.

NEWS UKC

Local businesses invited to join the Nine Elms supply chain Wandsworth and Lambeth based businesses can now register for the next round of the Supply Nine Elms on the South Bank programme, which gives them access to millions of pounds worth of new contract opportunities.

The initiative offers local businesses the chance to meet the major buyers involved in the regeneration of Nine Elms on South Bank, London’s biggest development programme.

The last round of the Supply Nine Elms on the South Bank programme saw local businesses secure new contracts worth a total of £1.2M. In the coming year there will be even more tender opportunities coming through the programme, including opportunities in the construction and development sectors, as well as catering, office support, environmental management and utilities.

Buyers taking part include Battersea Power Station Development Company, Barratt, Ballymore, St James, Carillion,

Skanska and Laing O’Rourke.

Businesses taking part are matched to forthcoming contract opportunities and given a package of one-to-one training and support to help them develop the capabilities needed.

They are also offered support in preparing compliant and competitive tenders which can be a significant barrier to small firms securing new work.

The programme, which is completely free-of-charge and only available to businesses based in Wandsworth and Lambeth, also includes networking and ‘meet the buyer’ events, as well as business development workshops.

The scheme is financed by Wandsworth and Lambeth Councils and is being delivered on their behalf by BE Group, a leading specialist in business support and supply chain development.

Ravi Govindia, Leader of Wandsworth Council said: “We have worked hard to unlock the huge potential of Nine Elms and our communities are now reaping the

rewards in the form of new affordable homes, jobs and apprenticeships.

Through the Supply Nine Elms on the South Bank programme we are ensuing that our local businesses take a share in the benefits and I encourage Wandsworth traders to take full advantage.

“This is a gateway to new contracts, new long-term clients and comes with a range of expert business development training which give local companies the best possible chance of securing new work.”

Cllr Jack Hopkins, Lambeth Cabinet Member for Jobs and Growth said: “Lambeth Council is delighted to be able to offer a programme of support to local businesses, allowing them access the wealth of opportunities made available through the Nine Elms Vauxhall regeneration.

“We are committed to ensuring Lambeth businesses throughout the borough are supported to access the contracts available and I would urge Lambeth businesses to get involved”

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THE DRIVING FORC

INNOV

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UKC NEWS

Structural Awards 2015 celebrate engineering excellence The winners of ‘The Structural Awards 2015’ were announced in November during a ceremony at The Brewery in London. The awards, which recognise outstanding achievement by structural engineers from all over the world, are organised each year by the Institution of Structural Engineers. This year’s Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence went to the Singapore Sports Hub, a complex which boasts the world’s largest free-spanning dome.

Fourteen Awards were presented on the night, recognising all aspects of structural engineering, from the largest projects like bridges and stadia to smaller scale work like innovative housing, heritage restorations and educational buildings. The winners were drawn from nine nations across five continents.

Martin Powell, Chief Executive of The Institution of Structural Engineers, said: “Once again The Structural Awards have delivered a magnificent illustration of the extraordinary work of structural engineers - preserving engineering heritage, finding solutions to the complex demands of the modern world, and shaping the future of our urban environment.

“This spread of winners illustrates the vital contribution engineers make as

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creative, innovative problem solvers and the guardians of public safety.”

LIST OF WINNERS IN FULL: Award for Arts or Entertainment Structures: The Vegas High Roller, Las Vegas, USA (by Arup) Award for Commercial or Retail Structures: Intesa SanPaolo Tower, Turin, Italy (by Expedition Engineering and Studio Ossola) Award for Community or Residential Structures: “Malapa” Hominid Fossil Site Cover + Visitors’ Platform, Johannesburg, South Africa (by Fellows Consulting) Award for Education or Healthcare Structures: Melbourne School of Design, Melbourne, Australia (by Irwinconsult) Award for Highway or Railway Bridge Structures: Schuman Bridge, Lyon, France (by Flint & Neill) Award for Infrastructure or Transportation Structures: Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), Anaheim USA (by Thornton Tomasetti)

Award for Pedestrian Bridges: Greenwich Reach Swing Bridge, London, UK (by Flint & Neill) Award for Small Practices: Steel and glass features for the 300th anniversary of Omsk, Russia (by Malishev Engineers) Award for Small Projects: Stage by the Sea, Littlehampton, UK (by Expedition Engineering) Award for Sports or Leisure Structures/ Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence: Singapore Sports Hub (by Arup) Award for Structural Heritage: Restoration of Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall, Singapore (by T.Y. Lin International) Award for Regional Groups: SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland (by Arup) Award for Sustainability: Housing for Low-Income Communities in El Salvador (by Arup) For more information about ‘The Structural Awards 2015’ visit: www.structuralawards.org

NEWS UKC

Newport steps up with Friars Walk Friars Walk, designed by Leslie Jones Architecture on behalf of Queensberry Real Estate, has opened its doors to the public, becoming one of only a handful of retail and leisure destinations to do so this year.

The 390,000sq ft city centre development sits at the heart of a comprehensive programme of regeneration underway in Newport between the River Usk, with its comprehensive leisure offering, and Newport’s existing retail core. As such, the design for the £117M scheme needed to reconnect these disjointed parts of the city to give an overall boost to Newport’s retail and leisure economy.

Leslie Jones’ innovative design achieved this by seamlessly integrating a network of covered streets to create an all-weather destination. Differences in street levels are resolved by a new three-storey Debenhams to the north, which will encourage pedestrian

activity, while double-height shop fronts meet the needs of modern retailers.

A series of new public spaces will further reinforce the integration of Friars Walk within Newport’s city centre. John Frost Square will be laid out around a new eight screen Cineworld multiplex cinema complete with new restaurants including Las Iguanas, Nandos, TGI Fridays, GBK and Le Bistrot Pierre.

Brian Tracey, Director at Leslie Jones Architecture said: “We took inspiration from the surrounding Welsh landscape and Newport’s historic architecture in the designs for Friars Walk, which incorporate slate, timber, steel and glass. This further reinforces the scheme’s position within the architectural context of Newport, while being both functional and aspirational for the public and occupiers alike.”

As a result of the scheme opening, Newport’s retail and leisure offer has

been transformed with the overall catchment growing from 211,000 to 367,000 with an estimated footfall of 10 to 12 million per annum. This will double retail sales in the city adding £120M per annum to the local economy.

Paul Sargent, Chief Executive and CoFounder of Queensberry Real Estate said: “As well as turning round the retail and leisure offer in Newport, Friars Walk has given a boost to Newport’s economy by generating £90M of direct investment in Newport, while supporting the job market through the preferred use of local supply chains. In addition to the 400 jobs created on sit during construction, around 1,200 jobs have been created in the new shops and restaurants worth £15M in salaries a year. This is stimulating yet more investment and jobs in Newport - ensuring the city is taking its rightful place as a major employment hub and one of South Wales’ leading retail and leisure destinations.”

Shaylor Group commences pioneering environmental project National contractor Shaylor Group has announced a successful start to the innovative £15M Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) project located within mature woodland at Mill Haft, Staffordshire.

Launched by the University of Birmingham in 2013, BIFoR aims to be unique in Europe in size, ambition and scope and is headed by respected Professor of Atmospheric Science Rob MacKenzie.

The Mill Haft project will see the Institute conduct research into two fundamental and interrelated challenges to the world’s forests: the environmental impacts of climate change and the effects of pests and disease. As one of only three such research centres in

the world, it will firmly establish the UK as a world leader in forestry research.

Shaylor Group is carrying out extensive works setting up the project site including access roads, a fieldwork compound, a carbon dioxide (CO2) storage compound and all site utility services. They are also busy installing approximately 1,000 metres of pipework throughout the forest which will be used to distribute the CO2 through a network of 25m high masts located in 30m diameter rings. It is currently planned that the masts will be delivered to site and manoeuvred into place by helicopter.

The ten year experiment will simulate the atmospheric conditions expected in 2070 and as a result help improve the understanding of what effect climate

change may have on existing woodlands.

Shaylor Group has already won recognition for its outstanding performance on the project, being named winners of the Environmental Award at the prestigious Building Safety Group (BSG) Awards 2015.

Shaylor Group Framework Director Professor Martin Chambers commented: “It is a fantastic achievement for Shaylor Group to be involved in this landmark international climate change experiment.

Without doubt it is our ability to transfer core construction project management skills into the delivery of this cutting edge climate change facility that has led to our appointment.”

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UKC NEWS

Tarmac secures £30M Knowsley highways contract Tarmac, the UK’s leading sustainable building materials and construction solutions company, has been awarded a five year, £30M highways maintenance contract with Knowsley Council.

Commenting on the award, Paul Fleetham, Tarmac Contracting Managing Director said: “We are delighted to have secured this contract, which is a reflection of our strong track record in delivering a high quality, innovative highways maintenance offer for local authorities across the UK. We have a highly skilled and experienced team which is looking forward to working with colleagues at Knowsley to deliver a first class service across the borough.”

Valued at £6M per annum, the contract is scheduled to commence on 1st February 2016 and will see Tarmac deliver highways surfacing, bridge and

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structures maintenance, gully cleansing as well as footway and carriageway repairs. A number of apprenticeships will be created by the Company over the duration of the contract as part of an ongoing commitment to creating local jobs and bringing young people into construction.

Tarmac’s proven experience of working with clients on similar contracts, as well as its commitment to partnering, quality and delivery, were key factors in securing the contract. Knowsley Council will draw upon the Company’s extensive resources and ability to self-deliver bituminous and concrete materials, surfacing, planing and asset management services as well as its recycling capabilities.

Cllr Mike Murphy, Knowsley’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Economic Development said: “Knowsley’s highway

is one of the council’s most valuable assets so it is vital that we have the correct provision in place to ensure this is maintained. We have recently been recognised as the best overall performer in the National Highways and Transport Survey 2015 and the new contract with Tarmac will deliver direct efficiencies for the council and will give us a more flexible approach to the service, which is critical to our continued success in the current financial climate. It will also positively support the local economy through employing local apprentices and using local sub-contractors.”

The contract award builds upon recent successes in the North West in Halton and Warrington. In addition, Tarmac also delivers term maintenance contracts for many local authorities across the UK.

Expedite Resolution to launch new construction industry mediation panel Expedite Resolution are set to launch a new panel to provide mediation on disputes on a multitude of issues in the construction industry.

Established in 2012, the Company already offers high quality, cost effective mediation and dispute resolution services in the claims and insurance sectors and the company feels the time is now right to expand its offering of sector expert mediators into the construction sector.

All Expedite Resolution mediators have a deep understanding of the insurance sector as well as top class mediation credentials, giving the parties to a dispute a choice of highly qualified sector specialist mediators.

The new panel of experts all have specialist construction knowledge and will comprise Peter Vinden, Robert Juniper, Bob Davis and Matt Molloy and will deliver mediation services on construction related issues, regardless of whether they feature an element of insurance.

Peter Vinden is the Managing Director of The Vinden Partnership, a multi- disciplinary consultancy offering procurement, project management and dispute resolution services to industry.

For the past fifteen years, Peter has been working as an arbitrator, adjudicator, expert and mediator.

Robert Juniper was accredited as a Mediator by CEDR in 1993 and was previously Senior Partner of Daniel Connal Partnership. Currently, Robert acts as mediator, arbitrator or adjudicator on his own account with administrative and secretarial support provided by his previous Partners.

Bob Davis has nearly 40 years of experience in engineering and construction in the UK and internationally. For the last 20 years, Bob has been acting in the capacity of Arbitrator, Adjudicator, Independent Expert, Mediator and Dispute Board member and is currently the principal of a construction consultancy.

Matt Molloy has worked in the construction industry since 1987 and qualified as a Mediator with

CEDR in 1999. Since that time, Matt has acted as mediator in construction and property related disputes including complex multi-party disputes, disputes involving public and private bodies, private individuals and insured professionals.

Expedite mediators have the opportunity to network with fellow sector expert mediators and to market their services under the prestigious Expedite Resolution brand.

Users of mediation can look forward to a simple administration and booking process, plus a competitive and flexible fee structure.

For more information or to book a mediator contact Laurence Besemer laurence.besemer@ expediteresolution.com Tel: 01256 466 354 Mob: 07921 491 426 www.expediteresolution.com Expedite Resolution Limited, 218 Strand, London, WC2R 1AT

Regent House, Folds Point, Folds Road, Bolton BL1 2RZ t. 01204 632888 f. 01204362808 tvp@vinden.co.uk www.vinden.co.uk

Swings and Roundabouts Overdraft or Invoice Discounting?

The last 12 months has seen a steady increase in construction activity. Most firms are reporting an increase in order levels as demand for new buildings returns but many firms are also reporting problems with obtaining skilled reliable labour, materials and, more alarmingly, access to bank funding.

These are all barriers to growth but the lack of access to appropriate funding is a problem that will inevitably kill your business if you don’t get this right.So will it be traditional overdraft funding for your company or would Factoring or Invoice Discounting provide a better solution?

It is no secret that our clearing banks took a beating from the construction sector in the recession and many clearing banks are simply reluctant to lend to construction because it is perceived as a very high risk sector. Any funder agreeing to

advance a finance facility will require security. This might be a charge on a fixed asset such as a piece of land or building. Prior to 2001, banks believed that they could rely on monies due in as book debts as fixed charge security and they would have priority over any other creditor including PAYE, VAT and even operative wages.

Not surprisingly, overdraft funding was the most widely used type of working capital at that time.

The clearing banks ruled the construction finance world at that time - period.

Nothing lasts forever and in 2001 the banking sector was hit by an earthquake with the New Zealand Court of Appeal referring a case known as Re Brumark Investments Ltd (“Brumark”) to our House of Lords in order to obtain a ruling on the status of a fixed charge holder in relation to book debts.

This ruling was to change the

banking world’s approach to the construction industry for good.

The House of Lords decided that a true fixed charge must give the charge holder absolute control of the proceeds of any book debts.

If absolute control of the funds received was not a feature of the facility provided by the bank then the book debts would have to be treated as a floating charge realisation. This was not good news from a bank’s perspective because it meant that it would no longer be sufficient simply to have the proceeds routed through a customer’s account in order to rely on the charge to clear the overdraft facility in difficult times.

In any insolvency, all pre-Brumark fixed charges on book debts would be demoted to a floating charge status meaning that the proceeds received from book debt realisations would be used to pay

Regent House, Folds Point, Folds Road, Bolton BL1 2RZ t. 01204 632888 f. 01204362808 tvp@vinden.co.uk www.vinden.co.uk

the costs of the insolvency and any preferential creditors before the banks would have access to these funds. Banks could and did lose money as a result.

The ruling in Brumark is undoubtedly the main reason for the significant growth in factoring and invoice discounting facilities in the construction industry over the last ten years.

Under a factoring or Invoice Discounting facility (“ID”) a receivable debt is assigned (sold) to the funder in return for which the funder offers a pre-payment facility to the customer of anything up to 90% of the book debt. As the ownership of the debt has in effect changed hands and must be paid to the funder, absolute control of the book debt is maintained and the ruling in Brumark has no effect on the factoring or ID facility.

Most ID facilities are “with recourse” (where the contractor bears the risk of bad debts).

“Without recourse” facilities are available (where the funder takes the risk) and these facilities are underpinned by insurance policies which add an extra layer of complexity and cost that has to be taken into account.

Under a factoring facility a factor takes over the day-to-day running of a company’s sales ledger.

Undertaking credit checks on debtors, sending out statements, credit control, collecting payments and instigating legal action if required, are all functions undertaken directly by the factor.

When a contractor issues an invoice (or application), it sends a copy to the factor which, if it approves the debtor’s creditworthiness, will allow the contractor to draw

up to the agreed prepayment percentage of that approved invoice or application.

All invoices must have a printed assignment clause to inform debtors of the factoring arrangement. Debtors settle invoices by making payments directly to the factor, who then releases the balance of each invoice (less charges) to the contractor.

An ID facility follows the same principles as factoring with some notable differences. Book debts are still assigned to the invoice discounter, but companies retain day-to-day control of their sales ledger, and the responsibility for credit control. It is essentially “factoring on trust”, since debtors are not aware of the ID arrangement.

At pre-agreed intervals, a contractor is permitted to send in a list of its outstanding invoices (or applications) to the invoice discounter, and is able to draw up to the agreed prepayment percentage of approved invoices and applications.

The contractor collects payments from its debtors in the normal way, but must bank them through a trust account so that the invoice discounter can monitor receipt of the funds. The balance on the account (after charges) is released to the contractor.

reason that an increasing number of contractors and sub-contractors are using confidential invoice discounting facilities rather than opting for factoring solutions.

There is no doubt that the number of invoice discounting facilities is increasing steadily in the construction industry. More often than not, higher funding levels can be generated from an ID facility than via a traditional overdraft and it is increasingly accepted that ID funders have a greater understanding of the construction industry than many of the clearing banks do.

Choosing the right funding solution for your business can be a difficult choice. Which one will you go for? Will it be the swings or the roundabout?

Peter Vinden is a practising Arbitrator, Adjudicator, Mediator and Expert. He is Managing Director of The Vinden Partnership and can be contacted by email at pvinden@vinden.co.uk. The Vinden Partnership provides funding solutions to companies operating in the construction sector. For similar articles please visit www.vinden.co.uk.

In practice contractors rarely use factoring facilities. They are often expressly banned under many forms of contract and there is a perception in the construction industry that a company which factors its debts may not be as financially secure as a company that operates a traditional clearing bank funded overdraft. It is for this

Regent House, Folds Point, Folds Road, Bolton BL1 2RZ t. 01204 632888 f. 01204362808 tvp@vinden.co.uk www.vinden.co.uk

UKC COMMENT

Interim payment disputes - Stop winding me up!

Last month the Court of Appeal handeddown judgment in a case concerning contractor’s insolvency and payment in winding-up proceedings (Wilson and Sharp Investments Ltd v Harbour View Developments Ltd). The case is of interest because of its wide interpretation of the JCT contractual insolvency provisions. It also sends a clear message as to how interim payments should be enforced.

In 2012, Property Developer Wilson and Sharp Investments Ltd (the Employer) engaged Harbour View Developments Ltd (the Contractor) for the development of student accommodation in Bournemouth.

There were two building contracts, both based on the JCT Intermediate Contract with Contractor’s Design 2011.

In August and September 2013 four interim certificates were issued - one of which was later paid - leaving an amount of over £1M outstanding. No Pay Less Notices were issued by the Employer. As a result, the sums certified became due and payable. The Contractor subsequently suspended its services on the grounds of non-payment. It was common ground that the contracts were terminated in late January 2014.

Rather than issuing adjudication proceedings to recover the sums certified, the Contractor, having first notified the Employer of its intention to do so, issued a winding-up petition against the Employer. The Employer subsequently issued an application for an injunction restraining the petition, on the basis that the interim certificates grossly overvalued the Contractor’s works.

The financial standing of the Contractor

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subsequently deteriorated. Prior to the hearing at first instance the Contractor proposed a CVA, which was subsequently rejected and notice was given that a meeting of creditors was to be held for the purpose of appointing a liquidator.

The Court at first instance dismissed the Employer’s application for an injunction to restrain the winding-up petition because: 1. The JCT provisions allowing the Employer to suspend payment on insolvency did not apply where the contracts had already been terminated before the contractor became insolvent 2. As the Employer had not served Pay Less Notices and acknowledged the interim payments were due and payable, the Employer’s cross claim for overvaluation of the works was a ‘put-up job’ and not genuine.

The Employer appealed. So what did the Court of Appeal decide?

The Court of Appeal agreed with the Employer that the JCT provisions regarding suspension of payments to the Contractor on insolvency apply regardless of whether the contract had already been terminated or was capable of termination.

The Court of Appeal also disagreed that the cross-claim was a ‘put-up job’; the evidence showed that the cross-claim was reasonably arguable. Further, the Court stated that an acceptance by an employer that an amount was due under an interim certificate (because a Pay Less Notice was not served) did not preclude an employer from

challenging the valuation later.

This, of course, is a hot topic since the outcome of the appeal in the case of Harding v Paice, where parties were not permitted to challenge the valuation of interim payments in the absence of a Pay Less Notice, is due at any time.

But possibly the most important message from the Court of Appeal to contractors is that even where there has been a failure to serve Pay Less Notices, don’t use winding-up proceedings to enforce interim payments where there is a challenge to a valuation or a cross claim. The most appropriate route is to pursue adjudication proceedings followed by enforcement in the TCC. Kasia Dickson, Legal Assistant, Thomas Eggar LLP Kasia Dickson

COMMENT UKC

Payment Application and Pay Less Notice: the Henia Case As noted in previous articles recently, payment notices have increased practical importance since the amendments to the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (the HGCR Act) brought in by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 (the LDEDC Act). If the employer fails to issue either a valid payment notice or a valid pay less notice, the contractor is entitled to be paid the sum for which it applied.

Again as we have seen in previous articles, adjudicators have tended to take a lax approach to the validity of the contractor’s payment notice and have readily found contractors entitled to sums applied for on the basis of questionably alleged payment notices, whereas the courts have made it clear that it must first be investigated whether the payment notice relied on is valid: see Leeds City Council v Waco UK Ltd (2015) and Caledonian Modular v Mar City Developments (2015). It is important that these notices are valid, as they have potentially severe financial consequences if not acted upon correctly; it is therefore vital that they are clearly recognisable as payment notices.

In the most recent case, Henia Investments Inc v Beck Interiors Ltd [2015], the judge set out some fairly stringent requirements for these notices. Beck Interiors was carrying out extensive fitting out work for Henia under a JCT contract. Akenhead J stated that a document relied on as an interim application must be in substance, form and intent an interim application stating the sum considered by the contractor to be due at the relevant due date and it must be free from ambiguity. It must be clear that it is what it purports to be so that the parties know what to do about it and when. It must be clear and unambiguous

that an application relating to a specific due date is being made. On the facts of this case, Beck Interiors’ application for interim payment of 28th April 2015 was held not to be an effective interim payment notice in respect of the 29th May payment due date.

A second issue concerned a pay less notice from Henia. Akenhead J made the point that a pay less notice can validly be used by the employer to challenge the independent certifier’s certified amount (as well as any payment application from the contractor). A pay less notice can be used both to challenge these amounts and to take account of any amounts to be set off. This was the position under both the statutory provisions and the JCT contract. The regime under the HGCR Act before amendment by the LDEDC Act was that a withholding notice was only for set-off and any certified amount had to be paid in the absence of a valid withholding notice (see the Court of Appeal decision in Rupert Morgan (2003). The certified amount could only be reviewed in adjudication, arbitration or court.

notified amount that has to be paid is the amount the employer specifies in the pay less notice he considers is due. Whether the legislation was right to put the matter so broadly rather than limiting s.111 to set-off is a separate policy question.

The pay less notice thus determines provisionally what sum is to be paid net of set-off. In the Henia case, Henia’s pay less notice did not in fact challenge the certified amount but accepted it and set off liquidated damages, with the effect that the certified amount was reduced to £0.

The pay less notice was provided in time and was held to be valid and effective.

For more information, contact Peter Sheridan Partner at Sheridan Gold LLP T: 01737 735088 E: psheridan@sheridangold.co.uk W: www.sheridangold.co.uk

Peter Sheridan

The Henia analysis does mean that in cases where the employer challenges the certified amount, the contractor may find out only very shortly before the final date for payment that the sum to be received is less than expected by reason of a change in the valuation, by the employer, from that certified.

If dissatisfied, the contractor in these circumstances may adjudicate or follow some other dispute resolution route.

This may be a relatively rare occurrence, as employers are generally content with the certified amount. It does in any event seem to the writer that the judge is correct that the legislation allows an employer to challenge the certified amount in a pay less notice: see s.

111(1), (3), (4) and (6), under which the

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UKC COMMENT

UK immigration options for the construction industry With 2014 being a boom year for housing and commercial development, and with continued growth in 2015, the construction industry is creating a demand for specialist and skilled workers. The Royal Academy of Engineering acknowledged that the UK will need over one million new engineers and technicians over the next five years and the UK Government recognises that there is a skills gap in the resident labour market. This suggests that the UK is not able to keep up with this demand, requiring employers to hire workers from outside the UK. Tier 2 (General) For construction companies looking to hire migrant workers to fill skilled positions within the UK that cannot be filled by resident workers, the most appropriate category is likely to be Tier 2 of the UK’s Points Based System.

Employers must first obtain a licence from UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI) before they can sponsor migrant workers in the UK. In addition, unless the position is an intra company transfer, is on the shortage occupation list or the annual salary is at least ÂŁ155,300, the position must be advertised to the resident labour market for a 28 day

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period in two mediums and provided no suitable resident worker applies for the role, the employer can then request a restricted Tier 2 (General) Certificate of Sponsorship (COS) from UKVI. There are only 20,700 of these restricted COS available per year, divided into 12 monthly allocations. Restricted COS are allocated on a points basis, with roles on the shortage occupation list, PhD level positions and those with high salaries obtaining the highest points.

required to be at NQF Level 6, but this does not apply to those positions on the shortage occupation list.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is an independent nondepartmental public body which was set up to advise the UK government, for example on where there are shortages of skilled labour in the UK. Based on this advice, the UK Government created and updates a shortage occupation list.

The good news for the construction industry is that several relevant specialist roles are on this list including certain technicians, quality control and planning engineers in specific industries and environmental professionals in the construction related ground engineering industry. If a position is on the shortage occupation list it means that advertising is not required and that it is likely to be granted a restricted COS. In addition, positions under Tier 2 are also usually

A further option for multi-national construction companies is to transfer current employees who have gained the specialist skills and experience required by the company, to their UK based branch under Tier 2. For transfers of 12 months or more (up to a maximum period of five years or nine years if earning at least ÂŁ155,300 a year) the employee must have been working for the organisation outside the UK for at least 12 months directly prior to the transfer and must be filling a skilled job in the UK which cannot be filled by a settled worker. The employer is not however required to advertise the position.

A migrant may work in the UK under the Tier 2 (General) category for an initial period of up to five years, with a maximum period of stay of six years.

However, this category can lead to indefinite leave to remain in the UK (ILR).

Tier 2 (Intra-Company Transfer (ICT))

Current employees can also be transferred to a UK branch of the same organisation for a maximum six

COMMENT UKC

month period to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to perform their role overseas, or to impart their specialist skills to the UK workforce, provided the role in the UK is supernumerary. The employee just needs to be employed by the overseas company at the point of applying. Alternatively, if a UK company has a structured graduate training programme, clearly defining progression towards a managerial or specialist role, they could use the Graduate Trainee sub category of Tier 2 (ICT). Migrants must be recent graduate recruits of multi-national companies who are being transferred to the UK branch of the same organisation as part of the graduate training programme.

The Tier 2 (ICT) category does not lead to ILR however therefore an employer should consider applying under Tier 2 (General) if they require a long term or permanent transfer of an employee.

Tier 2 also covers migrants who are working in the UK on a contract basis and are being supplied to one organisation by another. The sponsor in these circumstances must be whoever has full responsibilities for the migrants duties, functions and outcomes or outputs of the job.

Employers sponsoring migrants under Tier 2 must also ensure that they are paid the minimum required salary, which is dependent on the category and the applicable Standard Occupational Classification code. They must also be aware that if the sponsoring migrant leaves the UK at the conclusion of their sponsorship they will be unable to reenter the UK under the Tier 2 category for a period of 12 months (unless an exemption applies, for example they were previously in the UK in the Short Term staff, Skills Transfer or Graduate Trainee sub categories of Tier 2 and they are returning under the Long Term staff route). Employers must therefore take this exclusion period into consideration when transferring staff.

Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) This is an alternative immigration option that does not require a sponsor and enables successful applicants to take any employment in the UK. This category is relevant for migrants who are world leaders, or emerging world leaders, in their field and covers the field of engineering. However the bar for this category is set very high and there are only 1000 places available each year, with 150 places allocated to the

engineering industry. The application process initially involves the applicant obtaining an endorsement from a relevant designated body, such as the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) The Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) category is open to those who wish to join, take over or establish a business in the UK. In order to be successful, applicants have to demonstrate that they have access to ÂŁ200,000 for investment in the UK. This category could also therefore be applicable to those wanting to invest in a construction company within the UK. There are therefore several options available to enable companies within the construction industry to hire and transfer skilled workers to fill the skills gap which currently exists within the UK, at least until any education or training programmes prove successful in upskilling the UK resident labour market.

Article by Jennifer Stevens – Senior Associate Solicitor and Practice Manager and Mercedes Moya – Paralegal both of Laura Devine Attorneys LLC

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UKC COMMENT

The new Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations Carbon Monoxide Awareness Week which took place at the end of November, is an annual event to alert the population to the dangers of this dangerous substance. There have been recent legislative developments in this area, which now change the obligations on landlords with respect to detecting carbon monoxide in their rented properties. Expert Lawyer, Gavin Evans from Simpson Millar takes the opportunity to address the new Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 and their potential impact. Gavin warns landlords: “Ignore these Regulations at your peril.”

With the introduction of the regulations which came into force on 1st October 2015, landlords are now obliged to install a Carbon Monoxide alarm in every room where there is a solid fuel appliance and also have an obligation to install a smoke alarm on every storey of the property.

This applies to all new tenancies entered into the property from 1st October 2015 and to existing tenancies also.

However, the government guidance surrounding this law does suggest as good practice that the landlord installs a Carbon Monoxide in all rooms where there is a gas appliance also.

According to the charity CO-Gas Safety, there have been 677 deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning and more than 4,700 ‘nearmisses’ in the last 19 years. Carbon Monoxide is known as the ‘silent killer’ because it’s almost impossible to detect its presence without some kind of an alarm. Because we can’t smell, taste or see carbon monoxide poisoning, it can kill without anyone even noticing.

According to Stephanie Trotter OBE, the President and Director of CO-Gas Safety, a large number of people have “very limited knowledge about the dangers of

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CO exposure and how to prevent it. CO cannot be detected using human senses.

Sadly most people are also unaware of just how quickly CO can kill - less than two per cent of CO in the air can kill in between one and three minutes.”

Under the new regulations, in the private sector landlords are under a legal duty: • To fit at least one smoke alarm on every storey of their rental property which is used as living accommodation • To fit a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation where solid fuel is used • To check that the alarm is working on the first date of the tenancy (It is recommended that the landlord includes on the tenancy checklist inventory a tickbox to go through with the tenant to confirm that the alarms are in place, have been tested and are in working order.)

Landlords must ensure alarms are there at the start of a tenancy and working. However, property occupants need to take responsibility for routine testing and maintenance. If the alarms develop faults then it’s up to the landlord to replace or repair them once the tenant has notified them.

A breach could see a fine of up to £5,000 per property handed to non-compliant landlords. It will be up to the local housing authority to police compliance with the legislation and they can also hand out remedial notices to landlords

who haven’t made the change.

The commercial implications for landlords are that they will have to incur the cost of purchasing smoke and CO alarms and maintaining them and fund the cost of supplying replacement batteries. Landlords are advised though that a number of Fire Services are giving out these alarms free of charge and they may be able to obtain one for free if they have not already complied.

Gavin Evans concluded: “While this legislation is widely welcomed, this will only target a small portion of the UK housing sector and only targets one source of CO leaving other sources and other housing situations unregulated and vulnerable. This is a tiny step in a mammoth journey which is needed to have a real impact on reducing the number of unnecessary deaths and exposures. CO kills and further legislation which reaches the other sectors of the population and sources of CO is needed to make impact on the drive to prevent any further unnecessary deaths and exposures.”

For further information on carbon monoxide and its dangers, visit www.simpsonmillar.co.uk

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UKC COMMENT

It’s time to put occupational cancers under the spotlight Shocking statistics highlight need for greater awareness and early intervention Mike Petter, Chairman, Considerate Constructors Scheme

The Considerate Constructors Scheme ‘Spotlight On’ series of campaigns aims to raise awareness of critical issues throughout the construction industry. The Scheme was established by the construction industry to improve its image - and as we know, image is far more than just appearance. By highlighting key issues that affect the workforce, the Scheme plays a vital role helping to raising standards across the industry.

The latest ‘Spotlight On’ focuses on occupational cancers. Scheme Chairman Mike Petter outlines how the industry can help to safeguard its workforce against occupational cancers - as early intervention is critical - before it’s too late.

Construction is by its very nature, a physically demanding industry with many of the workforce being on site, up ladders, underground, drilling, demolishing and creating safe structures for society’s future. Whilst construction work is visible, many of the health risks for the workforce are not always obvious - especially those that are completely undetectable, often remaining dormant for decades.

The construction workforce is at a greater risk of developing cancer at work compared with any other industry group, if the risks posed fail to be appropriately managed. The two main types that significantly affect individuals

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working within the construction industry are skin and lung cancer. They can be caused by exposure to carcinogens and UV radiation in the workplace over a prolonged period of time. The causes can also take various forms from solid substances to gases and dust.

A number of substances potentially causing risk are asbestos, silica, diesel engine exhaust emissions, paint and prolonged exposure to UV radiation.

Without appropriate control measures in place, the workforce can be harmfully exposed breathing these substances in or absorbing them through the skin.

Shocking statistics • Construction workers have a 6 times greater risk of developing skin cancer than the general population (Construction Enquirer, 2015).

• In the UK there are 14,000 newly occurring cases of occupational cancer per year (IOSH, 2015).

• In 2015, an estimated 3,500 construction workers will die from cancer caused by past exposures to asbestos, 500 more from silica dust, and another 5,500 will be diagnosed with occupational cancer (Breathe Freely, BOHS, 2015).

It is difficult to determine the true extent of occupational cancers as in many cases individuals fail to develop

any noticeable symptoms of either skin or lung cancers until many years later.

Therefore, they are often not viewed as a high risk health and safety issue immediately affecting the workforce.

Awareness and early intervention It’s essential to raise awareness amongst the construction industry, and understand how early intervention can help to mitigate / reduce risk of exposure.

1 Proactively remove carcinogenic and hazardous substances.

If complete elimination isn’t achievable, working methods and equipment must be substituted for safer alternatives.

2 Isolate high risk areas Specific areas should be designated at a distance from main working areas or workers should be removed from areas of hazardous operations.

Those who are exposed can be properly protected during operations, such as cutting timber or cement blocks.

3 Controls to reduce exposure Measures to minimise exposure to dust and fibres include implementing a ventilation system or installing local exhaust ventilation systems on woodworking machinery. Dust bags can be integrated on power tools for sanding and cutting, and spray booths can be installed for particularly hazardous operations.

COMMENT UKC

Certain controls can be employed to reduce the amount of harmful exposure operatives have to UV radiation such as providing shade, sun cream protection, reflective Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), modifying reflective surfaces and using window tinting on vehicles.

4 Review and update safe working procedures Outdoor work can be rescheduled to ensure that it does not take place in the middle of the day when UV levels are at their strongest.

Jobs could be moved into shaded areas, outdoor tasks shared and staff rotated so the same person is not always working outside in the sun.

5 Adapt to match the working conditions PPE could be used alongside other control measures such as dust masks and respirators to protect against fumes. Gloves, overalls, neck protectors, sun cream and sun hats

could also be provided for the workforce.

6 Raise awareness, provide support and advice The construction industry should be aiming to acknowledge and address dust and UV related issues. Sites should educate and inform the workforce about the dangers of occupational cancers via regular toolbox talks, nurse visits, posters and leaflets. A clear message needs to be communicated to everyone and equipment should be provided and made available to ensure that workers are able to protect themselves.

The importance of protection for the long-term health of the workforce has to be carefully considered and reinforced amongst workers. The industry has to better safeguard against occupational cancers, providing more awareness, guidance and support is essential to achieve this goal.

If the industry wants to attract talented, new recruits, it must ensure it is doing everything it can to provide a safe working environment for today and the future, considering both the short term and long term health impacts and risks involved.

Further information is available at: www.ccscheme.org.uk Visit the Scheme’s Best Practice Hub: bit.ly/bestpracticehub - a unique database available to anyone free of charge. The Hub hosts a wealth of best practice examples, innovations and case studies to help the construction industry learn from their peers and raise standards throughout the industry.

Mike Petter Mike is Chairman of the Considerate Constructors Scheme, the organisation established by the construction industry to improve its image. Mike is a Chartered Civil Engineer, who has over 30 years working in the construction industry, and has monitored over 1000 construction sites registered with the Scheme.

Mike began his career at Geoffrey Osborne Ltd, working on a variety of construction projects before becoming Managing Director. He was also Regional Director at Alfred McAlpine Civils. Prior to joining the Scheme in 2008, Mike was Managing Director for Five Dimensional Management Ltd, a well-established consultancy firm specialising in construction. Mike also holds non-executive roles within health and housing.

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UKC COMMENT

First line of defence: The importance of perimeter protection As the first line of defence against intruders and security breaches, effective perimeter protection should form an integral element of the security strategy for any business. Paul Adams, Head of Technology and Product Management at Kaba Ltd and Chairman of the Access and Asset Protection Section of the British Security Industry Association (BSIA), explores the key considerations businesses should make when deploying perimeter protection.

When it comes to providing effective protection against intruders, the ability to secure the perimeter of a diverse range of vulnerable sites – as a first line of defence – is undoubtedly a key concern for organisations operating in a range of business sectors. Whether the location in question is an important part of the critical national infrastructure – such as a transport hub or power station – or a valuable private sector location such as a storage depot or warehouse, it is imperative that integrated and robust security measures are in place.

used starting from the site’s perimeter all the way back to individual building security or main asset security in order to deter would-be intruders. The outer perimeter layer represents a key starting point in terms of physical protection combined with electronic and/or security patrols. Patrols with dogs can also be used. This approach is commonly deployed on large, sprawling sites with many separate buildings and elements, including ports and airports.

For many organisations, the area in need of protection can cover large geographical areas or contain several separate buildings or elements, which can mean that their perimeters are extensive and complex. The need to monitor these around the clock requires an effective security strategy which seamlessly combines various systems and technologies, enabling businesses to identify and address potential threats in a timely and effective manner.

As the first line of defence, physical security measures can provide a daunting deterrent to would-be intruders, while restricting access and directing visitor flow through the desired entrance and exit points. Gates, barriers, doors and fences are the obvious choices for perimeter protection, but attention should be paid to some key considerations when these are deployed.

A combination of technology, physical security and the deployment of trained personnel is often the most effective method of security integration, creating several layers of defence to protect the perimeter of a site or business.

A layered approach A so-called ‘onion ring’ approach is often recommended for sensitive areas, or those covering a large geographical area.

This approach involves the most at-risk area being strategically positioned at the core of a layered defence system, whereby several layers of security are

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Physical security

Firstly, doors should be fitted with high quality cylinder locks or five-lever mortise locks, and should comply with the standard PAS24-1, entitled ‘Doors of Enhanced Security’. Areas not easily secured with lockable doors – such as turnstile entry points – should be covered with a security grade grille or shutter.

Similarly, security fencing and gates should be substantial and wellmaintained with good quality locks. It may also be advisable to think about the installation of bollards or barriers on the entrances to car parks in order to prevent unauthorised vehicular access to a site.

A watchful eye on the perimeter Undoubtedly, CCTV continues to play an important role in keeping a watchful eye on critical perimeter areas, acting both as a deterrent and an active measure for early intervention. More recently, demand for high-definition (HD) CCTV has been on the increase, which, when in place, offers the potential to deliver a much greater level of surveillance at critical or high-risk areas, such as site entrances and exits, and can also provide detailed footage to help secure convictions should a security breach occur.

Furthermore, to better secure the area, the deployment of thermal imaging cameras at regular intervals along the fence line can be an effective method of spotting intruders during the hours of darkness or adverse weather conditions. Detector-activated CCTV can also prove useful in providing 24-hour alerts to site managers responsible for large-scale sites, enabling security personnel on the ground to be deployed effectively when an alert is generated.

Looking more closely at remotely monitored, detector-activated CCTV, this is finding favour with businesses in a number of sectors across the UK, who are able to keep an eye on vulnerable areas by linking cameras and detectors – strategically positioned on the perimeter – to a privately-run Remote Video Response Centre (RVRC). Systems that are compliant with British Standard BS8418 can enable the operator to issue a verbal warning through onsite speakers to stop the intruder in their tracks, which has shown to be a sufficient deterrent in 90% of cases.

Should intruders be successful in breaching the wider perimeter of a site, effective access control measures can play a significant role in preventing further access to buildings. Access control provides the ability to control, monitor and restrict the movement of people, assets or vehicles in, out and round an area. This is essential for an organisation of any kind that experiences a busy footfall and wishes to secure specific areas from being accessed by non-personnel.

While traditionally consisting of elements such as turnstiles and key cards, the latest developments in access control technology include the use of biometrics – the unique physical characteristics of individuals, such as finger prints or iris recognition – to confirm the identity of individuals seeking to gain access to a restricted area. As the security risk increases, these identification factors should be used in combination to authenticate the user: Token (something you have), PIN (something you know), and Biometrics (something you are). Apply a single factor for general security, two of these factors where medium to high security levels are required, or all three for high to special security.

The scope of the technology is impressive in itself, and with environmental commitments and cost savings being high on the agenda for most organisations, effective utilisation of access control systems can offer the vital reductions that they’re looking for. Access control measures can be integrated with other systems – including energy management – to provide wider business benefits, such as the control the use of heating and lighting dependent on the location of people within the building.

Taking a general overview of the nature of perimeter protection, it is clear to see that integrating physical security measures with electronic systems provides an early warning and speedy response to potential breaches, especially for sites that do not have the resources and manpower to ensure that the whole site is being monitored 24 hours a day. Security specialists can provide expert advice on the implementation of a range of security measures to suit individual business needs and to counter a range of risks faced by businesses operating in varying business sectors.

To find out more about the solutions mentioned in this article, and the products and services offered by BSIA members, visit the BSIA’s website at www.bsia.co.uk.

NHBC’s Land Quality Endorsement (LQE) service has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. Here, NHBC’s Engineering Manager John Jones looks back over the last decade and ahead to landmark projects that the team will be involved in over the coming months and years.

Developing brownfield or marginal sites can often involve significant risks, with geotechnical and contamination issues often contributing to unforeseen costs and obstacles during the potentially lengthy remediation process.

For residential developments, ensuring that the remediated site is acceptable for new home warranty cover needs to be considered from the outset by the project promoter. NHBC’s Land Quality Endorsement service can assist in providing this assurance for landowners and land developers remediating land for sale to the house building sector.

The LQE service delivers comprehensive technical risk management for clients on sites with challenging geotechnical and contamination ensuring remediation is in line with NHBC standards (Chapter 4.1: Land Quality - Managing Ground Conditions) for land quality and suitable for Buildmark warranty cover.

Over the past decade, our dedicated team of land quality and geotechnical engineers have assessed some of the most contaminated sites in the UK, contributing to the restoration of over 100 sites, with the potential for 45,000 new homes, back to sustainable residential usage.

Although UK housing levels have increased over the last three years, with volumes for 2015 on track to top last year’s total of 145,000 new home registrations, there remains a great demand for new, quality homes across the country – meaning that LQE has an important role in ensuring brownfield developments remediated by independent or third party land developers are suitable for residential end use.

Significant LQE sites have included the former Avenue Coking Works near Chesterfield, widely regarded as one of the most heavily contaminated former industrial sites in Europe and a former chalk quarry in the Kent new town of Ebbsfleet - soon to be home to 6,250 plots.

COMMENT UKC

Controlling access

for Buildmark warranty cover.

Indeed, NHBC’s LQE is fast becoming a pre-requisite for many developers looking at large brownfield sites, with typical locations including landfills, quarries, gas works, mine works, industrial complexes and collieries.

Looking ahead, NHBC is already helping on some of the largest remediation schemes and challenging sites in Europe - open cast coal mines, landfills, cement works and chalk pits. Additionally, the service is particularly beneficial to sites that will be remediated for subsequent sale to developers of new housing or mixed-use schemes.

One such project is the landmark Priors Hall Park development in Corby, Northamptonshire. Previously described as the “UK’s biggest building site”, the LQE team will be involved in two phases at the former ironstone quarry site, working on land on for up to 2,400 new plots.

Master developer BeLa Partnership has outline planning permission for 5,096 homes; creating the infrastructure for the next phases of the development that will help to deliver 400 new homes per year.

We will be working at Priors Hall Park for the foreseeable future while the team also work with many other land developers and house builders across the country to help transform complex brownfield sites into land meeting the appropriate Standards and suitable for Buildmark warranty cover on thousands of new homes.

For further information on NHBC’s LQE service please visit www.nhbc.co.uk/ ProductsandServices/ Consultancyand Testing/ LandQualityEndorsement John Jones

In these cases our involvement has helped to reduce uncertainty by identifying and assessing potential risk. NHBC’s early involvement checks that remediation solutions comply with the NHBC Standards for land quality, thereby ensuring acceptability

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UKC COMMENT

About the author Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of Powered Now. Powered Now’s mobile app aims to take the pain out of paperwork for individual trades people as well as small field trade businesses. www.powerednow.com

Constructing the right price I’m in a somewhat fortunate position, I get to speak to a lot of construction companies in my role. It’s fascinating as I don’t think I’ve come across two companies that are really alike, however there is one common element the more successful ones have, they don’t compete on price.

By ‘don’t compete on price’ what I mean is, they don’t allow price to become the main reason their company is chosen for work, and they definitely never commit themselves to beating other prices whatever they are.

I find this fascinating, but its very tempting to focus on price, especially in a competitive market such as construction.

In this article I explain some of the problems when you make price your primary way of competing, and then try to suggest some alternative strategies.

It doesn’t make sense Supermarkets buy in bulk so are able to wipe out many local shops because they have huge economies of scale.

This is known as a cost advantage.

Most construction companies sadly don’t have much of a cost advantage over one another. Therefore one of the only ways that you can consistently beat others is by paying you and your staff less per hour or cutting corners, not a good business strategy!

You will deal with more difficult customers In general, those customers most keen on a “deal” will also be the most demanding, the most difficult and as a

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result the most challenging at paying.

Are they the type that you want? Or would you prefer your competitors to have them to themselves?

Impacts recommendations As I described earlier, the standard strategies for lowering prices are not very attractive. I’ve seen companies that end up in disputes over cutting corners and this has a terrible knock on effect, you will never be recommended.

Recommendations generally lead to uncontested quotes and without them you will always find yourselves competing with others. It’s a vicious circle that’s very hard to break.

You can prosper by not doing it There are a number of different approaches you can adopt. The first is to always emphasise quality when you are discussing the job, and do your best to demonstrate your expertise to the prospect without irritating them by being a know-it-all.

Guy Hodgson, Screwfix tradesman of the year for the West Midlands, suggests: “The way to win business is to go in person to see the client. Listen hard and try to contribute useful suggestions. If you don’t know something, say so. Then later do research and call them back.

Get your quotation or estimate to them quickly. Strike while the iron is hot.”

His approach is to impress with expertise, not price, and thus Guy has a thriving business.

As Hodgson says, a tip is to be very fast at producing a quotation when

one is requested. Many tradesmen are slow to respond and home owners can get very frustrated waiting.

Maybe you could experiment with saying that if a decision is given by a certain date, you can start on the following week, but that commitment ends if they don’t make a decision in time. That way you can use the lack of speed by competitors to provide your advantage. Of course your bid does need to be reasonable as well.

Just be careful that you can deliver. If you force your customer’s hand, setting their expectations that they will get a fast job and then they get something else, this will cause big problems.

Some of the companies I have interviewed simply don’t quote when they are in competition with others – the cost of preparing failed quotes is too high and they don’t wish to compete on price. They work hard to generate enough leads so they can afford to just quote for the ones where there isn’t any competition.

Be firm Competing on price is the quickest way to lose money and probably after poor workmanship is the biggest reason for construction businesses fail. No one is suggesting that rip-off pricing will work but fair pricing that provides for a good job and a decent profit should always be your aim.

Sometimes it’s hard to wean yourself off low prices and it can take persistence and a lot of confidence. However while no two construction campaigns are alike you can use this to your advantage.

COMMENT UKC

Build UK – Single voice or a sick joke?

Written by Barry Ashmore, co-founder of StreetwiseSubbie.com Ltd Following the launch of Build UK at the beginning of September, I read a whole host of articles and stories about the aspirations of this shiny new organisation formed as a result of the merger between the National Specialist Contractors Council and the UK Contractors Group.

Many of those articles clearly outlined Build UK’s claim that it will provide, “for the first time, a single voice for the whole of the contracting supply chain and offers a real opportunity to transform the construction.” Reading all this was music to my ears, and many others involved in the construction industry I imagine. A very worthy aim but, and it’s a big but, one that I feel is sadly unattainable for a number of reasons.

1 Build UK is made up of “27 of the largest major contractors” and “40 trade associations representing over 11,500 specialist contractors”. How on earth can 67 separate businesses and associations speak with one single voice? Each one will undoubtedly have its own separate agenda and, come on, main contractors and specialist contractors singing from the same hymn sheet? It’s like poachers and gamekeepers joining forces – it will never happen.

2 There are, indeed, some huge household names cited in the member and partnership section of the Build UK website. If you contacted any of them tomorrow, would they know the specific aims of “the ‘go to’ representative organisation for industry stakeholders” that they belong to?

Even if they did, would they be able to explain exactly how these aims are being achieved on a day-to-day basis by the very organisation they

are part of that purports to “provide influential and dynamic leadership and a joined up approach from the supply chain”? The short answer is, no.

3 Build UK professes to “focus on key industry issues that can deliver change and enable the contracting supply chain to improve the efficiency and delivery of construction projects to the benefit of the industry’s clients.” Just take a look at any one of those ‘issues’ and you’ll realise that Build UK has a truly immense task on its hands to offer solutions. They could be at this a while…

4 Referring to point 3, I do see, however, a very quick win for Build UK in the shape of the ‘fair payment practices’ issue. I’ll give the executive board the solution to this one for free. Cut through the PR flimflam of “considering what fair payment practice in the construction industry looks like” – we ALL know what it currently looks like and it’s both soul and business destroying. Fact. Main contractors, pay your subbies on time, every time and the problem will be resolved overnight. Now that was easy wasn’t it?

5 In Build UK’s “Action Plan”, it states that: “quite simply, construction is what everything else relies on.” It’s very refreshing to hear this tone of voice but, quite frankly, they’re hollow words. UK construction is a huge, multi-billion pound industry employing millions of people which is why the Government, and the banks, can’t let it fail. The problem is, it is failing but it’s the subcontractors at the very bottom of the pile that are being failed by the existing system. Six construction firms are going bust every single day

but no one at the top cares*. Well they should. Why? Because if you take specialist contractors out of the equation, there would be no UK construction industry whatsoever.

I could go on and if anyone from Build UK, board directors, members or partners, would like to contact me, I would be happy to discuss it.

On a daily basis, at StreetwiseSubbie. com we help to pick up the pieces from the fall-out of skills shortages, HR problems, non- or late-payment and legal battles. We support specialist subcontractors to win more work and get paid (on time!) for it. We’re already doing what Build UK aims to achieve and we’re doing it very well.

Perhaps more ‘talking’ will somehow lead to solutions to the serious issues that Build UK says it is attempting to tackle, but somehow I doubt it After all, actions speak louder than words. And if the main contractor’s business model relies on paying its specialist contractors after 90 days, no amount of asking or talking will persuade them to pay in 30 days.

Or am I missing something?

Anyway, I know this is a hot topic so I would love to hear from you, Construction UK’s readers, about your views on Build UK and any experiences you may have had over the last couple of months, good or bad.

One last thought. This might all just be a cunning plan by Ms Nichols and co. to lull contractors into a false sense of security before turning on them, and selling them out completely!

Maybe Build UK does have a plan after all…

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UKC COMMENT

Construction in the Education Sector Education has been a surprisingly strong sector of the construction industry over the last two years. Following the capital spending cuts in the early years of the Coalition Government, construction in the health and education sectors was forecast to fall by up to 40% over the subsequent years. Initially, these expectation were met, as education construction output fell by around 20% over the 2010-12 period.

However, 2013 saw some stabilisation of the sector and this was followed by exceptional growth of 19% in construction output in 2014. As a result, the sector recovered to a value of £10Bn - bringing it back to the same level as 2010, prior to the scrapping of the BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme. Further growth of around 5% is expected in 2015, with forecasts for modest growth in 2016/17.

Increasing output levels are being driven by a combination of factors, including ongoing investment in key building programmes, such as the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP), and programmes to deliver new and refurbished facilities for the primary and secondary schools estate, such as the Academies Programme. In addition, further education has also benefited from improvements and new facilities for FE colleges whilst the University Technical Colleges programme is likely to boost output growth into the medium-term.

A key factor to note is the pupil population is expanding rapidly, with overall numbers expected to grow by seven per cent in 2016-20. As a result, the current landscape is changing, with a combination of rising demand for school places set against a backdrop of lower

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budgets and restricted designs – a stark contrast to the early days of the BSF programme. These issues will make for a very challenging environment for schools and contractors in the education sector going forward and the key to the future of education construction work volumes remains the rate of procurement and funding levels of key national building programmes. For example, in the new build sector, the Government’s Priority Schools Building Programme is expected to generate increased workloads in 2016 and, in addition, the Government has also announced a further £2Bn for a second capital funded phase between 2015 and 2021.

The Free School model, which the Conservative government is expanding, will now mean that state-funded academies can be set up without needing to consult the local authority and will remove further demand for places at authority controlled schools. So far, over 290 free schools have opened in England with another 100 or so approved and due to open in 2015-16 and beyond.

In Scotland, the Schools for the Future Programme, worth £1.8Bn, is expected to deliver 100 schools up to 2019, while in Wales around £1.4Bn is being spent through the 21st Century Schools Capital Funding Programme to 2018.

Higher Education University construction work remains a much smaller market than the schools & colleges sector and declined steadily between 2008-12. However, in 2014, the value of public sector university work to contractors reached £1.8Bn - the highest value recorded and a 45% increase on 2013. Despite the increase in tuition fees, student numbers continue to expand in the HE sector, which has placed great pressure on university infrastructure,

and there is a considerable need to address past under-investment and provide additional spaces for teaching, research and student accommodation.

Key long-term capital building projects in the higher education sector, which should underpin output growth into the medium-term, include spending plans for the Russell Group of universities, forecast to be in the region of around £9Bn between 2013-17.

In general, investment is increasing among UK universities as competition to attract overseas students intensifies, and there is a particularly buoyant pipeline of ongoing new work at a number of universities as part of major long-term development programmes to increase provision for additional students, upgrade residential, teaching and research accommodation and to build new campuses, at the moment.

Student Accommodation Going into 2016 and beyond the outlook for the student accommodation sector remains positive, with student numbers expected to increase with the removal of the cap on student numbers. The student accommodation sector will

Whilst universities still remain the largest provider in the purpose built student accommodation sector, there has been a dramatic change in the balance of supply between institutional and private providers, and the impact of private operators in the market has been significant. In 2014-15, private sector operators formed around 44% of supply and given current rates of development and investor activity, it is expected that private operators will overtake universities over the next decade.

higher quality accommodation with combined study and social space, with the latest technology and amenities.

In conclusion, while pressures on capital spending in the public sector will continue to be a feature of the next five years, the education sector currently offers good prospects for the

construction industry. The diversity of sectors and funding programmes, coupled with rising pupil/student numbers, should ensure a steady stream of attractive projects, which will help underpin work for the supply chain over the next few years.

COMMENT UKC

continue to be characterised by acute undersupply in many of the major university towns across the UK, ensuring that the pipeline of new developments will remain buoyant over the coming years.

This article was based on the ‘Education Construction Market Report – UK 2015-2019 Analysis’ report, which was recently published

by AMA Research. The report is available at www.amaresearch. co.uk or by calling 01242 235724.

Driven by structural changes affecting the HE sector and continued budget cuts, traditional halls of residence and privately developed city-centre apartment blocks are now being replaced by community-led ‘student villages’, designed to include retail, healthcare and entertainment facilities and enhance the overall student experience.

Students are increasingly demanding

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UKC COMMENT

Skilled sharing How the logic of the sharing economy could drive apprenticeships Oliver Johnson, Policy Executive, Association for Consultancy & Engineering The so-called sharing economy was named by TIME magazine as one of ’Ten Ideas that will change the world’ in 2011. Four years later, the construction industry appears to have taken little heed of this assertion, though, the logic of the sharing economy may be breaking through.

The big question posed by the sharing economy is: why own a chainsaw when you only chop down trees two days a year, why not loan it out to others while you do not need it? Indeed, the sharing economy has, in its short history, mostly been orientated towards individual consumers making the most of shared resources. Incredibly successful businesses like Uber and Airbnb have emerged as sharing economy posterboys. For the purposes of the construction industry, rather than viewing the sharing economy as a necessarily consumption-angled concept, the sector needs to expand its thinking to understand how it can be deployed to solve construction problems.

One problem that the construction industry faces is a crippling skills shortage, which will likely worsen as demand for new housing, for example, increases. Despite the prospect of renewed demand for housing, the UK is victim to a grave skills gap. Half a million of the existing 2,124,000 strong construction workforce is due to retire in the next five years and needs to be replaced (and more) as the sector grows, which calls for more apprentices. And, by 2013, ‘the number of first year trainees undertaking apprenticeship training had fallen for the fifth consecutive year to

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an all-time low of 3,539’. In sum, the sector’s ability to replenish the shrinking construction workforce at a time of unprecedented demand is diminishing.

A significant barrier to increasing the stock of apprentices is, very simply, the lack of apprenticeships on offer in the construction sector. Indeed, just one in four construction firms reported having taken on an apprentice in 2014, despite 75% finding themselves either satisfied or very satisfied with the schemes.

A key question, then, is how to encourage employers to take on more apprentices. Perhaps the logic of the sharing economy that provides some of the answer; although the apprenticeship system can be traced back to the Middle Ages, there might be a way of reinvigorating the construction industry with a resolutely modern take on this most ancient method of training.

The CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) has stepped up. It launched a pilot programme called the ‘Shared Apprenticeship Scheme’ which allows young people to complete a full apprenticeship by working with a number of different employers. The scheme allows employers to take on an apprentice for a minimum of three months before allowing the apprentice to move on to another firm to learn more. It gives the apprentices a wealth of varied experience and a series of contacts to pursue for a full time job once they complete their training while also insulating the employer from higher costs associated with taking on an apprentice for a year, therefore

lowering risk. The real beauty of the scheme is that it does not rely on incentivising apprentices by paying them more, just sharing of excess capacity of apprentices’ services between companies – a key tenant of the sharing economy. The model works because it is sympathetic to both employers and young employees. Why have an apprentice for a full year when you only need him/her for 3 months, why not loan them out for another firm to train them when you do not need them?

The CITB pilots have proved successful, reinforcing the construction industry with an extra 500 apprentices per annum.

A real effort, however, must be made to roll out the programme on a wider scale. The industry has to work hard to find ways to make apprenticeships more flexible and engaging for the apprentices involved. The sector should consider administering this kind of scheme among themselves rather than relying on Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) such as CITB to do the work for them, which would enable them to more specifically tailor the apprentice’s training to their needs.

Although the sharing economy is often perceived as unrealistic or cerebral, its rationale can be applied to the resolutely tangible world of the construction industry and if it means a higher capacity for infrastructure, society as a whole will surely be sharing in the benefits.

Whether it’s swapping apprentices or chainsaws, a sharing economy inspired approach might well be the future of training in the construction industry… and chopping down trees.

COMMENT UKC

Key metrics you need to know to measure the effectiveness of your on-site trainings

By Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP®, PMI-ACP, Founder of Cheetah Learning Project Managers, and especially certified Project Managers, know firsthand the value of quality training for their own professional development and effectiveness. Being a PMP, after all, requires PMs to pursue ongoing education to maintain their credential.

The Project Management Institute’s recent Pulse of the Profession report further confirms the value of PM training; in their 2015 study, they found that “80% of high-performing organisations offer ongoing training for project managers.”

Training isn’t valuable only for individual employees, then; it improves the performance of a whole organisation.

Project Managers also know, however, that not all training programs are created equal. How, then, can organisations and their leaders evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the trainings they offer? Here at Cheetah Learning, training evaluations ultimately need to measure real-world results. For Project Management training, we find that two of the most important metrics of training effectiveness are bottom-line financial measures and exam pass rates of employees. We’ll explore these in the case of Cheetah’s own evaluation of the effectiveness of one of its most popular courses: its Cheetah Exam Prep® for PMP® Exam program held on-site for corporate clients.

First Metric: Bottom-Line Financial Measures To evaluate how well our on-site PMP training helps the financial bottom line of our corporate clients, Cheetah tracks the profitability and growth rates of these organisations. Since

we have provided regular trainings for many of our publicly traded corporate clients for ten years or more, we were able to examine the historical data on their organisation’s profitability and growth alongside the on-site trainings we provided to that organisation each year based on their publicly available annual reports. We were not surprised to find that 90% of Cheetah corporate clients increased their profitability and that 85% of them increased their growth rate in the year immediately following retaining Cheetah Learning for their on-site PM training needs.

pass rate for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® exam is estimated to be approximately 60%, 98% of students who go through Cheetah Learning’s Cheetah Exam Prep® for PMP® Exam program pass the test.

Even if your training program does not culminate in an exam like the PMP, you can still use an exam format to measure the training’s effectiveness.

Good trainers could (and should) end their program with a knowledge assessment to see how well employees that went through their program assimilated the information presented.

Regardless of the type of training program your organisation brings on board, measuring the long-term effects on your company’s profitability and growth is crucial to evaluating that training’s effectiveness. This metric is most reliable when you are able to measure the effectiveness of training programs offered regularly over a long period of time.

The types of metrics you choose to evaluate the effectiveness of your organisation’s training programs will, of course, depend on the trainings your organisation uses. But regardless of whether these are high-stakes trainings that require employees to pass a globally recognised certification exam where everyone’s reputation is at stake (including the organisation’s), or lower-stakes trainings focused on soft skills, measuring the effectiveness of training programs is the best way to know which trainings are adding value to your organisation - and which need to be either improved or eliminated.

Second Metric: Exam Pass Rates A second, crucial metric that we here at Cheetah use to measure the effectiveness of our on-site accelerated PMP prep program is perhaps the most obvious: how many employees who go through our program actually pass the exam (and pass it the day after they complete the course). To track this, we keep in close contact with all of our program alumni to find out if they passed the exam and what their next career moves are. This is built into our program, as we refund the money of those who do not pass. Through these efforts, we have found that while the first-try

To learn more about Cheetah Learning’s on-site Cheetah Exam Prep® for PMP® Exam program and how to bring this award-winning training to your organisation, contact the company at (888) 659-2013 or info@cheetahlearning.com.

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Taking your business to a better place H3 Partners is a leading provider of Business Change Programmes using Organisational Change H3 Partners frameworks is a leadingtoprovider of Business Management help transform Change Programmes using Organisational businesses from within.

Change Management frameworks to help transform from within.

In the first ofbusinesses a series of discussions, UK Construction Journal speaks with Rod Horrocks, Director of H3 UK Construction speaks with Rod Partners, about the Media processes involved.

Horrocks, Director of H3 Partners, about the challenges with company keeping and Could you tell usassociated a bit about your process in-check and the vital role incentive what it does? plays measuring performance.

H3 has in always focused on change management. We provide a range of services that cover the change While Performance Measurement proven management aspect of any business. Thishas might include invaluable, many businesses struggle to identifying stakeholders and deciding what communication maintain bestand practice over works long periods of time. needs they have what media best, running In H3 Partner’s experience, how –often should workshops on the forthcoming changes whether process, organisations be revisiting their processes to organisational or business role changes – or conducting ensure that performance communication sessions whereremains people canoptimal? ask questions and receive an honest and confidential answer.

As you know, most businesses will budget We also conduct training exercises and assessments, annually by department – perhaps with a during which we monitor what the change going to do to top line and a cost line for sales. Theis same the business and whether the business has achieved that should be done for process performance. change and theshould associated benefits.

Associated Businesses always reset their with that, we modelevery the business processes help people to targets 12 months as atominimum. understand how the change works in an end-to-end sense.

At H3 Partners we prefer this to be a continuous At what point did every you realise there was a market for process so that six months, once you have helping with performance management and how did reached a target initially set, the target can be you look to might get involved? reset.

You say “Okay, we’ve done that.

Businesses are there alwaysistrying to that improve Do we think more we their can performance do?”

and a key element of this process will be to agree what the key improvements be–and measures will drive There are three should targets thewhat idealistic, the these.

From our perspective, it is important that you can minimum and the exceeding expectation – and measure what you trying the12 cost these should beare reset ontoachange. regularWhile basis. side of the equation is very easy to see, we want people to months is a minimum, and if a target is hit three understand that they ought to also measure what the months on the trot it’s time to reset the target. benefit is going to be. This is not always easy to identify however, which is where do performance measurement comes Speaking generally, businesses in.

People do not measure these things lack the necessary infrastructurevery well – they have tended totheir rely on accountancy practice, meaning that to improve processes? the performance measurement data is tends to be late, can have beenalways manipulated and resource is focused if onyou a single There’s enough put number.

For me this is about getting business leaders to actually the process in place and empower the guys understand where performance is poor, where to do it. If you provide enough time for the performance is good, and what changes can be made to improve the business.

Where does the construction industry fit in and what issues do you commonly encounter? frontline staff to agreeis on performance The construction industry not the too different.

Most measures and then implement a simple businesses have difficulty putting in identifying the correct weekly review that focuses onperformance the measures against process business processes and key exceptions and promotes improvements. indicator targets. The additional problem with construction is that the working environment is not ideal for implementing This works on the shop floor, but measurement systems.

Construction can in be construction subject to you would have to work quite hard the significant changes that are not foreseen atto thedo planning samewhen because you have to create a space stage you schedule the dates and estimate how much that is at a premium. the concrete is needed or how You long can it willstill takeget to dig a hole. guys you together to site askorhow week has gone When arrive on startthe the project can you be sure however, even if it’s on a whiteboard with that the planning is correct and the dates set can be targets.

everyone gathered round over a cup of tea.

Ensure that time lookingcompanies at performance is What can a construction expect when enshrined in weekly tasks to review performance working with H3 Partners? andfirst to identify issues effecting it.

The is that wethe demonstrate an understanding of the

business and can empathise in how difficult the process of Is it difficult for how businesses toitmake setting KPI’s is and even harder can bethose to make it positive changes stick in the long term? work properly.

We bring an enlightened view on what the business is trying to measure and what we use the results for.

If youifdo notempower measure a the process youand cannot Again, you staff theymanage get it and therefore out if youofare going to measureif ityou’re then forget something it not – no.

Obviously, trying manage Wetop encourage clientsthe to use the doingthe this from it.the down then answer measurement nothave to beat-up on earlier the site interviews, manager or is yes. As we said in sub-contractor but to find out what isto happening using performance measures beat upin the process and how to improve it; involving them inand the on front line staff is counter-productive discussion.

Performance is notinwell unsustainable.

But ifmeasurement you’re actually a position understood particularly when you think about setting targets to set the measures and give performance and whatincentives the impact isso of that both under performing. related thereand is aover personal We are not talking about single measures as the benefit, then it is self-sustaining. Peopleprocess cannot be black or white. withto clients starts with become engrossed inOur thework ability manage an education awareness on both the structure and their life at and work.

Everybody wants that ability management of measures and enables managers to design to manage any change, which in modern day and implement them for themselves.

Not forgetting that life is inevitable, what they don’t want is targetsthe implementation the process be enacted by humans and measuresof set withoutwill their involvement. and poor measurement can have a very negative affect on performance.

To read the interview in full, please

visit UK Construction Online.

To read the interview in full, please visit UK Construction Online www.ukconstructionmedia.co.uk For more information on how H3 Partners can improve your business please visit the more information about how H3 Partners For can www.h3partners.co.uk or download H3 business please your visit improve Partners’ Performance Measurement e-Book www.h3partners.co.uk H3 Partners’ download or available at h3partners.co.uk/wp-content/ Measurement e-Book, available at Performance uploads/2014/06/H3-Partners-ebook1.pdf www.h3partners.co.uk/files/2014/06/H3-Partnersebook1.pdf

caroline@h3partners.co.uk

www.h3partners.co.uk

UKC COMMENT

Cities must innovate to make them fit for the future

By Sara Smith at BROXAP By 2050 nearly 90% of the UK population will live in urban areas – a staggering 64 million people. Currently around 49 million people live in towns and cities meaning that over the next forty years there will be a serious influx of people.

At the same time they must also contend with a changing energy model that will re-focus how towns and cities move their citizens around. Each area will be different, meaning that the challenges each faces may be very different. However, I believe there are commonalities across the country. ´ How, for instance, do you

move refuse and what do you do

with it once you have it?

At the moment we have smart bins that monitor when they need to be emptied allowing councils to spend less cash and emit lower amounts of CO2 by optimising routes for dustbin lorries. In South Korea they have gone one better and have the rubbish “sucked” out into a central system that then creates compost.

Changes in how citizens move around towns and cities will also change what people need in our urban areas. If you have more cyclists going to work, they need safe, secure and dry places to keep their bikes. If pedestrians are brought back into the city centres en masse, they must have places to shelter from the sun and rain that are both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

That idea of beauty is one that should rank highly alongside a number of others

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to create a street space that will be usable and liked by those who interact with it. Citizens will want to live in and take care of areas that look nice. We are visual creatures after all, so making sure that new buildings are created with care is of utmost importance.

I believe there are also two other key elements to making the future urban environment a success. ´ Technology The pavements that will be pounded in the next century will be made up of far more than just concrete and asphalt.

Sensors embedded in street furniture can map movements of pedestrians and allow the city to adapt as people flow in and out of areas. Think of football crowds heading home from a game in the depths of winter. Networked LED street lamps could be increased in brightness to help guide them to their destinations.

Or at the approach of an emergency vehicle they could blink, alerting drivers to make way for the ambulance that is rushing to the hospital. Data, however, is only one part of the process that will decide how urban areas move forward. ´ People Arguably the most important component are those who are going to use the spaces that are being designed.

Governments – at both a local and

national level – designers and companies must speak to citizens and make them part of the process. An engaged populace will feel like they own the city and in turn they will come to the decision makers with ideas. It is they who will, in many cases, pay for these infrastructure projects out of their taxes and also have to use them on a daily basis.

Back in 1989 the makers of ‘Back to the Future 2’ had a go at imagining what the world would look like on October 21, 2015.

Some things they got spectacularly wrong (dust proof paper anyone?) but others proved eerily prescient. Take for instance the neon pavements that Marty flew over in his hovering DeLorean.

They seemed like fantasy at the time but in Cambridge a street is paved with a coating that, as the sun sets, begins to glow in a beautiful blue hue.

The product absorbs light during the day and emits it at night to give a carbon neutral way of lighting paths. That’s tech that even Doc Brown could get behind.

While the future of urban areas may not be crystal clear at this moment, businesses have a huge opportunity to take advantage of when they look to revenue streams in the future. Not only will it help them grow and thrive; it will also benefit our whole country.

COMMENT UKC

International arbitration in the construction industry: why is it important now?

Legal issues are commonplace in this industry: construction does not always go to plan and costs can quickly escalate. Reflecting this, the global consulting engineer Arcadis recently published research to show that the value of the average construction dispute rose by almost 60% last year, with failure to properly administer the contract and misunderstandings over contractual obligations amongst the top five causes cited.

When it becomes apparent that such issues cannot be resolved between the parties involved, formal dispute resolution proceedings often beckon.

Recent years have seen a huge increase in the use of international arbitration instead. Why is this the case?

Construction disputes sit at the apex of complex, highly technical and constantly evolving disciplines; construction and engineering and the law. Only a few jurisdictions have specialised construction courts (the Technology and Construction Court in England is a notable exception). Consequently, parties that choose to resolve their disputes through the courts risk having their case being heard by a judge who may have limited experience in dealing with construction contracts, construction industry terms and the technical aspects of a construction project. In international arbitration, where parties have the option of selecting arbitrators with specialist technical knowledge and industry expertise, selecting an arbitrator that has significant experience with

construction disputes gives rise to a greater likelihood of achieving a decision that takes account of all relevant issues.

A sea change is evident from primarily court-based litigation to utilising arbitration as the preferred method of dispute resolution. The 2015 International Arbitration Survey, conducted by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in partnership with White & Case, illustrates that international arbitration is, conclusively, the preferred form of dispute resolution for cross-border disputes. In particular, the research found that 90% of the respondents favoured international arbitration over other forms of dispute resolution, a 17% increase from QMUL’s first international arbitration survey in 2006.

Factors behind this shift include the greater enforceability of arbitral awards, the flexibility of the arbitral process and the ability to avoid specific legal systems.

As the research shows, however, the most attractive feature for parties in the construction industry is the ability to have disputes resolved by individuals with construction industry expertise.

International arbitration also provides parties with the option of choosing the jurisdiction in which disputes will be resolved. The location of an arbitration can be anywhere in the world, irrespective of whether it has any connection to the parties or the project. A neutral venue can be chosen, thereby avoiding any perceived ‘home advantage’.

London and Paris have long been the most traditionally preferred venues.

However, the study showed that Hong Kong and Singapore have gained significant momentum, arguably reflecting the growing importance of Asia for inbound and outbound investment in large infrastructure and construction projects. Such projects, being sizeable, expensive and complicated, invariably result in disputes. As such, more Asian parties are becoming involved in large construction disputes and arbitral forums in the region have invested considerable effort to attract these sorts of disputes.

The 2015 International Arbitration Survey demonstrates that although London and Paris continue to be the two most used locations and preferred seats, Singapore is now considered the most improved seat over the past five years followed closely by Hong Kong.

The cost of large scale construction projects is now rising into the billions and at the same time so does the value of the disputes that arise out of them.

The decision as to how to resolve them is therefore of critical importance. The latest International Arbitration Survey shows that international arbitration has now become the norm.

Michael Turrini, Partner (Construction) at White & Case

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UKC COMMENT

Neighbourhood planning powers boost plans for housebuilding by 10% Neighbourhood plans allow people to decide the future development of their area, including where new homes and businesses should be built, what they should look like and what local infrastructure is needed.

Putting planning power in the hands of local people involves the whole community, from plan drafting to referendum stages.

So far more than 100 areas have voted ‘yes’ in neighbourhood planning referendums, with more than eight million people living in areas involved in neighbourhood planning.

The latest figures show that plans for housebuilding are more than ten per cent higher in the first areas with a neighbourhood plan as opposed to only the council’s local plan.

Nationally planning permissions were granted on almost 250,000 new homes in the last year, with more than one million permissions granted for new homes since 2010 and the National House Building Council saying the number of new homes being registered with it so far this year is nine per cent higher than a year ago.

Speaking about the second reading of the Housing and Planning Bill, Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said: “This government is continuing the huge shift of power from Whitehall to the town hall and to local people. More than eight million people now live in areas that have had or will have their say on planning in their neighbourhood, and more areas are coming forward every day.

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“We are scrapping the broken old planning system that pitted neighbours and developers against each other, and cornered people into opposing any development in their back yard.

The 100 neighbourhood planning referendums show how our approach of getting the whole community working together is paying off, and breaking through local opposition.”

Earlier this year the government opened a neighbourhood planning support programme, including a fund allowing groups to apply for grants of up to £8,000 to help write their plans, pay for events to engage the local community, develop websites and pay for specialist planning expertise.

Areas facing more complex issues may be eligible for up to £14,000.

Local people can draw up neighbourhood plans which, once approved, councils are bound to consider as part of the planning process alongside the council’s own local plan for the area.

Separately, neighbourhood development orders can grant planning permission for specific types of development in a particular neighbourhood.

Both require support of 50% of voters in a local referendum.

Every one of the more than 100 neighbourhood plans submitted to a local referendum has been approved by local people. ´ Housing and Planning Bill Central government has also outlined its ambition to ensure that an extra million families will be able to become homeowners by the end of this

Parliament. This includes delivering 200,000 affordable starter homes that will be available to first time buyers at a 20% discount below market rates.

The Housing Minister has reaffirmed the government’s ambition to transform generation rent into generation buy.

Brandon Lewis said: “The 2008 crash devastated the housebuilding industry, leading to the lowest levels of ‘starts’ for any peacetime year since the 1920s and the loss of a quarter of a million construction jobs. We have got Britain building again, with housing completions at their highest annual level since 2009.

“We know that around 86% of people aspire to own their own home and we want to help turn their dream into a reality. That is why we are supporting the building of all types of homes from starter homes for first time buyers to opening up planning reforms to make more custom builds a reality.”

The government is now extending the Right to Buy to give housing association tenants the same home ownership opportunities as council tenants, with every property sold replaced with an additional affordable home. The reinvigorated Right to Buy for council tenants has already helped nearly 40,000 into homeownership since 2012.

Every home sold under the scheme will be replaced by an additional property on a one-for-one basis and, since 2012, councils have already delivered more than 3,000 homes through the refreshed Right to Buy. More council housing has been delivered since 2010 than in the previous 13 years.

COMMENT UKC

Case Study: Grange Wind Farm Anticipation builds in Burton-uponStather as Blue Energy, one of the UK’s leading investors in and developers of renewable energy infrastructure, puts the finishing touches to a new £19.5M sustainable development – Grange Wind Farm.

Blue Energy acquired the site from the developer Ridgewind following approval of the proposed development, at appeal, in 2012. It is indicative of the Company’s core aspirations – to make a valuable contribution towards future carbon reduction targets in the UK. Once operational, Grange Wind Farm’s six 2.05MW Senvion MM92 turbines will generate an approximate 32.3GWh of electricity each year – enough energy to power approximately 7,705 homes or more than half the households in the Burton-upon-Stather ward.

The development is sited on a parcel of land situated between the River Trent to the west and the Burton-upon-Stather woodland to the east. With consistently high wind speeds and a low potential impact on local ecology, the site makes for an ideal location. Arable farming will continue once the development is complete, thanks in part to Grange Wind Farm’s modest 4.6 hectare footprint.

A nearby farmhouse (used presently as a private residence) sits within the site boundary. Blue Energy has upgraded road access to the property, which had fallen into serious disrepair, in recognition of the occupant’s continued support and understanding whilst construction works were taking place.

Blue Energy has also dedicated funds to increasing ecological diversity in the area. New hedgerows will be

introduced to link the ancient Burtonupon-Stather woodland to habitat features to the north and south of the site, while grassland field margins will encourage new wildlife into the area.

Additionally, the Company is working with the public to establish a Local Community Benefit Fund which will contribute £24,000 to local projects each year for the duration of the wind farm’s lifespan.

Given the development’s location on what has been the flood plain of the River Trent, the main archaeological interest in the site was in what the underlying sedimentology could reveal about previous migrations of the river.

With this in mind, sedimentary cores of underlying soils have been taken as part of an archaeological watching brief to determine historical flood patterns.

Delivery of the turbine’s many components, including the 46m long turbine blades, was also challenging, with a number of restrictions preventing access via traditional highway routes.

Blue Energy worked with neighbouring landowners and Flixborough Wharf to construct a new access road which provided direct access to the site from the River Trent and bypassed a significant portion of the existing road network. This not only reduced the transport route to site but also the impact on the local community, mitigating delays on popular commuter routes whilst large components were transported to site.

Construction began in February of this year with renowned civil engineer Jones Bros at the helm. Contracted to carry out key enabling and infrastructure works, Jones Bros ensured minimal disruption to nearby residents and the

local ecology throughout construction.

The construction phase was not without its challenges however, as Patrick Bailey, Jones Bros’ Regional Manager for the east of England explains: “Usually we would excavate to the base of the foundation before piling, but on this job we installed them from the existing ground level as we had concerns about how well the ground would support the weight of the piling plant.

“Once the piles were installed we excavated to approximately 1.5m below ground level and poured a concrete blinding layer, which provided a firm level surface to fix the foundation steel reinforcement.

“The 21m diameter bases each required 74 tonnes of steel reinforcement and 500cu m of concrete, while the 16.5m diameter bases had 50 tonnes of steel reinforcement and 340cu m of concrete.

“Each concrete pour took approximately 12 hours to complete, which provided its own logistical challenges such as ensuring the supply of concrete was consistent throughout the pour.”

Jones Bros, together with Powersystems UK Ltd, also acted as the Independent Connections Provider (ICP) for the project and undertook all contestable electrical works including wind farm grid connection, cabling and the undergrounding of an existing overhead 11kv cable which ran through the wind farm site.

Following Grange Wind Farm’s completion this month, a period of testing works will take place before the wind farm becomes fully operational in February 2016.

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UKC REPORT

2015: looking back and moving forward...

2015 has been exciting year, full of growth and expectation, not just in the construction industry, but also here at UK Construction Media, where April saw us join forces with BiP Solutions, allowing us to concentrate on providing our readers with great news, comments and opinions, whilst expanding our portfolio of customer focussed solutions.

We look forward to continuing our new found partnership with BiP and believe that 2016 will bring more exciting developments and growth for us all.

November saw the launch of our unique marketing solution packages, designed to raise your profile within our sector.

A synergistic and trusted approach makes our partnerships successful and makes us the leading provider of marketing solutions to the UK Construction Industry.

In the construction industry, 2015 has been an interesting year; with the start of AMP6 leading the utilities sector into an era of ‘totex’ – total expenditure investment - where systems and assets are being improved and upgraded leading to long term

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benefits, rather than short term and problem management investment.

The new CDM Regs also came into force at the beginning of the year and have received mixed reviews from suppliers and contractors alike, with some bemoaning the cost of investment and others unaware of the changes altogether. We looked at some of the challenges faced and the benefits gained from the change.

contractors and professionals who chose from a mix of seminars, demonstrations, debates and discussions, designed to make UK Construction Week a powerful and stimulating event at all levels.

Throughout the year, we have enjoyed attending some of the most interesting exhibitions and gatherings the industry has to offer on our shores. A highlight of which was Digital Construction Week and our conversations with BIM Guru, David Philp.

Looking ahead, 2016 will involve more change and development from the industry. With the Government’s 2016 Mandate for BIM on our doorstep, people will be asking what this means for them. ‘The Mandate’ was first stated in the “Government Construction Strategy” published by the Cabinet Office in May 2011. The report announced the Governments intention to require: collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) on its projects by 2016.

UK Construction Week introduced itself with a bang and this new event is set to become the biggest construction industry trade show on the UK calendar.

This year it comprised nine separate shows under one roof from 6th – 8th October. More than 1,000 exhibitors were joined by an estimated 55,000+ building and construction industry

Essentially the UK Government has embarked with industry on a four year programme for sector modernisation with the key objective of: reducing capital cost and the carbon burden from the construction and operation of the built environment by 20%. Central to these ambitions is the adoption of information rich Building Information Modelling

REPORT UKC

(BIM) technologies, process and collaborative behaviours that will unlock new more efficient ways of working at all stages of the project life-cycle.

Over in the transport sector, Network Rail have pushed ahead with the electrification of its network and a number of major hubs have been refurbished: with Birmingham New Street opening in September and Manchester Victoria, hard on its heels in October.

Following a five-year, £750M transformation, Birmingham New Street now boasts an iconic new atrium over a huge passenger concourse - five times the size of London Euston’s.

The station, which opened its doors to the public on Sunday 20th September 2015, has been rebuilt while trains continued to run as normal for the 170,000 passengers a day who use it.

Just a couple of weeks later, the refurbished Manchester Victoria Station was officially reopened. Once known as the ‘worst station in the UK’, the £44M upgrade is part of a £1Bn investment programme in rail across the north of

England, providing better journeys and helping to build a Northern Powerhouse.

At the opening, Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, said: “The north is receiving a wave of investment in its transport infrastructure on a scale not seen for generations, with £4.5Bn in the north west alone.

The benefits are already being delivered, with 71,000 more businesses in the north west than in 2010 – a clear sign our long-term plan to secure a stronger, healthier economy is working.’

Work to develop Crossrail continued apace, with some 67% of this massive project to provide a new railway for London and the South East now complete.

Following the successful completion of 42km tunnel in the spring, the project continues to move closer towards delivering the new railway which will open in phases from 2017.

Transport isn’t the only sector the Government has pushed ahead with, and 2015 saw Prime Minister David Cameron call for Generation Rent to become Generation Buy and a promise

to build one million homes by 2020. The Government has previously pledged to deliver 200,000 starter homes for first-time buyers and 275,000 affordable homes during by 2020. With the Autumn Budget promising another 200,000.

We shall see how this progresses and whether the homes will remain affordable to all.

And so, looking ahead to 2016, we will see the implementation of BIM as a major event in the calendar and I’m sure a lot of our readers will be interested to see how this is managed and will have numerous opinions about it – please feel free to share these thoughts with us, you can contact me directly at: vicky. lee@ukconstructionmedia.co.uk Overall, the market looks healthly for 2016, with the Construction Products Association predicting growth along with healthy results from The Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Manager’s Index for October.

Once again, construction companies were upbeat about the prospects for growth over the coming 12 months with 59% expecting an increase in business, with only 7% forecasting a drop.

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Joint campaign launched to raise awareness for automatic enrolment The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), together with The Pension Regulator, has launched a bold new multi-million pound initiative aimed at smaller employers and their employees.

The joint campaign, which combines digital, TV, radio and press advertising with PR and social media activity, addresses a single theme – ‘Don’t ignore the Workplace Pension’.

Though light-hearted, the campaign carries with it a serious message. While automatic enrolment into workplace pensions has been rolling out across the UK since 2012, it is only now that 1.8 million small and micro employers are being required to take action to help their staff to save for later life.

As part of a phased process over the next three years, every employer will have to enrol their eligible staff into a pension scheme by law.

The new campaign, which comes with the hashtag #DontIgnoreIt, was launched in late-October by Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann.

The Minister comments: “We have made great strides forward by automatically enrolling more than five million people into a workplace pension – now the challenge is to make sure hardworking people with every type of employer get to enjoy this major financial benefit.

“This is a fun and quirky campaign but

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behind it lies a very serious message.

We need everyone to know they are entitled to a workplace pension – and we need all employers to understand their legal responsibility to their staff, but also to feel more positive about engaging with workplace pensions.

“This Government is committed to providing security for working people at every stage of their lives, and that includes giving people the chance to plan for a financially secure retirement. Automatic enrolment is a big part of that.”

Since 2012, more than 5.4 million workers have been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension by almost 61,000 employers. By the time the process is complete in 2018, it is estimated that around nine million workers will either be newly saving or saving more into a workplace pension thanks to the policy.

In the meantime The Pensions Regulator will continue to write to each and every employer in the UK to alert them to the fact that they have new pension duties.

The regulator has also recently launched new online tools and information specifically aimed at small employers to help them through the process.

Chief Executive of The Pensions Regulator, Lesley Titcomb, said: “Automatic enrolment has been successfully introduced across the UK’s large and medium employers.

This campaign aims to raise awareness

amongst small and micro employers that they cannot ignore workplace pensions.

“Our website and the letters we send out to employers have been updated to ensure they have clear information that is relevant to them and helps them understand what they need to do, and when, to comply with the law.”

Automatic enrolment has already fundamentally changed the way society approaches saving into workplace pensions. Instead of opting in, as was the case in the past, all qualifying employees of large and medium-sized firms are now automatically enrolled by their employer provided they are over the age of 22 and earn more than £10,000 a year.

This means that, as well as paying in themselves, their employer also makes a contribution to their financial future.

Figures show that only around 10% of people who are automatically enrolled are choosing to opt out, significantly fewer than was expected when the policy was first developed.

As a result the total amount that is expected to be saved each year by 2019/20 has been revised upwards to about £15Bn – more than a third more than the previous estimate of around £11Bn.

HR4UK:

All your pensions and auto-enrolment questions answered in one “How do I set up my company pension scheme to cover different types of employees and contracts?”

“Where do I start with auto-enrolment?”

“How will I know if my new pension scheme meets all the latest employment law requirements?”

Not sure where to start with pensions and auto-enrolment?

At HR4UK, we’re working with UKCG to make straightforward, high quality pensions and auto-enrolment set-up and management available to employers in the construction sector.

Call 01455 630700 or Email info@hr4uk.com to find out more

AUTUMN STATEMENT 2015: WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS? Following the much-anticipated Autumn Statement 2015, we look at the key issues it brings up for business-owners and their employees: APPRENTICESHIPS LEVY If apprentices form part of your workforce, you will want to know that from April 2017, an apprenticeship levy will be introduced. This will be set at 0.5% of an employer’s pay bill and will be paid via PAYE. Through the levy, each employer will receive an allowance of £15,000 to offset against their levy payment. The levy will only be paid on any pay bill over £3 million. According to the Chancellor, this means that fewer than 2% of employers will pay it. Employers who don’t pay the levy will be able to access government support for apprenticeships. The aim of the levy is to help ensure that big business supports the cost of training workers and to fund three million apprenticeships.

However, some business organisations see it as a new “payroll tax” and potentially a major cost for companies.

PENSIONS AUTOENROLMENT The Chancellor’s announcement about changes to pensions has been seen as one of the most significant changes covered in the Autumn Statement.

The planned increase in the minimum pensions contributions employers have to give their staff has been pushed back to April 2018 and 2019, instead of October 2017 and 2018. It is claimed that this has been done to simplify the administration of auto-enrolment for the smallest employers. The delay will save the government £390m in 201718 and £450m in 2018-19.

Travel and subsistence rules for workers employed through an intermediary The government will restrict tax relief for travel and subsistence expenses for workers engaged through an employment

intermediary, such as an umbrella company or a personal service company. This change will take effect from 6 April 2016. While the Chancellor did not cover the issue of reforms around IR35 and the use of personal service companies, this issue is still under consideration by HMRC. COMPANY CAR TAX Despite previous announcements that it would be withdrawn from April 2016, the 3 percentage point differential between diesel cars and petrol cars for calculating the benefit in kind value for a company car will be retained until April 2021. This could lead to some unpleasant surprises for employees who have a diesel car through their work, thanks to an unexpected additional tax liability of up to £400 per year from April 2016. The change, which means that diesel cars will remain 3% more expensive than their non-

If you have any questions about the issues outlined above, please call our team of expert HR advisors now on 01455 444222.

diesel equivalents for five more years, is anticipated to cost employers an additional £1.36bn.

CHILDCARE The Chancellor announced some changes to the eligibility conditions for the new tax-free childcare scheme coming into force in 2017. The upper income limit per parent will be lowered from £150,000 to £100,000 while the minimum income level per parent will increase from the equivalent of 8 hours to 16 hours at the national living wage. From 2017, 30 hours of free childcare will be available to families with three- and fouryear-olds where parents work more than 16 hours a week, with incomes of less than £100,000.

SALARY SACRIFICE While the Chancellor didn’t make any specific announcements

about changes to company salary sacrifice schemes, this is an issue about which the government ‘remains concerned’. However, it is currently in the process of gathering further evidence before deciding what to do. With this increasing focus in mind, it is important that employers take the time now to ensure that their salary sacrifice schemes are appropriate and compliant.

Sick and disabled workers A White Paper will be published in 2016 to set out reforms to improve support for people with health conditions and disabilities. This will include looking at the role of employers.

The Fit for Work scheme will also be extended. In addition, the Access to Work scheme will see an increase in spending to ensure that 25,000 more disabled people remain in work.

If you have any questions about the issues outlined above, please call our team of expert HR advisors now on 01455 444222.

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Digital Construction Week Review The first ever Digital Construction Week ran from 20-22 October 2015 and was attended by UK Construction Media. Here’s our review of the event.

The three-day event began with an evening reception held at the Irish Embassy in London where Head of BIM for the UK BIM Task Group, David Philp, addressed the gathered VIPs and spoke about the spirit of collaboration: “What is BIM about? I think if anything, it’s probably one of the biggest cultural changes we’ve made in a long time; it’s about bringing people together.

“We’re talking about unification, improving our industry; we’re talking about sector modernisation, efficiency reform, and probably at the heart of it is this thing called collaboration.”

David Hancock, Head of Construction at the Cabinet Office also spoke at the reception and talked of digital construction being a force for gender diversity and a greater BME presence within the construction industry.

In his welcome notes he said: “No matter what your profession or experience we want to bring everyone together to start thinking and sharing what digital means to you.”

After Tuesday night’s reception, the two-day exhibition and conference programme got underway at the Business Design Centre in London.

The Conference Running alongside the main exhibition, the two-day conference programme covered all the topics and issues one would expect from a gathering of the digital sector’s leading experts.

BIM guru David Philp kicked off the conference programme. What is immediately evident with David is his passion and enthusiasm for BIM and the digital pathway that the construction industry is on. This infectiousness, coupled with his vast knowledge, made him the ideal person to get the event underway.

He said: “The really exciting thing for me is that we will also enable a drive and improvement of gender diversity and BME involvement in construction industry by attracting individuals who have not previously considered our industry as attractive.”

In his opening, Mr Philp said that Digital Construction Week was about the digitisation of the construction industry and its journey from analogue to digital. He confirmed the government’s commitment to BIM and spoke of the involvement of the BIM Task Group continuing beyond 2016.

What was evidently clear from both these addresses was Digital Construction Week was about collaboration and bringing people together.

There followed an absorbing panel discussion on the future of the built environment and how digital technology is changing the face of the construction industry.

Director of Digital Construction Week, Oliver Hughes, described the event as “an evolution conference”.

The issue of collaboration for collaboration’s sake was discussed, with the consensus being that the sharing

of data and information should always be done with a purpose, otherwise there is a real danger of inefficiency.

David Philp commented: “Don’t do it for the sake of it. It’s about having a purpose and applying technology with a purpose.”

The conference panel took a variety of questions from the floor and social media, which opened up interesting lines of debate. One such question being the role of experienced people within a digitised construction industry.

Again, the sense of collaboration was evident in the answer: using the strengths of people and technology together, rather than it being a question of choosing between them.

The idea that digital can allow people and companies to do more with less was examined in the ‘Adopting a Digital Mind-set’ part of the conference programme. Given the looming shadow over the construction industry of the skills shortage, this was of particular interest and relevance.

Indeed, the skills shortage and the need to open the construction industry up to a more diverse range of people was a running theme throughout the programme.

‘Shaken & Stirred, the digital natives are coming’ gave a glimpse of the construction professionals of the future – the digital natives. Class of Your Own, providers of education programmes to schools and colleges, gave a group of 16 year olds the chance to demonstrate they could work with a BIM model for their James Bond 007 hotel. From the evidence on show, it would appear that Daniel Craig might not be the only

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THE OPPORTUNITIES FROM 4D SIMULATION As an emerging technology in the construction industry, 4D simulations enable the people involved in a project to gain an easy understanding of progress and the planned sequence of works by providing a visual representation of the project.

This visual approach is used in the tender stage, when representations prepared by multimedia teams are often used in Client presentations to help explain the Contractors plans.

Through our innovative new technology project teams can now realise the opportunity of connecting the Building Information Model (BIM) to the programme, an option that was previously constrained by the lack of available easy to use tools.

It is commonly accepted that about 10% of design and construction time can be saved by the use of BIM, 4D communication is part of the step change to realise and improve upon this opportunity. Wherever and whoever you are trying to communicate to, operatives at site inductions, directors at project reviews, visitors to site, or for your own purposes, the power of a visual representation, or indeed an interactive time-lined visual representation is immense.

Technology to date has not made it quick or easy for people to repeat the process of linking dates with objects in a model and enabling rapid re-sequencing, this is a critical downfall as activities are commonly amended and dates changed frequently during project delivery. This is caused because currently, a single model and a single programme are fused together for this one off exercise. This fusion is permanent, so when amendments are required the whole task needs repeating from scratch, wasting time and resource.

TRADITIONAL 4D TOOLS ARE TOO RESTRICTING TO MAKE THEM PRACTICAL IN THE DELIVERY PHASE The traditional way to link the 3D model to the project programme is to take individual activities and associate them with modelled components. Projects naturally range in size but a good size complex project can easily yield 10,000+ activities and tens of thousands of objects in the model. Currently the task of association is not for the faint hearted and will only be possible if your viewing software can handle the file size of the model in the first place. Once the model and programme are hard-wired, pushing another programme into the same model is generally not possible.

ACCESSING THE BIM AT A DATA LEVEL ENABLES NEW FASTER WAYS OF WORKING In BIM we know a lot about the object; we know what it is, its size, its location, potentially its cost and the labour associated with it. Indeed, in a data centric solution to BIM such as the Clearbox BIMXtra solution, all the associated information is held in a central data environment. This can be accessed readily by project stakeholders through a variety of interfaces within the system.

If the model is associated to the data in a data centric environment the connections, including those between programme and object, can be re-created at will. This is especially important when consultants update models as the re-association can take place with minimal effort. The BIMXtra process relies on its toolsets within the system to find the right objects to associate with the activities, as opposed to current solutions which require the manual adding and updating of codes in the model, which is a task that constantly causes frustration to the numerous people that need to participate to provide the output.

ASSOCIATE VIA A DATA CENTRIC PLATFORM TO ADD VALUE TO THE OUTCOME This approach of associating the model and programme within BIMXtra also allows all the material resources to be aggregated, by activity from the components that are automatically associated with the activities in the programme.

This aggregation of the material resources comes with the flexibility to associate cost and labour and allows all of these resources to be pushed back to the programme. In effect the association of the model and programme along with material, cost and labour resources can be updated within minutes, not the days or weeks currently required.

The flexibility and speed of this solution allows you to iterate 4D simulations quickly providing a simple repeatable process. It is this repeatability, combined with the effective association of an installation date for every component that allows the process to be completed quickly at regular intervals, perhaps even a few moments before the inevitable monthly progress meeting!

VISUALLY COMPARE VERSIONS OF PROGRAMMES With 4D simulation via the BIMXtra data centric approach taking place outside of the programme and/or the animated sequence, we are also able to run visual programme comparisons i.e. between planned and as built or comparison of different build solutions. This takes place at the same speed as the single programme association and provides valuable simulations and comparisons with minimal effort.

Our ability to associate and repeat, and then compare and repeat the association of model and programme in superfast time changes our ability to be able to use 4D visualisation on the main construction model. In so doing we enable better communication and more accurate association of the work scope including the most essential aspects of our project controls.

At Clearbox we have a unique blend of people, mixing people with many years of project delivery with software engineers to provide focussed technology solutions to overcome project delivery issues.

Our solution to provide 4D simulations is targeted to provide ease of use to those involved in project delivery, not limited to those with specialist training in CAD solutions.

It allows you to quickly develop and subsequently change and visualise build sequences with the objective of opening up the benefits to the whole project team, saving time and money in the development of the visualisations and the project delivery.

one to have to contend with a smart and a capable young gadget master.

There was also a discussion on the role of digital in terms of industry growth and what skills are needed to fulfil these ambitions. Again, the issue of the skills shortage is something that won’t go away for the construction industry. The panel felt that schools would benefit from more engagement from industry, with talented individuals benefiting from mentoring.

Highlights from day two of the conference programme included Andrew McNaughton, Technical Director on HS2, discussing the influence digital is having on the huge infrastructure project.

Ron Bakker, architect of ‘The World’s Smartest Building’ was also on hand to provide an insight into the future of design. The Edge can track everything form energy use to when vending machines need to be restocked. It is also capable of saving energy by shutting down parts of the building that are unoccupied to reduce costs of heating, cooling and lighting.

There were ample chances to meet with other like-minded people and companies, with networking breaks held throughout the two-day conference programme.

Seminar stages Away from the main conference area, the exhibition also hosted three seminar stages: the Main Stage Seminar & Technology Theatre, the BIM 4 Communities Village,

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and the BIM Ireland Pavilion.

The Main Stage Seminar & Technology Theatre provided two days of informative sessions, which included lectures and case studies, workshops, dropin clinics and interactive forums.

The BIM 4 Communities Village provided discussion on the challenges and benefits of adopting and implementing BIM.

Consulting Engineers of Ireland, Kevin Rudden spoke at Digital Construction Week’s reception and described how Ireland had become incentivised by the UK government’s decision to mandate BIM and also the country’s need to adopt the technology due to the huge amount of overseas investment, particularly the United States, that had demanded BIM on their projects.

For those BIM novices looking to get to grips with its implementation or even for an expert looking ahead to BIM Level 3, it also hosted dropin clinics after each session and provided an invaluable resource for discussion and to ask questions.

The BIM Ireland Pavilion provided the perfect showcase of the capability and technology available from a range of companies from Ireland.

He outlined CIC’s BIM vision, which was presented again at the BIM Ireland Pavilion: “The Construction Industry Council (CIC) in Ireland embraces a BIM enabled world. CIC actively encourages the Irish Construction Sector to continue to take full advantage of current and emerging information and communication technologies to remain at the forefront of the industry in Europe.

The CIC views BS1192, PAS1192 and BS8536 as important routes towards standardised BIM implementation.”

President of the Association of

From the panel discussions and

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keynote speeches, it was evident that professionals within Ireland’s construction industry are embracing BIM and ready to share their expertise across the globe.

The exhibitors The event’s exhibitors gave a fantastic opportunity to see the latest digital technology and how it could be applied within the construction industry. Over 70 businesses were represented, including many of the industries most familiar names such as Bentley, RPS, Union Square, Autodesk, Trimble, Asite, and Newforma, and offered visitors the chance to experience first hand some the latest technological developments that digital had to offer.

Technologies on show included BIM, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, wearables and laser scanning equipment.

For those uninitiated in the world of BIM and digital, the products being demonstrated was an eye opening journey as to what technology is capable of and how it can be applied to all manner of construction related tasks.

One of the first exhibitors you would see upon entering the venue is Hobs and their visionary render virtual wall.

This provided an immersive 3D view of buildings and space that could be explored and interacted with.

Soluis and their virtual reality dome was another stand that attracted people hoping to experience a virtual world, which they did via an Xbox controller.

This provided an immersive environment

that allowed users to walkthrough designs and garner a true sense of a project’s space. The benefits of this over more traditional plans were obvious.

Another stand out display came from HAL Robotics. The London-based robotic control specialists demonstrated ABB Robotic capabilities, giving a glimpse of the collaborative opportunities in the construction industry that the company are working towards.

UK Plant Operators, in association with Lynch, presented a potential solution to the skills shortage of plant operators.

The Tenstar training simulation with a fully working driving and operating environment allowed people to get behind the wheel and experience working an excavator. Safe to say, a number of major accidents were prevented by conducting demonstrations of this training in a virtual world!

FARO’s latest scanning equipment, the FARO Focus 3D Laser Scanner and the FARO Scanner Freestyle 3D, which can be used for creating point clouds and capturing 3D images. The benefits for those working in surveying, construction and civil engineering were clear and a great example of technology being used well.

MagiCAD’s exhibit gave the chance to see the MagiCAD for Revit software in action. The piece of kit for HVAC and electrical design allows for a BIM design to be filled with data in terms of product dimensions and performance.

Again, this level of information being immediately at hand, demonstrated a collaborative and streamlined

approach to a construction project.

Conclusion The digital construction industry was certainly well represented with all the main players present but it was also great to see some new faces in attendance.

The event succeeded in plotting the journey BIM had taken and what the future might bring. It was both informative and in-depth but penetrable enough for those attendees who weren’t directly involved in the digital industry.

One of the major aims of Digital Construction Week was to bring a sense of collaboration and sharing in order to understand how best to use the wonderful technical innovations within the industry. From speaking to exhibitors and visitors, many found it an excellent opportunity for networking and it was encouraging to see exhibitors mingling with each other and finding areas of common ground. There was definitely a sense of people striving to find the best use for digital technology and for it to be used cohesively with people, not to replace them.

There are already plans to run the event again next year in November. The organisers of Digital Construction Week have given themselves a strong platform to build on the successes of this year’s event and will hope to attract even more visitors and showcase a digital world beyond the BIM Level 2 mandate.

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Exclusive interview: David Philp, BIM Task Group David Philp,, MSC, BSC, FCIOB, FRICS, FICES, FGBC, is Head of BIM at the BIM Task Group and has spent time as Head of BIM Implementation at the Cabinet Office.

The Cabinet Offices BIM requirements are delivered through the Task Group and David is responsible for this.

This Group is the driving force in supporting and delivering the objectives of the Government Construction Strategy and the requirements to strengthen the public sector’s capability in BIM implementation.

In this exclusive interview, David Philp talks to UK Construction Media about his own journey and how BIM’s importance is continuing to grow.

Please could you give us some background as to your own career and what attracted you towards BIM? I graduated in the early 90s (engineering and project management) and then joined a leading infrastructure organisation (Balfour Beatty) as a graduate engineer.

I advanced through the Company, becoming Director of Technical Services and BIM Programme Director before leaving to join Mace as Head of BIM. I am also a Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University and visiting Professor at Middlesex University.

In 2011, I was seconded into the Cabinet Office’s construction team as Head of BIM Implementation for the Government’s Construction Strategy. I have continued this secondment with the BIM Task Group core BIM team (Head of BIM).

I have always enjoyed highlighting the potential of new technologies and how we interact with them to bring added value to the client and unlock new ways of working throughout the entire

life-cycle. I am passionate about our industry and perceived BIM as being a catalyst for reform and rebranding as a technologically advanced sector.

I was however initially attracted to BIM as an enabler of more integrated and concurrent working practices.

Level 2 BIM maturity in the Government pilot projects has in addition to a more for less agenda is achieving a whole range of additional benefits:

At what point in your career did you see BIM becoming as influential in the industry as it is and what steps did you take to make sure the companies you worked for got involved within this?

• Encourage collaborative working including early engagement of FM and Operation

It was in the noughties that BIM caught my interest though perhaps in a different guise than we recognise it today. I was lucky to be steered by some great folks such as Andrew Wolstenholme (CEO, Crossrail) and John Tocci (Tocci CEO) who showed me a vision of a more integrated industry powered by digital data.

Whilst BIM has been about for many years it was 2011 and the publication of the Government Construction Strategy that we really saw a tipping point in motion with clients looking to leverage the benefits of computer readable data. I think at this point we started to herald the beginnings of digitised construction sector.

Tell us a little bit more about BIM and how it would typically be better for projects than more traditional methods?

BIM has many definitions but essentially it is about the creation and management of digital data in our built environment, it allows the virtual production, analysis, evaluation and optimal development of an asset in a digital environment that mimics the understanding and behaviour of the solution to the realisation of that solution in reality.

• Improved stakeholder engagement and better decision making

• Visualisation, prototyping & lifecycle solution testing • Accurate and complete data improving quality of bids, reducing risk allowances in target prices and lump sum bids • 3D model input into the assessment of the impact changes at all stages in a project lifecycle • Input of a populated asset data set into CAFM systems – saving time and avoid duplication • Better outcomes for the end user How were projects undertaken before BIM became so prominent and what changes have been made?

Firstly we must recognise that the UK has a built environment sector to be proud of, one that is rich in heritage and has delivered many world class projects.

As our sector becomes more globalised we are having to compete on a new basis and need to ensure that we stay at the vanguard of efficiency and digitisation of our sector is a key enabler.

Smarter BIM-enabled procurement and operation is fundamental to this process ensuring clients are buying their information only once in a validated and co-ordinated form which they can reuse for many purposes.

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How are current BIM targets are being met, and how its influence on the industry is growing, along with that of new technologies....

You were Head of BIM Implementation at the Cabinet Office and now Head of BIM at the BIM Task Group. How did this come about and how do you drive projects within the industry?

I was interviewed for the position which was identified in the Government Construction Strategy.

I am proud to be part of a team working with industry and Government to leave a strong digital legacy. We help clients understand the purpose of the data (use) and how they best define this in a computational form, procure it and use it.

The Government has previously said that it wants BIM in public sector contracts by 2015/16. Are you still on target for this?

As set out in the Government Construction Strategy launched in 2011 the UK Government is aiming to achieve Level 2 BIM maturity on all centrally procured projects by 2016. Significant progress has been made with this and there are already just around £9.5Bn of public sector Level 2 BIM projects in the pipeline.

With the heavy lifting on the enabling processes and tools being almost complete I would say that Government is exactly where it should be at this stage of the programme.

How has the industry’s involvement of BIM increased over time? What are the numbers now to say, five years ago?

The UK’s ambitious BIM objectives and their centralised approach has been envied by many other nations – a client offering clear leadership in a switch to digital.

The Task Group programme has always been about working with industry and we are seeing significant increase in adoption; indeed a recent survey

by High Speed 2 noted that 56% of

organisations that responded now had leading projects that could be considered as Level 2 maturity.

Furthermore a 2014 Hill McGraw report said that the mandate had inspired 76% of organisations to initiate a specific BIM project with 66% encouraged to add BIM resources to their organisation.

What steps are being taken to ensure this target is met?

The departmental adoption pipeline is reviewed regularly along with a maturity index to ensure the Level 2 BIM is truly imbued within the Government organisation.

It is essential that the adoption is tested against the objectives set out in the original strategy such as: Valuable, Understandable, Nonproprietary, Competitive, Open and Verifiable. There is also a BIM Stewardship group with Departmental BIM Champions that are helping drive adoption within their portfolios.

Is it just public sector contracts or are there targets for other sectors?

The Government Construction Strategy and its associated mandates are limited to the central government departments.

However we are seeing a great uptake from local authority and private sector clients such as Great Portland Estates who are equally reporting a positive return in investment from BIM. How is the reputation of BIM spreading and what do you do to make this happen? What are the best methods to spread the message within the industry?

Clients group that is growing rapidly, allowing us the chance to share knowledge around consistently procuring Level 2 BIM services and data.

We also have our website www. bimtaskgroup.org and we like to tweet @BIMgcs. We also have a regular online newsletter to ensure we share latest developments in the programme and highlights what going on around the various BIM4 parishes.

Beyond the 2016 targets, how do you see BIM’s involvement in the industry?

Are there further targets set out?

The Industrial Strategy 2025 sets out a vision of an industry that is innovative and technologically advanced including the concept of a Digital Built Britain (essentially the shift to Level 3 BIM).

What does the future hold for BIM? Where do you see it going in terms of different sectors and companies?

As we move upwards from the solid foundation set by Level 2 we will start to address the functionality for delivery of operational data sets and integration of telemetry. Level 3 will address these in sector delivery and operational stages, with a focus on enabling total cost and carbon outputs.

This move towards real time and often open data, senor rich assets will see us partnering and learning more from other sectors out with construction, especially those that employ data science skills. I also see there being much more concurrent cycles in the design and construct process.

Good communication and knowledge share is really important to us.

Are any new technologies being developed that can improve the process further?

We have established with industry a series of BIM4 groups with CIOB acting as secretariat. These are communities of practice such as BIM4SME, BIM Regional Hubs that allow us a two-way communication conduit to and from the Task Group.

We have also recently formed a BIM4

We are already starting to see a convergence with lots of other technologies such as laser scanning and augmented reality. As we shift towards Level 3 maturity we will see more consideration of telemetry and other senor technologies to provide real time feedback from our assets.

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BIM THERE, DONE THAT BIM is widely regarded as an intelligent model-based process that helps to create, explore, manage and maintain design and construction data to improve decisionmaking and enhance productivity. One of the key benefits to using BIM services in your design and construction project is the reduction of errors, which in turn leads to more accurate expenditure on projects and a faster construction time.

But does using BIM give you the edge in the global market? The short answer is yes. With businesses across the world looking to increase the quality of their building projects, reduce costs and compete globally, incorporating BIM

services into your construction project is the way forward; whether you’re working on a shopping centre in Slough, a Disneyland Resort in China or an office block in the United Arab Emirates, BIM can help give your project the competitive edge.

For most economies across the globe, the construction industry is seen as a key contributor and enabler to the economic growth of that country. People will always need homes and key buildings such as schools, hospitals, prisons, shopping centres and hotels. The UK is no different in this; with many understanding that construction is often a useful way to

encourage and stimulate the growth of the national economy.

“One of the key benefits to using BIM services in your design and construction project is the reduction of errors, which in turn leads to more accurate expenditure on projects and a faster construction time.”

As more and more owners and developers require the integration of BIM services as a prequalification requirement for contractors as part of the tender process, BIM will continue to grow, leading to the positive spread of BIM experience and the benefits of this across the industry globally.

BIM is not altogether new but is a collaborative way of working, supported by integrated software and technology that makes building, project design and construction more efficient and helps to manage and maintain assets. Using data to create a unique three-dimensional computer generated model that is used for the effective management of information throughout a project lifecycle, from earliest concept, through to construction and finally operation.

We think BIM is a real game changer – of course it means a little extra work in the early days of BIM Compliance, but once the industry is all on the same

page, BIM will become second nature and we won’t know what we did without it!

The CAD Room have been working at the forefront of the industry offering BIM services on projects large and small, we think the advantages speak for themselves. Our team are highly experienced in multi service coordination, as well as pre fabrication of plantrooms and service modules for both corridors and risers. We become your outsource partner working with you and your BIM standards to achieve quality accurate drawings from approval stage through to completion.

If you are looking to take your first step towards a BIM future then we may be able to help you achieve your goals.

Grant Hood Managing Director The CAD Room Ltd Tel: 0161 427 0348 Grant.Hood@thecadroom.com www.thecadroom.com

Introducing the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM) On April 2, HSE published the new CDM 2015 Regulations and the accompanying L series guide. The guide explains what the law is seeking to achieve and what the regulations mean in practice for the various dutyholders, across all construction projects. This guide is supported by a series of industry guidance booklets, one for each dutyholder and one for workers. Written by industry groups representing the breadth of construction professionals, and hosted by CITB (Construction Industry Training Board), their focus is to provide practical advice on implementing the new legal requirements on smaller construction projects.

Both the L Series and industry guides can be freely downloaded from HSE and CITB websites. ´ Simplified The regulations provide a much more linear structure that represents the process of delivering a construction project from concept, through design and build to handover and future use of a structure. This approach provides greater clarity on the importance and influence that each dutyholder has on the way that construction hazard and risks are identified, reduced, controlled and managed, throughout a project.

A single set of requirements, applicable to all projects irrespective of size and duration. Unlike with CDM 2007 there is only one trigger

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point for additional action in the new regulations concerning only the client. ´ Commercial Clients Recognising the importance and influence a client has over the way a project is procured and delivered and the standards to which these are done, the regulations strengthen and broaden their responsibilities. The regulations encourage clients to actively lead construction projects, whilst recognising that their experience and abilities will be diverse.

The client is now responsible for making the arrangements by which the project will be managed and ensuring that those arrangements are maintained and reviewed throughout the life of the project.

Where there is or is likely to be more than one contractor working on a project, the client must appoint both a Principal Designer (PD) and a Principal Contractor (PC) at the earliest opportunity and before construction starts. The client is also responsible for taking ‘reasonable steps’ to ensure both the PD and PC comply with their duties, for providing pre construction information (PCI), ensuring the construction phase plan and health and safety file are produced and for ensuring the health and safety file is handed over to any new owner of the structure. ´ Domestic Clients Although the exemption for domestic

clients has been removed, the only responsibility placed upon them is to appoint the PC and PD, where there is more than one contractor. However, if this (as will be common practice) does not happen, the regulations automatically transfer the client duties to the contractor or principal contractor of a project.

In recognising that some domestic clients may have already established a relationship with their designer before they go ahead with construction, the regulations allow the designer to take on the client duties where there is a written agreement between the client and designer to do so. ´ Principal Designer This new role brings the function of planning, managing, monitoring and co-ordinating the design stage of the project, directly into the project team and under the control of a designer.

The PD will support the client in bringing together and providing the Pre Construction Information (PCI) and act as the conduit for disseminating that information to the various dutyholders who will need it at the right time.

This will be an ongoing responsibility throughout the life of the project.

The PD is responsible for ensuring the designers working on the project discharge the duties placed upon them as designers throughout their appointment. The role of the PD mirrors that of PC in the construction phase.

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WHAT’S NEW This role is not limited to the design stage before construction starts.

The PD will work together with the PC throughout the life of their appointment to ensure the health and safety implications of design aspects and later changes are properly considered, support the PC in drawing up the construction phase plan as well as developing the health and safety file and providing it to the client at the end of the project.

The regulations do recognise that in some projects the PD may not be contracted throughout the whole life of the project – especially when the design stage is complete and the construction phase is well advanced.

If, in this situation the PD is released from the project, then the responsibility for completing the health safety file and handing it to the client at the end of the project passes to the PC.

´ Notification

• Simplified structure to the regulations

The notification threshold for projects has changed. A project becomes notifiable where it lasts longer than 30 days AND has more than 20 workers, working simultaneously at any one point OR exceeds 500 person days.

• Clients responsibilities strengthened and broadened

Increasing the notification threshold will reduce the number of projects required to be notified significantly, and thus reduce the burden on business.

Notification is a stand-alone requirement and does not give rise to any additional duties.

• Removal of exemption for domestic clients • A new role of Principal Designer to co-ordinate the design stage • Removal of the role of CDM-C • Removal of notification as a trigger point for additional duties • Notification threshold includes worker numbers • Appointments threshold being where more than one contractor on a project • Removal of ‘competence’ requirement and replaced with ‘skills, knowledge, experience and training’ and ‘organisational capability’ • All construction projects require a construction phase plan (CPP)

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Construction (Design & Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM2015)

As the transitional provisions of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM2015) ended on 6th October 2015, ALL construction work must now fully comply with the duties and requirements of CDM2015.

APPLICATION OF CDM2015 The normally understood definition of construction of new build and major refurbishment work also applies to ongoing maintenance and repair of buildings, building services, utilities and other fixed plant and systems.

The following extract from Q&A Briefings – Construction Division - Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 further explains the Health and Safety Executive’s interpretation of what is construction.

Q1. Does CDM 2015 apply to all maintenance work?

The definition of maintenance work has not changed. If the task in hand looks like construction work, requires construction skills and uses

construction materials, it is construction work.

General maintenance of fixed plant which mainly involves mechanical adjustments, replacing parts or lubrication is unlikely to be construction work.

If the maintenance work is construction work, and there is only one contractor, no PC or PD appointment is required. If more contractors are brought in, then a PC and PD need to be appointed for that particular project.

All construction work under CDM 2015 requires planning, but the plan for smaller jobs should be simple, short and proportionate to the risks.

Example: Changing a lamp in a light fitting would not be construction, but repairing or replacing the light fitting would be construction.

CDM2015 applies to any construction work performed for both commercial and domestic clients, and is not dependent on the time taken for the work or the number of persons performing the work.

APPOINTMENTS & THE HEALTH & SAFETY FILE

CONSTRUCTION PHASE PLAN

The appointments of the principal designer (PD), the replacement for the CDM coordinator, and the principal contractor (PC), and the requirements for a health and safety file, only apply where the project may involve more than one contractor for the delivery of the project. A contractor is any organisation performing construction work, including the client’s personnel performing construction work, main contractors, specialist contractors and sub-contractors.

Under CDM2007 a construction phase plan was only required to be prepared and managed by the principal contractor on notifiable projects. CDM2015 requires all construction work to be performed under the control of a construction phase plan, not taking into account whether the project is notifiable or not, how long the project will take or how many people or contractors are involved or whether a principal contractor is appointed.

Note that the appointments and the health and safety file requirements were linked to the notification of the project under the previous version of the regulations (CDM2007), and that this is no longer the case. Linking these requirements to ‘more than one contractor’ means that the appointments and health and safety file are required for much smaller projects.

Example: Replacing the light fitting by a client employee (maintenance technician), with an electrical contractor employed to perform the electrical isolations and the work, would be two contractors and would require the appointment of a principal designer and principal contractor and the production of a health and safety file.

NOTIFICATIONS Notification of a construction project is now a stand-alone part of the regulations, and does not cause any other parts of the regulations to apply. These notifications are now required to be performed electronically, through the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website by the client, or on the client’s behalf.

Fewer notifications will now be required than were required under CDM2007, as the notification criteria now is that the construction phase(s) include 30 working days, and at some point more than 20 persons working or involve over 500 person days/shifts. The 20 persons is the changed requirement, and will result in fewer projects being notified.

Example: If the project involves 100 working days with an average of 4 persons working and at no time more than 20 persons working, the project is not notifiable.

Example: Replacing the light fitting by a client employee (maintenance technician, electrically qualified), without any other contractors involved will still require a construction phase plan to be produced by the client, who is also the contractor for this project.

ADDITIONAL CLIENT DUTIES CDM2015 places more significant duties on clients than were placed on them under CDM2007. The client is now much more involved in the health and safety management of projects and must ensure that the appointed principal designer and principal contractor are complying with their duties. The client must also ensure that the health and safety file is compliant with the regulations.

These additional requirements on clients have been imposed by CDM2015 whilst at the same time the client’s advisor under CDM2007 (CDM coordinator) has been removed. The principal designer does not have any duties to advise and assist the client with the client duties, except with regards to the pre-construction information.

The HSE have stated that this advice and assistance could be provided by the client’s health and safety advisor, required by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. The HSE have also stated that if that person or persons are not skilled, knowledgeable and experienced in construction health and safety management and CDM, or do not have the time and resources to provide this advice and assistance, the client could engage an external organisation to provide this service. These organisations are calling themselves CDM advisors or CDM consultants.

ADVICE, ASSISTANCE AND TRAINING If you need external advice and assistance you should talk to Callsafe Services Limited, who provide these services, also being appointed as principal designer and CDM advisor by our clients. We also offer both accredited and non-accredited training in the requirements of the CDM2015. See our advert on the outside back cover.

Callsafe Services Limited, Yardley House, 11 Horsefair, Rugeley, Staffordshire. WS15 2EJ Tel: 01889 577701 Email: enquiries@callsafe-services.co.uk Web: www.callsafe-services.co.uk

´ Removal of ‘competence’ ‘Competence’, is a term that has no minimum standard of compliance, is widely misunderstood, and unhelpfully applied to both individuals and organisations - giving rise to unintended bureaucracy, without necessarily improving the development of a competent workforce in all sectors of construction.

To address some of these issues and to make the delivery of a competent workforce clearer for dutyholders, the new regulations have disentangled ‘competence’ into its component parts of ‘skills, knowledge, training and experience (SKTE)’, and where it refers to an organisation, ‘organisational capability’.

The new regulations focus attention on the work that individuals and organisations are appointed to undertake and require that those appointed have the necessary

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skills, knowledge and experience to deliver that work effectively and safely – each and every day.

It’s therefore incumbent upon anybody appointing a contractor or designer (including PD and PC) to ensure they have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience, before they are appointed.

The regulations also provide flexibility for those employing and appointing site workers, by requiring that those employed or appointed either have or are obtaining the necessary SKTE for the task in hand. By requiring contractors to provide adequate supervision for all workers under their control, the regulations allow workers to develop site skills without being put at risk or putting themselves and others at risk. ´ The Construction Phase Plan All construction projects will now require a construction phase plan

(CPP) – irrespective of size and duration. The purpose of this provision is to focus those undertaking even the smallest of projects (including domestic work) on the planning of the project and ensure associated risk is considered and controlled.

The plan should be proportionate to the scale of the job and the health and safety risks involved. Plans involving smaller, less risky jobs should be short and simple and should require no further consideration than is already required for well-managed activities.

To help small construction businesses complete these plans without additional burden, HSE has produced a simple template. The template CPP is available from the HSE website and includes the necessary information to allow businesses to plan their work and consider risks quickly and efficiently.

Additionally HSE and CITB have

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developed a smartphone app, freely available to download form the CITB website, which allows the construction phase plan to be completed within a few minutes without any paper form filling. This app is designed for small businesses undertaking routine construction projects. Once the relevant construction activities are input – the app identifies the common health and safety risks automatically, and the control measures that should be followed.

The plan is automatically generated and can be saved or emailed to others such as clients and other contractors. ´ HSE encourages all small building firms to adopt this approach.

Does maintenance work need a Construction Phase Plan The definition of construction work has not changed and dutyholders still need to make a sensible judgement as to whether CDM 2015 applies to activities such as maintenance. For example, where the activities involve general maintenance of fixed plant involving mechanical adjustments, replacing parts or lubrication it continues to be unlikely to be construction work and CDM 2015 will not apply.

However, where the task in hand looks like building work, requires construction skills and uses construction materials, CDM 2015 is likely to apply. In this case, the job will need planning. A practical and proportionate construction phase plan, which highlights the real risks of the work, should be prepared and kept up-to-date. ´

What should designers and contractors be saying to clients (domestic, inexperienced or otherwise)

A designer can take many guises from an architect, technician or technologist through to the specific designer disciplines of structural, civil, electrical and the like.

Moreover, any other discipline (including contractors) preparing or modifying a design, or arranging or instructing another under their control to do so, is a designer.

Irrespective of the role, the duties on the designer remain the same. Primarily, their

first obligation will be to ensure before they start any design work that the client is aware of their obligations under CDM. Designers’ responsibilities differ little in this respect from that conferred on them by CDM 2007. A designer should have sufficient knowledge of the client’s obligations in order to be able to assess their knowledge and advise them of their role. Advising the client of their obligations is a routine matter that will be part of any early discussions about the project.

The regulations do not specify any one method by which designers will discharge this responsibility and indeed it will be on a case by case basis.

Many designers have in the past, used a standard letter format to the client and this may well continue to be a sensible approach. In the smallest of commercial projects, this may prove a useful method, but it may be that verbal advice and assurance is enough. It is often helpful for a designer to have some mechanism to record that they have discussed and advised the client on this issue – but any such mechanism should minimise bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. ´ Messages for contractors and domestic clients Most importantly, the regulations do not seek to make the lives of contractors more difficult. By passing the client responsibilities to the Principal Contractor or contractor in control of the project or the designer if the domestic client so wishes, the current position for domestic projects changes little.

TOP TIPS 1 Read the industry guides – they are a great help 2 Download the CITB smartphone CPP app and use it.

3 Make sure work is planned in a sensible and proportionate way 4 Concentrate on the real risks involved with construction work 5 Be aware of your possible role as a client in domestic projects 6 Use the HSE CDM 2015 website – it has all the information you need for free 7

Remember – HSE does not expect contractors to be health and safety officers – they want you to work safely.

8 Contractors and designers need to communicate and help each other in deliverin a successful project

The new regulations intend to support small business in improving health and safety standards on sites where incident rates are high. It is not the intention to increase bureaucracy or cost – quite the opposite. By providing clear guidance through the industry guides for principal contractors and contractors and supporting that guidance with the template CPP and smartphone app, HSE believes that small construction projects can be delivered to a higher standard of health and safety and thus cost effectiveness with minimal extra work on the part of business.

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CDM 2015: How will the changes affect the Construction Industry?

The new Construction (Design and Management) Regulations brought in at the start of April this year look set to introduce a number of changes to the industry when the transitional period is complete in October 2015. Here, Safety Equipment Suppliers, Manchester Safety, highlight how the construction industry will be affected by the changes.

´ Appointment of Principle Contractor and Principle Designer

´ Definition of the Client

Reduced Health and Safety Bureaucracy

The new regulations have slightly realigned which parties can fall under the title of ‘Client’. The new regulations determine that all clients who are receiving construction work which does not further their business interests should be referred to as a ‘Domestic Client’. This brings the rights and responsibilities of nonprofit organisations and charities in line with homeowners rather than for-profit business owners.

The new regulations have been designed to try and reduce the bureaucracy attached to health and safety rules.

Streamlining the process – the HSE hopes the new regulations will reduce the drain on funds and time.

Definition of Pre-Construction Phase The redefined pre-construction phase can now overlap with the construction phase – extending until all design and preparatory or design work is completed. ´ Increased Client Duties The CDM 2015 has increased the responsibilities and duties of the client. The client is now responsible for ensuring suitable arrangements for the management of the project are completed. The client must also ensure that a contractor has drawn up a suitable and substantial construction phase plan.

The new regulations also dictate that the client must ensure that the principle designer has prepared a sufficient health and safety file for the project.

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CDM 2015 also includes more clearly defined regulations for appointing the principle contractor and principle director – necessitating the latter is appointed at the very beginning of all design work, including feasibility.

Paul Manchester, Director of Manchester Safety Services, adds: “The new CDM emphasises the importance of genuine safety on construction sites without compromising the quality and accuracy of the reporting.” ´ Construction Phase Planning The new regulations clearly dictate that the principle designer must assist the principle contractor in the preparation of the construction phase plan. The principle designer must also prepare the project’s health and safety file as the job progresses. However, if the principle designer does not continue until the end of the project, the principle contractor assumes this responsibility.

The principle contractor must liaise with the principle designer throughout the duration of the project – keeping the latter abreast of planning and management of the job.

´ Detailed Risks The new regulations have specified additional risk concerns which must be considered by the principle contractor when developing the construction plan. The new risks specified include burial under earth falls, engulfment in swampland, risk of drowning and falling from a height.

Additionally, the regulations stress the importance of health monitoring on sites which potentially put workers at risk of contamination from chemical or biological substances.

The new regulations have also been designed to protect workers who are working near high voltage power lines, in compressed air atmospheres and in wells, underground or in tunnels. ´ Existing Projects Projects which were not notifiable under the previous CDM and no principle contractor has been appointed, must appoint a principle contractor as soon as practicable after 6th April. The newlyappointed principle contractor must then produce a construction phase plan and a health and safety file.

If the principle contractor has been appointed but the project is due to be completed before the transitional implementation stage concludes on 6th October 2015, there is no requirement to appoint a principle designer. However, if the project is due to continue past this date, a client must appoint a principle designer. If the client does not appoint a principle designer, they will assume all the latter’s responsibilities.

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What work does CDM2015 apply to?

David Carr, Managing Director of Callsafe Limited CDM2015 applies to ALL construction work, no matter who the client is, how long the work will take or how many workers will be involved, including where the work is performed by client employees.

The definitions of construction contained within CDM2015 regulation 2(1) most relevant to facilities management are: “construction work” means the carrying out of any building, civil engineering or engineering construction work and includes— (a) the construction, alteration, conversion, fitting out, commissioning, renovation, repair, upkeep, redecoration or other maintenance (including cleaning which involves the use of water or an abrasive at high pressure or the use of corrosive or toxic substances), decommissioning, demolition or dismantling of a structure; (e) the installation, commissioning, maintenance, repair or removal of mechanical, electrical, gas, compressed air, hydraulic, telecommunications, computer or similar services which are normally fixed within or to a structure, To remove any doubt as to whether CDM2015 applies to the work, regulation 2(1) also contains the definition of a structure, as follows: “structure” means— any building, timber, masonry, metal or reinforced concrete structure, railway line or siding, tramway line, dock, harbour, inland navigation, tunnel, shaft, bridge, viaduct, waterworks, reservoir, pipe or pipe-line, cable, aqueduct, sewer, sewage works, gasholder, road, airfield, sea defence works, river works, drainage works, earthworks, lagoon, dam, wall, caisson, mast, tower, pylon, underground

tank, earth retaining structure or structure designed to preserve or alter any natural feature, and fixed plant; any structure similar to anything specified in paragraph (a); any formwork, falsework, scaffold or other structure designed or used to provide support or means of access during construction work, and any reference to a structure includes part of a structure; This extends the normally understood definition of construction from new build and major refurbishment work to ongoing maintenance and repair of buildings, building services and other fixed plant and systems The majority of the CDM2015 regulations apply to all construction work, including the preparation of a “construction phase plan” by the contractor.

The following extract from Q&A Briefings – Construction Division – Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 further explains the Health and Safety Executive’s interpretation of what is construction. ´ Does CDM 2015 apply to all maintenance work?

The definition of maintenance work has not changed. If the task in hand looks like construction work, requires construction skills and uses construction materials, it is construction work. General maintenance of fixed plant which mainly involves mechanical adjustments, replacing parts or lubrication is unlikely to be construction work… e.g. changing a lamp in a light fitting would not be construction, but repairing or replacing the light fitting would be construction.

´ How to manage maintenance and repair tasks CDM2015 requires the client to provide information regarding the project, site and other relevant issues to the designers and contractors on all projects (tasks/jobs). This information will be included within the ‘pre-construction information’. This will include where the contractor can park his vehicle and store materials, what welfare facilities are provided and existing rules and procedures.

The contractor must produce a ‘construction phase plan’ for all construction work; and the client has a duty to ensure that it is produced and used.

The pre-construction information has always been required to be supplied, but it would be useful to have some evidence of this. The construction phase plan is a new requirement on the smaller jobs; under CDM2007 it was only required on notifiable projects.

These documents do not need to be overly complex, as can been seen from the above example, produced

by Callsafe Services Limited for the Facilities Manager of an office complex.

It should be noted that the requirements placed on the client with regards to the pre-construction information and the construction phase plan are only two of the duties placed on the client, and therefore the Facilities Manager.

If you have any questions on CDM2015, then please do not hesitate to contact Dave Carr on: 01889 577701 or email enquiries@callsafe-services.co.uk Visit his website at: www.callsafe-services.co.uk

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The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) CIBSE is the prime source of expertise in the building services industry, giving advice to its 20,000 members.

UK Construction Media spoke to Professor Tim Dwyer, Teaching Fellow, UCL for Environmental Design and Engineering Member of CIBSE BIM Task Group, and Michelle Perry, Key Account Manager for Trox UK Ltd, Vice Chair of the PDT Group and member of CIBSE BIM Task Group. They shared their thoughts on the work CIBSE is undertaking to raise BIM awareness and the importance of Product Data Templates (PDTs) for the industry.

It is the fact that members can benefit from a wide range of information that means CIBSE is ideally placed to advise on all matters relating to BIM. BIM is something that CIBSE has been involved with for many years and all work supports BIM and the activities of members in the building industry.

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) is a membership-based organisation that has been around for many years.

This support is focused, which is an important difference from many other organisations and CIBSE is able to inform its members in a variety of ways.

In its current form, CIBSE has existed since 1976 and has more than 20,000 members comprising of not only building services engineers, but consultants, lighting firms, those involved in operations maintenance and facilities management.

Any industry developments, technological advancements can be relayed through the CIBSE Journals, conferences and exhibitions, and regarding BIM, a CIBSE spokesperson explained: “We’re trying to signpost the engineers working in our sectors about what the possibilities are and where they can go forward with BIM.

This professional body exists to ‘support the science, art and practice of building services by engineering, by providing our members and the public with first class information and education services and promoting the spirit of fellowship which guides our work’.

Members belong to a global network of professional support and expertise, with a full programme of meetings and events each year offering hundreds of opportunities for members to meet and learn from colleagues and experts to explore

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new ideas and take part in Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

“We give them the tools to really make a difference, but then also make sure we are collaborating with other bodies, the Government, other institutions and trade associations to make sure we’re in a good central position to get that information so that we can share it with our members and understand what’s going on.”

The collaboration is crucial because so many different companies in different sectors need the information.

Tim explained: “Building services is very much a multi-disciplinary activity and relies on being interdisciplinary so there’s a need for the management of information.”

The value that CIBSE can add to BIM is because of its expertise across many sectors, meaning information can be disseminated and sent back out to members.

The previously mentioned conference and exhibitions have a wide reach.

There are also annual awards - a big event that gives CIBSE a chance to show the industry what real exemplar projects are and what is being achieved within the industry.

When the 20,000 specialist interest groups are added to the membership, it is clear that CIBSE has a wide reach and through its forms of communication, can put information out to the industry.

´ CIBSE BIM Group

Informally, CIBSE has been involved in BIM for many years through the discipline of information, which is core to all activities. But in a formal sense, it has been four years, when the CIBSE BIM Group was established.

The Group meets once a month and consists of members from consultants, commissioning to manufacturers and main contractors so the level of information is spread across a variety of sectors.

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The Group has subcommittees that meet on an informal basis, with break-out groups also sitting to look at a number of issues such as current industry standards.

Tim said it was important that the mix of people involved in this were varied and eclectic enough to represent the whole industry.

He said: “It truly is a cross-industry group of people on the BIM Group, moving through the ideas that will help solve future problems of information management as well as meeting the needs of the Government and various standards.

“The Group has acted as a great catalyst for action within CIBSE.” Actively linked with the work of the BIM Task Group, the CIBSE BIM Group has run annual surveys so that the opinion of members can be canvassed in order to give an idea of what the industry wants from BIM and where it is going.

The results of the latest survey, which was conducted last year, showed BIM moving forward in the building services sector faster than others,

and those who took the survey felt that information they have been given has continued to improve when compared to previous years.

These are particularly encouraging results given that of those that responded, approximately 75% were have been involved in BIM projects.

Distributed through CIBSE Journal and Twitter, the two groups who responded in the greatest numbers to the CIBSE BIM Survey were consultants and manufacturers, and it is the latter group who are looking to the Organisation for help.

Michelle explained the reason for this is because they are ‘always at the bottom of the trail’.

She said: “Clients, projects and the Government drive things from the top through main contractors and consultants, who have to gear themselves up a lot sooner.

“Manufacturers are holding back because they’re not going to get paid additional money for doing this, so they wait to see which way the industry is adapting instead of

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implementing things and having to change it because obviously with the recession and the way industry has been for a while, money and resources have been tight so it’s about getting the message to the manufacturers and removing the fear factor.”

The way in which this fear factor is being stripped away can be explained through the two key initiatives put in place by the CIBSE BIM Group; Product Data Templates (PDTs) and the creation of www.BIMTalk.co.uk - a non-partisan, impartial website that allows people to find out a little bit about BIM.

´ BIMTalk.co.uk

Created three years ago, this popular website is widely used in the industry and boasts a full glossary so that people can find out what all terms used actually mean.

It is invaluable as that in itself can be a minefield and this website is key in making sure CIBSE members as well as other users from the building industry can understand what is going on with regards to BIM. All the results from the CIBSE BIM Group’s annual surveys are posted here, and so much more useful information is available such as other websites, case study examples, and sections about BIM standards and processes.

More than anything though, the CIBSE BIM Group created BIMTalk because there was a need for a site that had the sole purpose of enriching the knowledge of its members.

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Tim explained: “The reason we did it is there are loads of BIM web pages but as soon as you start looking at the information, you find it is partial, which is frustrating.

“We are dedicated to keeping this up to date so we put standards on there so people can read about whatever is of current interest.

“What we’re hoping to do is continually update links to other sites so people can find their way through to good, useful information.

“If we find case studies of interest that help people move through the jungle of BIM, we put them up there so people don’t have to trawl through journal sites.

We think it’s an important resource and other people do as well because we’ve heard good reports about it.”

´ PDTs Along with the BIMTalk website, the other major activity is the PDTs. It came about as a way that the industry could move BIM forward and provide quality product information into the chain from the beginning of a project.

The idea of a CIBSE BIM Object Library was suggested but this is not a unique idea and the PDT is an open standard to help manufacturers and not for any type of commercial use.

Formats such as COBie digital information and even German formats were investigated to make sure that the best ideas could be distilled into something that could answer product-

specific questions required by COBie. PDTs are adopted as a standard product questionnaire that manufacturers have to complete just once for each of their products, serving the needs of all people, products and services.

Michelle explained the benefits of the PDTs, saying that as well as ensuring manufacturers only have to input data once, the fact that it is inputted in Excel allows ‘consistent transfer of information’.

She said: “We’re promoting it as one common format for all stakeholders so you don’t have to produce the information in 10 different ways for 10 different companies, to suit 10 different softwares.

“It is in Excel which is readily usable for everybody and is adaptable into every kind of software out there.

“What I’m finding is when you put this information in, some of the software out there at the minute can’t deal with the amount of information so for us going down the route of Excel, it keeps it simple, as well as quality of information and consistent transfer of information.”

PDTs do not need much commercial input or new software in order to be updated. Instead, information is added onto them as and when new requirements become available.

Once the PDTs are completed, this produces a Product Data Sheet (PDS), which is essentially the answer to the questionnaire. The PDTs allow the manufacturers to introduce their products to BIM, providing

This gives a digital description of everybody’s product and as a project evolves, it allows the PDS to be developed in order to add more information to get to the project specific stages.

As a result, the project and industry doesn’t have to set the manufacturer from the beginning of the process and instead can compare and when ready, and information can be added on so that a project flows all the way through its lifecycle.

The PDS put all of a manufacturer’s information in one place on a spreadsheet, with links that will take the prospective user to the manufacturer’s website.

In the past, all this information would be in literature, books and various other papers. Now, it is all readily available in a spreadsheet so a user can compare different types of a similar product at one time because they’re in the same format of data.

This is much more convenient than having to look at three different forms of data.

Michelle explains how this encourages people to work in the same format: “You’ve got to be able to compare things and this is only aiding that. It will make things simpler because it doesn’t matter if you’re looking at manufacturers’ literature or consultants’ schedule.

“For some reason everyone wants to make them a little different but it’s got the exact same information in there.

“So this really does simplify things.”

Another area where the PDTs will show their value is by ensuring that information is not lost at various stages of a project.

Previously, there have been occasions where information goes missing when it is handed over as a project progresses. But with the PDT information, the equipment needed can be listed, negating the need to search back through years of information to find a piece of equipment and contact details for it.

information only has to be produced once rather than for every aspect of a project is a major benefit to everyone.

Tim also said that the need to meet the Government’s Level 2 BIM standard was also a driver behind the PDTs, which addressed ‘a gap in BIM provision’.

He said: “It was really a case of seeing where there’s a real gap in the BIM provision and that’s what created the impetus and project for the PDTs.” CIBSE is working closely with trade associations so that there is a route into manufacturers, whose input into the initiatives such as PDTs are absolutely crucial to them being successful.

Fundamentally, the PDTs are a way of the industry shaping what it needs along with its requirements, rather than other sectors or software providers doing that. ´ Future challenges BIM is an emerging technology that is not going to stop at Level 2 - the 2016 requirement. Software and demand will develop, and BIM is critical to the future profitability of companies all over the country, which will be enabled through good quality, speedily generated information.

Lots of progress has been made to ensure this happens. The PDTs are designed to enable information to be shared quickly and readily, benefiting the likes of manufacturers in the process.

But despite the positives, Tim and Michelle appreciate that more can be done to improve the process.

Collaboration is key to this because BIM has to work across the whole supply chain and lifecycle of a building.

Therefore it’s vital that everybody across a project, from architects and engineers to operators are in communication and feeding in the information.

Inevitably, this makes the whole process smoother for the transfer of information.

At CIBSE’s annual conference in November, RIBA President, Stephen Hodder, used collaboration within BIM as his key theme and said the institutions need to embrace this while finding out what members need to feed this information downwards to show where the industry and BIM are going.

The PDTs can answer all requirements about standards and what the industry wants to achieve, and the fact the

It is a theme that Tim echoed, saying: “We need more openness than what a lot of people are willing to

give. It has been a real challenge in some parts of the world to get the information shared because people are so precious about their work and what their designs are worth.

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lifelong access to information.

“So there’s been some reticence in fully sharing the designs.”

Another reoccurring theme is the pace at which software is developing and the way it can and maybe should be used to bring about savings.

The latter point is not an easy one to find a solution for, as many companies use different software for each stage of a project.

For example, an architect will produce a model of a building for a project, but when this go to the engineers, information will be reinputted and another model created.

This process can happen all along the project, which increases the chances of mistakes being made.

BIM should eventually tie this together but there is a need to work together and use the same software, which will save money.

Michelle said: “Going forward, that’s where the biggest saving financially will be in the industry. If we can have a model that is adopted by the entire team from inception, right through the full life of the project and you don’t have to re-draw at every step, it’s a bit smoother instead of starting from scratch.

“That will save so much time and so much money for people.”

Finding software that can handle so much information being put into one model is key to all of this. As it stands, the level of detail required by each person cannot be put into one model without it falling over.

Tim and Michelle have both spoken to various software houses and reasons for this range from lack of money to invest to reasons like the companies possibly getting too comfortable.

It is a challenge to move this forward in future, without doubt. But CIBSE is committed to raising awareness, with the likes of BIMTalk, its surveys, and PDTs. Going forward, it will undoubtedly lead to more knowledge for the betterment of the building services.

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Internet Anywhere Ltd Olympic Business Park, Unit 2D, Drybridge Road, Ayrshire KA2 9BE T 0800 668 1288 W www.internetanywhere.co.uk

Networks for the next generation The UK’s rail industry is undergoing a series of crucial signalling and telecoms upgrades which provide future substantial opportunities for the UK’s construction sector. Mike Hewitt, Head of Next Generation Networks at ADComms, explains Our railways are undergoing an almost unprecedented period of technological growth and change thanks to a series of vital signalling and telecoms upgrades.

This investment will deliver a robust and cost effective network infrastructure, and further cement the UK’s standing as a world-class hub for rail innovation and development. The opportunities these projects create for the rail industry and indeed the construction sector as a supporting body are of a scale not seen for decades. A number of key upgrades underpin these improvements.

FTNx – network of the future Network Rail, which owns and operates the UK’s rail infrastructure, will soon go live with an IP (internet protocol) upgrade known as FTNx (Fixed Telecom Network). This carrier class IP/MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) network will deliver a transport layer for all network services, regardless of type. This must deliver a secure resilient structure that will support the transformation of the UK’s signalling network.

FTNx is essential to progressing the operational capability of our railways. Network Rail’s multi-million build commitment also includes a signalling infrastructure upgrade to European Train Control System (ETCS) and the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS).

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The upgrade could yield a number of important safety benefits for the rail and construction workers involved.

The ability to link to consumer devices could lead workers to sport wearable technology so they can be alerted to the arrival of an oncoming train, Network Rail has already proposed. Workers will also be able to operate more smartly and safely through the use of internet enabled devices. Data delivery used to analyse conditions, predict events and generate information remotely could also save having engineers out trackside in a dangerous environment.

The challenge is balancing this implementation of new technologies, while continuing to support our railways’ existing services and safety systems.

This will enable the monitoring of millions of sensors and devices, both connected and wireless, across our railways and bring benefits from data acquisition and analytics to improve the reliability of the network through predictive preventative maintenance. FTNx is far more than a mere network upgrade - it is the catalyst for an evolution in network technologies.

With this project, Network Rail is rising to the challenge of bringing our Victorian infrastructure into the 21st century.

Improved connectivity for passengers is guaranteed, as is greater flexibility as to when and where we travel as

capacity increases. The role that technology focused organisations will play in this transformation is key to the successful delivery of modern infrastructure, as integration of advanced technologies is critical.

At ADComms, we have demonstrated how successful a collaborative approach can be across a series of vital telecoms and signalling upgrades. For example, we were recently tasked by Network Rail to design and install a new ‘leaky feeder’ solution to support the installation of crucial GSM-R technology as part of a Merseyrail signalling and telecoms upgrade. This replaced Network Rail’s existing wireless communication system within the tunnel structure beneath Liverpool.

We are now working on a new project to install GSM-R coverage across Heathrow Airport’s rail tunnel infrastructure. This will see us working to install the latest phase one of the UK’s ETCS compliant systems. The introduction of Crossrail services through to Heathrow Airport will rely on this upgrade to meet rising demand to provide ten trains every hour on the stretched Great Western Main Line.

As an enabler for Crossrail, the project will contribute towards massively

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Let Time Lapse Movie Company create a truly powerful marketing tool for your company.

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UKC COMMENT

The future of security Based in Sunderland, Hadrian technology provide HD-CCTV across the UK and Ireland, supplying and installing high quality CCTV systems for both commercial and domestic clients.

In an exclusive interview with Gary Trotter, General Manager at Hadrian Technology, we find out how the industry is changing and the importance of CCTV. Can you provide a brief overview of the company and what services you provide?

When it comes to CCTV, Hadrian Technology are one of the UK’s leading security supply, installation and maintenance companies, specialising in ultra high-definition IP surveillance, recording and advanced digital alerts.

We are also one of the biggest suppliers and installers of Hi Definition Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI) systems, which may sound complicated, but the result is ‘crystal clear’ image quality.

There are many benefits to working with ultra High Definition footage- it removes ambiguity and uncertainty associated with lower quality systems.

Think of 4K HD televisions currently being advertised; our cameras capture nearly double that level of detail. Being digital, these systems allow you to track, trace and receive alerts to any unusual, unauthorised, or suspicious behaviour 24/7 anywhere in the world.

What are the names of the founding partners?

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Hadrian Technology was founded by Managing Director, Stuart Ferguson and I. We have known each other for years alongside our Business Development Manager, Chris Stott. We are very proud to have seen Hadrian Technology grow from a business idea dreamt up over a pint in the pub, to recently being recognised as ‘Business of the Year’ at one of the North East’s biggest regional business awards.

How big is your work force?

Our core management team consist of ten, supported by an international network of 25 installers and time served specialist partners.

What are your services primarily aimed at? Do you specialise in a specific sector?

Our services are primarily aimed at those who specify and are responsible for insurance and security within the businesses we serve. Although our projects and clients span a diverse range of sectors, we specialise in large construction projects, from distribution centres and depots, to hotels, offices

and major leisure developments.

Are there any recent projects, products or initiatives that you would like to highlight?

I am particularly proud of our relationship with leading international supermarket chain Aldi. Over 15 years ago we were asked to install a small number of CCTV cameras to one of their North East stores. Since then we have continued to work closely with the supermarket and the benefits of our security solutions have been so effective Aldi have appointed us to provide them with advanced CCTV systems right across the UK and Ireland.

Our work has even led us to working on a very interesting project for Aldi- a ‘hotel’ for half a million honey bees.

Aldi built the insect observation hive as an interesting feature for staff and visitors, who were able to watch 500,000 busy bees flying in and out of the hives on a giant screen in the retailer’s reception area.

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Unlocking regional economic growth through infrastructure investment Sue Kershaw, Director of Rail for Europe, CH2M

The UK is home to one of the world’s most economically and culturally advanced cities in the world yet many of its urban areas outside of London are failing to achieve their growth potential.

Global growth is increasingly driven by cities, with a study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute highlighting that just 600 urban centres generate around 60% of global GDP. In the UK, however, relatively few northern cities are at the forefront of economic growth. London contributed over half of the net jobs created in cities from 2004 to 2013, and almost 85% of the net increase in private sector jobs in cities in the same period.

A key driver for unlocking regional economic growth is investment in infrastructure. Although we have seen increased political commitment in recent years for investing in transport infrastructure, northern cities in the UK are still lagging behind London and the South East when it comes to this, particularly in rail services.

A recent report by think-tank IPPR North found that the Government had invested just £263 per head in rail infrastructure in the North East in 201415, compared with £3,100 in London.

It is the role of major programmes such as HS2 and the wider Northern Powerhouse agenda to create this shift and help bridge the North-South divide when it comes to transport connectivity.

The HS2 ‘engine for growth’ tagline is therefore not just a bold statement, but

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also a confident prediction of what high speed rail investment can do for the UK, and particularly the North. Phase I of the programme will build much needed capacity into our rail network, providing a major boost to Birmingham in the process, whilst Phase II will act as the real ‘engine for growth’ to our northern towns and cities. By creating high-speed rail links between the West Midlands and both Manchester and Leeds, HS2 will act as the spine of a wider northern transport network enabling better connectivity between the region’s core economic hubs. Better connectivity and quicker journeys between the North’s many mid-sized cities will create a metropolitan area comparable in size to the capital and open up the area to much greater investment opportunities. The Northern Hub rail programme in itself is expected to allow 700 more trains to run each day in the North of England by 2019 which will bring over £4Bn of wider economic benefits to the region.

capacity continue in the wake of the Davies Commission report published in July. Although more capacity is required in the South of England there is still scope for better use of international airports such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham - just 70 minutes from London - which have available capacity and scope to bring more travellers into and out of the UK.

Although rail investment contributes a major part of infrastructure spend one should not forget about the significance of other modes of transport in the wider debate. Following the Budget announcement in July this year to triple highways investment between now and 2020-21, it is clear to see the role that the Chancellor feels road connectivity has in creating better inter-city links and developing northern economies.

There is also the case for improved regional airport investment as the discussions over south east aviation

As we watch the regional devolution agenda unfold and more city regions gaining control over their transport spending we will begin to see how major projects pave the way for improved multi-modal transport networks to unlock economic growth. It is only by combining measures like these with the efficient development and delivery of transformational infrastructure projects like HS2 or the Northern Hub that we can help the North grow and begin rebalancing the UK.

Today infrastructure is seen as a way of not only connecting communities but also unlocking regional growth. However, it is not enough to simply replicate the investment in world-class infrastructure that has provided the platform for London’s unparalleled growth. We must also capture the experience and examples of best practice learned from major London projects such as the Olympics and Crossrail, perhaps the most important of which is empowering metropolitan authorities to work in collaboration to achieve their wider goals.

UKC COMMENT

Construction industry remains optimistic despite Q3 slowdown Ms. Amandeep Bahra, Economist, Construction Products Association Growth in the construction industry accelerated to its fastest rate in 2014.

While we are unlikely to see growth rates near such levels in the coming years, prospects for the industry still appear bright. Construction output is forecast to grow 3.6% in 2015 and 3.8% in 2016 – and overall 19.7% by 2019, according to our latest Autumn Forecast.

This latest forecast has been revised down from our Summer edition, which estimated growth of 4.9% in 2015 and 4.2% in 2016, primarily reflecting widespread weakness across the industry during the third quarter of 2015. Output in the construction industry fell 0.1% on a yearly basis in Q3, which is the first annual decline since 2013 Q1. So, what has triggered this slowdown in the short-term?

This can largely be explained by the massive skills gap left in the construction industry following the onset of the financial crisis. With the development pipeline strong across the industry, a rising demand for skilled workers continues to outpace supply, which, in turn, has increased competition for existing capacity. Inevitably, the consequence of such market dynamics will push salaries up; according to the ONS, average weekly earnings in construction, overall, grew 6.8% year-onyear in July to reach £605, the highest on record. And within occupations used

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in house building, where there has been rapid growth in the last couple of years, earnings are likely to have risen even more. Thus, with increasing labour costs adding to overall construction costs, there is no doubt that developers are feeling the pressure – particularly within private housing and commercial.

In Q3, major house builders continued to report difficulties in recruiting on-site trades, especially bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers. Alongside this, threequarters of large contractors reported higher labour costs over the quarter, according to the CPA’s Construction Trade Survey. In the commercial sector, projects are reported to have been delayed as contractors return to clients and renegotiate prices, because costs have risen considerably since contracts were won 12-18 months ago.

Despite the challenging environment, the construction industry is expected to remain strong over the next five years. Here is what we expect to see across key sectors:

• Private housing – growth of 10.0% forecast in 2015, followed by 5.0% in 2016 and 22.6% between 2015 and 2019. Starts are forecast to rise 7.0% in 2015 and 5.0% in 2016.

Major housebuilders continue to signal their intention to increase units built over the next 12-18 months.

Help to Buy accounts for one quarter of new build purchases and will help sustain demand. Plus, house prices continue to increase in most regions, especially in London and the South East, illustrating the strong underlying demand.

• Commercial – expected to fall 0.1% in 2015 as positive output growth in offices, education and health is weighed down by the weakness in retail and entertainment. A return to growth is anticipated from 2016, rising 16.3% by 2019, mainly driven by new offices construction in cities such as Birmingham and Manchester as well as the capital. Retail construction is expected to grow but only 2.0% in 2016 and 3.0% per year between 2017 and 2019 as both increasing online retailing and a consolidation of expansion plans by major supermarket chains constrains activity.

• Infrastructure – activity continues to thrive, with output forecast to grow 11.2% on average per year between 2015 and 2019. By 2019 infrastructure output is expected to be 50.0% higher than in 2015. Activity will be primarily driven by the roads and energy sub-sectors but also in rail, water and sewerage. In addition, work continues on major projects in the £411 billion National Infrastructure Plan.

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UKC COMMENT

Not just Cryptosporidium...

Written by the Technical Team at Lubron UK Building Services Engineer at Lubron UK Water Technology The recent concerns over the traces of Cryptosporidium found at the Franklaw water treatment works outside Preston, Lancashire, led to more than 300,000 households in the area being advised to boil drinking water. The parasite Cryptosporidium can cause cryptosporidiosis, with the symptoms of nausea and severe diarrhoea, which may be life-threatening to those with low immunity, and responds to high doses of chlorine, or peroxide, but is resistant to many other disinfectants. United Utilities advised their customers to boil drinking water after routine tests at the Franklaw water treatment works detected small traces of Cryptosporidium, and the company installed several ultraviolet rigs strategically across the network to deal with the last remaining traces of the bug.

Water treatment is a science; waterborne viruses, parasites, etc. evolve, and become resistant, the same way air-borne ones do, so routine testing of water quality is paramount to ensure current treatment measures are working.

It is acknowledged that the parasite Cryptosporidium parvum is one of the most resistant parasites to chemical forms of water treatment. Fortunately, because the Cryptosporidium oocysts range in size between four and seven microns, barrier filtration techniques such as ultrafiltration or nanofiltration offer a proven method of removal.

For instance, ultrafiltration (UF) will remove 99.95% of all particles between three and four microns, and is now considered to be the standard approach for Cryptosporidium removal.

Reverse osmosis membranes, although not strictly behaving as a barrier filter in the way of UF, are considered to have pores of the order of at least ten times smaller - sufficient to remove more than 99.5% of even dissolved species, as well as 100% of particulates. It has even greater removal effect on Cryptosporidium than UF, probably due to the pore size being less 0.2 microns. Unfortunately, this process is more wasteful in energy and water.

Consequently, although effective, it is rarely utilised as a main line approach.

Besides monitoring and treatment, a further and equally important key stage

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in a programme designed to prevent Cryptosporidiosis is the protection of water systems from possible contamination. It is well known that Cryptosporidium can be transmitted through the faecal-oral route, like many other enteric pathogens, and so this needs to be prevented. For instance, a relationship between heavy rainfall and high concentrations of Cryptosporidium in source water has been noted in several studies along with sewer overflows and snowmelt.

Other causes include farming practices, accidental spills, and poor water quantity management practices. Most of these events may be predictable, and, therefore, the correct risk management could reduce contamination incidents.

Within the EU, water providers are obliged to provide consumers with ‘wholesome’ water that meets rigorous compliance legislation, and they clearly take this obligation seriously, resulting in the UK probably having one of the safest supplies in the world. Also, a raft of regulations is in place for the management of water systems in buildings to ensure cleanliness, for instance with regards to Legionellosis.

There is no reason certain measures cannot be taken by the buildings management and construction industry to ensure that properties are equipped with systems that will protect against further contamination of the water supply. The techniques and products are both proven and available, and are already in use in countries where the water supplies are less reliable and in sectors where assurance that harmful pathogens are absent is essential, such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare,

catering, and food and beverage production, as well as potable water.

There are also other microbiological species out there which can be troublesome – some may be in the water supplies, others may develop within water systems in buildings.

Unfortunately, some bacteria that exist only intermittently or at barely perceptible levels in supplies, can flourish in systems within the built environment.

Mycobacteria and Pseudomonas, for instance, whose potential harm is well understood, are of a particular concern for people who may already be undergoing medical treatment, or who have immunity related issues.

This may be especially relevant when water systems are poorly maintained.

In summary, the management of the microbiological aspects of water supplies, whether outside or within a building is a complex matter, and is, in general, properly regulated and managed well. From time to time, however, situations may arise where consumers, or even building occupiers, may be at risk. Fortunately, there are proven procedures and devices available to protect consumers from contamination by pathogens like Cryptosporidium. The water treatment and supply industry can monitor and test supplies, as well as advise and assist with the management of water systems wherever they are, to reduce risk and give peace of mind.

COMMENT UKC

Rising Developer Standards The second quarterly report of developer service standards shows water companies have improved on their overall levels of delivery and performance. The second quarterly figures for water supply have risen from 89% to 93% in response to 125,000 developer requests. For sewerage they are up from 94% to 97% - in response to 9,000 developer requests.

Commenting on these results, Richard Warneford, Chairman of the Water UK Developer Services Standards Group, said: “While the measurement and publication of these figures is still relatively new, an early trend is emerging with evidence that reporting is already driving improvements in performance. Over the past quarter there have been some inevitable increases and decreases in some of the 24 measures but we will use these results to engage with our key stakeholders to ensure the measures remain appropriate and

properly reflect the levels of service expected of water companies.

“These standards are just one part of our work to improve services for our developer customers and we know there is much more to be done. We have been working hard on providing input to the current work by Defra on improving the charging regime for the provision of infrastructure for new development. At the same time, we are looking at ways that water companies can reduce delays in the planning process arising from applications for new infrastructure for housing development.

“This package of initiatives shows we are determined to play our part in helping new building projects progress more speedily across the UK.” The latest developer service standards are available to view on the Water UK website: www. water.org.uk/developer-services

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UKC COMMERCIAL

AMP6: A watershed moment AMP6 kicked off in March this year, with the utility companies moving into the sixth phase of asset management following a long period of tendering and negotiations.

companies’ business plans were dominated by the need to meet tough European Union legislation covering issues like wastewater quality and wildlife habitats.

intensive solutions, and because it is introducing incentives to encourage the water companies to trade water and to source it form areas that do not damage the natural environment.

This phase of investment has seen the shift in focus from short term investment, replacing the ageing structures and systems to improve efficiency, to a ‘totex’ – or total expenditure investment – looking to improve and upgrade the systems for future benefits and in the long term.

This period will see water companies trying to get the most out of their existing assets and finding ways to minimise cost of operation.

This shift in emphasis is leading to water companies looking for different skill sets from their supply chains – expertise that will help make more of existing assets.

The Ofwat document made it clear that water companies should be focusing on what it called ‘long-term outcomes’, which it hopes will encourage innovative ways of working that will deliver services for less money, and with less impact on the environment.

The focus on long-term thinking is also being reflected in the way some water companies are looking to procure the firms that will deliver work during AMP6, with many opting for alliances, or for frameworks that run beyond the traditional five-year AMP period.

As a result, the regulator expects to see substantial efficiency savings being delivered during the five year AMP6 period.

Ofwat gave final approval to a £44Bn spend by water firms over the next period at the end of last year, saying that the deals struck with the water companies will lead to 5% average fall in bills across England and Wales.

The realignment was set out in an Ofwat report, published in 2013, which showed the methodology Ofwat would use to assess water companies’ business plans for AMP6.

The methodology relates to water supply and sewerage in England and Wales and made it clear that the water industry’s emphasis is shifting from the ‘ticking regulatory boxes’ approach of previous AMPs to focusing on value for money for customers.

For the first four AMP periods, water

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At the same time, Ofwat wants to encourage companies to manage water supplies more sustainably. It believes this will happen because the companies will no longer have a bias toward capital intensive and resource

Jonson Cox, Ofwat Chairman, said: “This is an important step in maintaining customers’ trust and confidence in the water sector.

COMMERCIAL UKC

“We set out to deliver a challenging but fair outcome. We are requiring companies to meet higher service standards and deliver on their promises to customers.

“We are bringing down bills so customers can expect value for money, while investors can earn a fair return. Companies will need to stretch themselves to deliver much more with the same level of funding as in previous years. We will achieve more resilient infrastructure and better service as a result.”

Alongside the asset investment and upgrade, major projects set to take place include Severn Trent Water’s Birmingham Resilience project, Wessex Water’s integrated supply grid, and modernisation of United Utilities’ Davyhulme wastewater treatment works, with the Thames Tideway Tunnel to be financed and delivered by an independent provider.

John McGovern, Northumbrian Water Group’s Head of Asset Delivery, said: “These partnership agreements clearly demonstrate our commitment to providing our customers, who rely on us every day, with an excellent service and to protecting the environment. The contracts will boost the economy of our region and of the local communities we serve and will also support employment. ”We are working closely with all companies involved to ensure the smooth transition of contracts and we look forward to working with those appointed. Having long-term framework agreements in place will enable better planning, relationship building and the transfer of in-depth knowledge and skills.

As a result of the security that this work brings, those who have won contracts will also be able to further invest in their own businesses, people and systems.”

Stephen Wilkie, Regional Managing Director of Esh Construction, based in County Durham, said: “We are proud and delighted to have been awarded this contract together with our colleagues at MWH, especially as our working partnership goes back for more than ten years. ”This contract extends our working relationship with Northumbrian Water with whom we have worked for over 20 years and is in addition to another contract – delivering reactive wastewater maintenance services – which we won earlier this year.”

Northumbrian Water names AMP6 winning bidders Northumbrian Water recently named the four winning contractors to deliver the AMP6 framework.

An Esh Construction and MWH Joint Venture, Integrated Water Services, Interserve and Mott MacDonald Bentley will carry out planned maintenance work on Northumbrian Water’s network over the ten-year contract.

Works on the AMP6 contract range from short term flood damage mitigation to long-term, large-scale capital projects designed to improve overall asset infrastructure.

Cath Schefer, Managing Director of MWH UK said: “We’re delighted with our appointment to this framework contract with our partners Esh. It is a great opportunity to bring our complementary capabilities to meet the challenges of AMP6 and the Totex environment. We look forward to working collaboratively with the other framework partners to drive efficiencies and ‘best in class’ customer service.”

Yorkshire Water Services appoints £100M contract partner Yorkshire Water Services has appointed Nomenca Limited, part of the NM Group, a £100M contract in the delivery of their £3.8Bn AMP6 investment programme.

Carrying out the repair, restoration, maintenance and improvement works to Yorkshire Water Service’s existing assets, as well as some customer support responsibilities.

Mark Fryer, General Manager for Nomenca Leeds commented: “this is a key contract win for Nomenca.

I am thrilled, excited and looking forward to being involved with working collaboratively with Yorkshire Water to deliver savings through their Direct Delivery Model.”

Paul Robins, asset solutions manager at Yorkshire Water, said: “Following a 12 month selection period, we are pleased to announce that Nomenca is one of four contract partners we will be working with to deliver this new MEICA capital framework. The MEICA framework will provide a fast and efficient delivery route where capital work can go straight into delivery. A key element of the new framework will involve the contract partners bringing the private to public pumping stations up to company standards.”

Northumbrian Water Group supplies 2.7 million people with water and waste water services in the North East and 1.8 million people with water services in Essex and Suffolk.

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UKC COMMENT

What makes a young person pursue a career in construction?

In the first in a series of articles, UK Construction examines this question and looks at how young people can be encouraged to become the construction workers of the future.

Whether it is the struggle to build enough houses to meet the government target of one million new homes by 2020 or completing large-scale infrastructure projects such as HS2 and Crossrail, the skills shortage seems dominate the construction industry.

The mismatch between the skills available in the UK labour force and those required to meet the ambitions of the government and private companies within the construction sector remains a huge problem and raises the key question – what can be done about it?

UK Construction Online recently covered a story on a record breaking Meccano bridge that was constructed by Queen’s University civil Engineering students across Clarendon Dock in Belfast.

Civil Engineering contractor McLaughlin & Harvey Ltd provided technical advisory services on the project, which provided an opportunity for students to gain on-site experience and to test their skills away from a classroom environment.

Local primary school children also got to learn more about the opportunities in construction and STEM careers in an effort to encourage them to consider taking up a career in these sectors.

Although not a solution in the shortterm, the need to encourage children and young people to consider taking up a career in construction is obvious if the long term future of the UK Construction industry is to be safeguarded.

We spoke to John McCarey, Chief Engineer at McLaughlin & Harvey, who worked with the students throughout the project, to discuss the most effective ways of educating the next generation of workers and also encouraging children to consider pursuing careers in construction.

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What was your involvement in terms of training for the Meccano bridge project?

Absolutely. I actually graduated from the Queens University in 2005 so I was in those students’ shoes ten years ago.

I was engaged with the students earlier on in the year to go through how we were going to lift and install the bridge.

We actually did a trial erection in our warehouse back in July, just as they were completing their final exams.

You gain so much practical knowledge from being out onsite and its great to be able to share some of that with students. That’s the one thing students sometimes don’t get enough of in an academic course.

We went through all the different aspects of how the load was being distributed throughout the bridge to give ourselves a good appreciation of the sensitivity of the structure because it is quite a light structure.

The industry really needs to provide more support and assist the universities because ultimately the construction sector want better qualified staff and we all have to engage.

We developed risk assessments, method statements, and a walkthrough with them on the various aspects of health and safety that perhaps don’t get covered in a classroom lecture theatre environment. This demonstrated to the students the practicalities that need to be considered and worked around when you bring something from a piece of paper through to build size and then through to the actual onsite erection of the structure itself.

The Meccano bridge is a fantastic way of capturing people’s imagination in terms of engineering. How important are these kind of projects to inspire people and help students along the way?

It must be extremely satisfying being able to pass on your knowledge?

It’s a really good insight into civil engineering. We face challenges everyday and we continually overcome them. Civil engineering is probably one of the unsung sectors because a lot of the stuff we do is buried beneath the ground and is out of sight. It only comes to people’s attention when something actually goes wrong,

COMMENT UKC

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UKC COMMENT

whereas a bridge is above the ground and is a showpiece of what we can really achieve.

From bringing a simple toy like Meccano into such a large-scale structure that can be physically used as a bridge shows what you can dream about and then how you can create it, install it and use it, which is a great aspect as well.

The school children participated in the project as part of the university’s outreach programme.

What was their role?

The school children were involved in the actual build process screwing the nuts and bolts, putting the Meccano pieces together.

What inspired you to take up engineering?

Everyday is a different challenge. You go into work and know there are always challenges ahead in every project and sometimes the smaller challenges you get more pride out of overcoming them.

The bigger challenges – everybody knows they need attention and there’s lots of resources thrown into them.

With engineering you get to the freedom to overcome small challenges that actually feed in to a global part of a project. It’s about being part of a team as well your own individual achievement on solving problems.

Essentially, it is all problem solving when it comes down to it. Whether it be designing something, making sure it’s structurally sound and how you get it installed and then operational.

In terms of your childhood, did you play with Meccano or Lego, or anything along those lines that you could say influenced your career choice?

I was a big Lego child. I had some Meccano bits and pieces over years but Lego was definitely an influence. I suppose I am still a big kid, I still tend to play with Lego every now and again!

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What kind of impact can toys like Meccano, Lego, and Minecraft have on children. Do you think they have a positive influence and can inspire youngsters to consider a career in construction?

I definitely do. Anything that helps people bring out their creative side and provide a technical challenge, whether it be following a simple plan, devising your own plans, or simply building from your own imagination. The great thing about those toys is you get to see the fruit of your labour and dreams.

It’s great because that’s essentially what happened with the bridge; we really scaled up something form somebody’s imagination into real life project and that’s what happened everyday with civil engineering.

Is Minecraft almost an entry level BIM for children?

You know it definitely is. Because essentially that’s what BIM is, you start off with your first blocks and you build up to different layers as you put in your different components into the structure whatever it may be, whether its blocks on the screen or blocks on the ground followed by fixtures and fittings.

It’s getting people in that mind set of where you start – from your initial concept and where you want to end up and all the bits and pieces you have to fit in together. It’s also about the challenges that come when things don’t fit together and how you have to work around things that are non-standard that you to then design, implement, and interpret what you need and invent to make it fit and become operational. It’s an excellent stepping stone.

Network rail recently released a study suggesting that by the age of 11, girls could be put off a career in engineering. Do you think there is a cut off point in terms of age to be attracted to a career in STEM industries?

I’m sure there is a certain point in time if they are not accustomed to playing with a certain toy, it would almost become socially unacceptable to then start picking it up at a later age. I think there should more availability for those toys for both sexes and be more targeted at female and particular ages.

The industry needs a good mix people as well.

Do you think more needs to be done to encourage women to take up careers in the industry?

There definitely needs to be a bigger drive. The sector itself is struggling at the moment with the number of people entering it and if you can entice more females into the industry then all the better.

I suppose it could be a number of years before we see the fruits of the labour as we set out to try and get the individuals to take up.

Lego are now starting to target girls more with their toys and different things like that, even the Meccano bridge – these things will inspire a certain age group so it maybe a number of years before we see the benefit. The younger generation is where it really needs to be targeted.

This is definitely one of my own gripes at the moment with the industry in that we probably don’t do enough. There are so many other different types of jobs and skill requirements within the construction sector, that sometimes it is targeted more towards engineering.

People who just want to work on the ground who are maybe unskilled right through to skilled labourers whether it be piling hands, carpenters, concrete workers, steel erectors, there are so many opportunities for other skills and the best way to learn those skills is through apprenticeships.

The construction industry really needs to jump in and try and make a big recruitment drive and get people into that and without the industry offering that training – industry itself needs to push it because no one else is going to train up their future employees for them.

The Royal Academy of Engineering said in June that the UK needs more than a million new engineers and technicians

in the next five years. Given what we’ve discussed, this doesn’t seem likely. It will take time.

No doubt it will take time. We are definitely seeing a skills shortage at the moment. We take on quite a lot placement students each year; we also try to take them back on the following year for their summer holidays.

We had a student who was instrumental in the Meccano bridge project from its conception right through to build stages. He was one of the team tasked with the project back in January. He worked with us as a placement student back in 2014 and came back and worked with us this summer. He got a real feel for the environment we’re in and we were able to provide him a bit of time onsite, in the office and he was back in with in this summer.

He was good for McLaughlin & Harvey in assisting us internally with the bridge and we were then able to design and look at all the different requirements we needed for the structure itself.

We feel that this process works well; we engage with the student early on in

their career, bring them in and it’s also a good way of picking up the better students as well by engaging them through those means.

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Is enough being done by the government to deal with this?

Do you think there’s an opportunity to get younger children involved within the industry?

We do a lot of projects on the Constructionline scheme and Considerate Constructors. Ivor Goodbody is a cartoon-style character that will visit schools and give out construction toys. He will visit primary schools and give them an overview of a project we are completing in their neighbourhood. Sometimes, where possible, we will bring the children on a site visit. Obviously some sites are more suited for children than others.

You need to plant a seed in those people’s heads. At that young age, probably under the age of 10, people really get a vision of what they want to achieve later in life.

Do Children’s TV programmes have a part to play in this?

I think they do. Bob the Builder is the most recent one I remember. Of course, the great thing about any type of construction is that you really get to see the fruits of your labour at the end of the day. Sometimes when you’re in an office environment, you’re working on a project for months on end before you actually see any reward, whereas in a construction environment, at the end of every day you can step back and see the changes as it evolves.

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Spotlight on NHBC Building Control – celebrating 30 years and looking ahead to the new building regulations NHBC has grown to become the largest single Building Control Body in the UK and this year celebrates its 30th anniversary. Diane Marshall, the organisation’s Head of Technical Services, looks back over the last 30 years and ahead to how the changes implemented by the Housing Standard Review, which came into effect on October 1st, will impact the house building industry.

In 1985, NHBC launched its Building Control service as the UK was on its way to producing record housing levels by the end of the decade. From the very beginning, the service has helped to raise standards of new homes via comprehensive design checks and site inspections and now carries out upwards of 400,000 inspections each year for building control. It has also helped NHBC’s builder customers to build quality homes that comply with the Building Regulations across England and Wales for the hundreds of thousands of new home owners over the last three decades.

Rewind to the mid-80s when NHBC launched its building control in England and Wales, the service was limited to three story houses. However, there have

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been several significant changes during this time, as the service has developed to cater for a wider range of properties – from single plots, to large scale mixeduse developments, London skyscrapers, landmark commercial projects and even the conversion of the Grade II listed Roald Dahl Museum. 1985 also saw the introduction of NHBC’s innovative Type Approval system. As the name suggests, Type Approvals are a useful tool if builders propose to build standard house types and details. Type Approvals of a repeat design, can helpfully speed up subsequent sites as it will always be accepted by NHBC throughout England and Wales. Recent changes to the Type Approval system now also allow specific Type Approvals for house types used exclusively in England or Wales.

´ New century, new developments In 2000, NHBC became the first Building Control body to invest heavily in a state of the art IT system, which made the business paperless and transformed the way the organisation interacted with customers.

New initiatives have continued over the years, with the launch of NHBC’s customer portal to make submission of information even faster, while this year has seen the introduction of a new TechZone, an online technical resource which includes Building Control Plus; a fully interactive platform which includes all Building Regulations and supplementary resources in one place.

Looking ahead, the industry is now in the process of embracing the challenges set by the Housing Standards Review.

Earlier this year in March, shortly before the dissolution of Parliament, the then coalition government issued the final results of its wide ranging review of the many statutory and non-statutory standards that house builders were being asked to design and build to.

Running to just over 4,000 pages of legislation, regulation and guidance, the comprehensive package completely changes the basis for building regulations that have been in place as far back as the 1667 London Building Act, i.e. to set the minimum standards for all new buildings.

The review, which was commenced in 2013, was launched as a ‘tidying up’ exercise to deal with ‘complex,

overlapping or contradictory housing standards’, replacing over 100 different policies and standards into a single set of national standards, most of which are published in the Building Regulations.

The final results of the review sees the introduction of Optional regulations in Part M – Access and also Part G – Water as well as a new mandatory regulation for all new housing Part Q – Security as well as a National Space Standard which has not been placed in the building regulations. ´ How will it work?

The system has been implemented since October 1st. From that date, Local Planning Authorities’ (LPA) can impose optional higher standards on space, water and access to residential developments in their area provided that they have set policies in their local plan. The ability to impose these standards is dependent on the LPA demonstrating a local need and also the viability of developments if the new higher standard was required.

The developer must then inform their selected building control body (BCB) if an “Optional” requirement has been imposed on their development and it is then the job of the BCB to enforce these as if they were the minimum standard for that development in the usual way.

Guidance for local authorities on how to apply the optional higher standards has been issued to all LPA’s.

So, what are the key areas covered by the new regulations?

• Water Minimum water efficiency standards were introduced into Building Regulations in 2010 and currently require that new homes are designed so that calculated water use is not more than 125 litres/person/day. This minimum standard is to be retained with an optional more conservative standard available locally ‘where there is a clear local need’. The new optional local standard of 110 litres/person/ day was introduced on October 1st.

• Access The new 2015 regulations substantially change Approved Document M to allow for new optional access requirements to be available locally. Existing standards

are to be consolidated with Lifetime Home Standard being replaced by ‘Category 2 – Accessible and Adaptable Housing’ and Wheelchair Housing Standards to be replaced by ‘Category 3 – Wheelchair User Dwellings in Part M (Access to and use of buildings)’.

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Additionally, Building Regulations have evolved over the years from prescriptive requirements to a more open system of functional requirements which give the designer greater choices. Early involvement of NHBC Building Control in a project therefore allows designers to consult building control professionals on their innovative solutions and ensure that they meet the requirements early on. Another major change was the increase in popularity of timber frame construction in the late 1980s, which has further evolved to a rise in the use of prefabrications and MMCs. As a result, keeping our technical staff up-to-date with regulations if of key importance; the last 30 years has seen an ever increasing rate of change as well as some of the approved documents becoming specialist in nature, such as Approved Document B – fire Safety and L – Conservation of Fuel and Power.

• Security A new mandatory security requirement (Part Q) has been introduced for all new dwellings. The new standard intends to introduce a level of consistency across different areas and consolidate around cost effective measures to reduce the incidence of burglary.

• Space** As well as the introduction of a minimum gross internal floor area and built-in storage area dependent on number of bedrooms, the standard will insist that at least one bedroom in a two-bedroom home is a double (or twin) room. Minimum room sizes also apply as well as a minimum floor to ceiling height of 2.3m for at least 75% of the gross internal area.

The new nationally described space standard has not been incorporated into Building Regulations. Instead the standard may be imposed by local planning authorities as a planning condition. ´ The future Having spent the last six months digesting the new regulations and understanding the complexities of what lies ahead, we hope that the industry will adopt the changes relatively seamlessly, but we are here to help builders adapt.

Looking ahead, this landmark year provides an opportunity to think about ways in which NHBC Building Control can further support its builder customers. Needless to say NHBC Building Control will continue to innovate and support builders, and homeowners, by providing a rigorous, independent third party check on the design and construction of the UK’s new homes.

For further information please visit www.nhbc.co.uk/Builders/ Productsandservices/Buildingcontrol ** The Nationally Described Space Standard remains outside of the Building Regulations and where applicable will be enforced by LPA’s.

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New EIA Guidance will speed up planning and bring down costs New industry guidance launched today seeks to support EIA professionals to achieve better, faster outcomes to their assessments at reduced cost. The two guides aim to ensure that environmental thinking is firmly embedded into any design processes and project resilience measures.

The guidance documents have been created by the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA), the professional association representing over 15,000 professionals worldwide. By working with two leading EIA specialist organisations – LDA Design and Mott MacDonald – IEMA has filled critical guidance gaps on two key EIA issues.

Josh Fothergill, IEMA’s Policy & Engagement Lead on EIA, said today: “Speeding up the process and progress of developments is crucial to the economic recovery, yet without current guidance there is a very real risk of unintended consequences for communities and the environment, resulting in unnecessary delays. It is IEMA’s role to ensure that EIA professionals can produce the best work possible and these guides will support them to create better quality EIAs that enable a smoother consenting process.”

The IEMA Environmental Impact Assessment Guide to: Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation provides a framework for the effective consideration of climate change resilience and adaptation in the Environmental Impact

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Assessment process, in line with the 2014 European Union Directive. It addresses proportionate assessment, the legislative and policy landscape and looks to the National Adaptation Plan as a crucial anchor point.

Succinctly, an environmental statement produced in line with the guidance will: • Always make reference to climate change; • Provide a concise explanation of how the project’s resilience to climate change was considered; • Set out clearly how effects related to climate change have been assessed; and • Define the significance of effects by pragmatically taking account of the knowledge base used in the impact assessment.

James Montgomery, Divisional Manager (Environment) at Mott MacDonald (a registered EIA Quality Mark company), led the guide’s development, and said: “Taking into account how proposed development will impact on an environment that is itself adapting to climate change is a challenging task that EIA practitioners are going to have to cope with in the future. This guidance will help practitioners by giving prompts on what issues to consider and when in the EIA process. The guidance is the first step to improve our EIA process, and I hope that future versions will be able to build on lessons learned from EIAs conducted taking on board this guidance”.

The IEMA Environmental Impact Assessment Guide to: Shaping Quality Development – establishes the principles and framework for maximising synergy between environmental thinking and project design within the decisionmaking process. It aims to contribute to the delivery of proportionate EIA by shaping decision-making which leads to higher-quality development proposals.

Adhering to the guidance document’s recommendations will result in: • Improved outcomes for the developer, communities and the environment • Better informed decision-making • Better solutions • Reduced consenting risk, consenting delay and associated costs.

Mary Fisher, Board Director responsible for EIA at EIA Quality Mark registrant LDA Design, who co-authored the guide said: “Today’s launch will ensure that EIA professionals are supported to encourage greater collaboration between design and assessment teams leading to development proposals which are better integrated with their environment and thus more likely to be consented. It will also assist the delivery of more-focused, proportionate Environmental Statements.”

The guidance documents are available from www.iema.net/policyimpact-assessment-resources.

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