Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The United Kingdom’s largest project is HS2. A project to link London to Birmingham with a high speed train line that can provide significant increases in rail capacity in a highly congested area. There is 140 miles of new track, with four new stations and a myriad of structures to support the rail line, with a projected cost of £66Bn. It is a major piece of civil engineering infrastructure, requiring technology, ingenuity and plenty of people ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome One of the larger challenges that the solar sector faces in trying to expand its installed generation capacity is winning the hearts and minds of the general public. It is true that the majority of people support their deployment, but it is crucial that we maintain this edge and public acceptance of solar. One of the areas that can support this is work within our schools, both by installing solar and then educating students, teachers and parents abou...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction is a complicated and often challenging occupation, both on site and back in the office. Our smaller, regional main contractors have to deal with all the same legislation and pressures as their larger competitors, but with substantially fewer resources, if they are to remain competitive. Andy Laflin, Joint MD of Gipping Construction, a £26M business, based in Suffolk, talks about their focus on recruitment and training to ensure the quali...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The Institutes of Technology (IoT) were invented in 2019 to support businesses in England, in technical industries, to find the right new recruits, who were technology aware, capable and competent to join technical businesses. Technical businesses was drafted widely to include construction skills, so that students were aware of the changes in their sectors and retained a sense of curiosity that could sustain them through their chosen career. Professor Rosa...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The role that carbon plays in construction design and delivery is large, accounting for over 40% of UK emissions that the industry is either directly responsible for or which it influences. Reducing it requires new techniques, different ways of building and a change in culture within construction. Dr. Russ Hall is the Lead for Sustainable Manufacturing and the Circular Economy at the Warwick Manufacturing Group. He straddles the gap between industry and academia...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Sustainability requires a culture change within construction. Ian Heptonstall set up the Supply Chain Sustainability School with a few main contractors who were looking to break the mould of training and skills acquisition in the UK on what was then a relatively new demand on our industry. The Supply Chain School remains free to all users at the point of use; something that Ian is hugely and justifiably proud of. The school provides remote cour...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Leaders are everywhere. All businesses have one, all organisations have them at various levels throughout their management. Within construction we can not lay a brick without an NVQ 2, yet there are no requirements for qualifications to run our companies and even the largest of our companies have few requirements for trained leaders. Prof. Elaine Limond, Vice-Dean of the Business School at University College Birmingham talks about the opportunity to ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Mental Health remains a stain on the reputation of the construction industry with a suicide rate of four times the national average. The reasons why are varied and complex, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of stress, poor health and lost productivity within the sector. Carla Toro is an Associate Professor in Mental Health Sciences at Warwick University. She has been focusing on mental health throughout her professional career a...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Improvements to construction productivity are the Holy Grail of many in our industry. Without these improvements we cannot offer our customers more for less, include additional services or even pay ourselves more, without charging our customers more. With no obvious improvement over the last quarter of a century, yet with significant changes to building methodology, client priorities and specification and a changing regulatory landscape, the time is ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome There are two things that construction needs to learn from the retail sector. The first is that it is all about customer service. Fail at this and you fail at the first step in business. The second is that you must modernise and take every marginal gain available. Retail is a hugely competitive sector and if you fail to do either of these things then you will not be, and probably don’t deserve to be, in business. These lessons are i...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Environmental, Social and Governance standards are increasingly a mandatory requirement for investment into any sector. Solar is no different, indeed many would say that we are more prone to these issues with the bulk of our materials coming from the far east where similar standards are not so mainstream. Rachel Owens is the Chief Executive of the Solar Stewardship Initiative. An initiative that was set up by the solar industries across Europe to che...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Construction prides itself on being a front-line meritocracy where every one has a crucial role to play in delivering successful projects. In any meritocracy there are bound to be those who are more equal than others and clients fulfil this role. Clients set the environment in which we all work, the priorities through which the supply chain is procured and the management of risk, all of which determines the success of a project. Julie Bell-Barker is ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The green energy revolution relies on electricians and electrical companies to design and deliver the infrastructure needed to support generation and use of energy. Without them, the revolution dies and we will be unable to meet our statutory or moral obligations to a green grid or net-zero. Luckily, we have the Electrical Contractors Association, which is the guardian of standards and competence within the electrical sector, representing electrical ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome One in four employees in the construction sector identify as neuro-divergent, meaning that they believe that they think differently, their memory works in a different way and they communicate differently to the norm. These people may be neuro-diverse, responding in a different way to the stimuli that we use at work and the traditional management techniques that used to be commonplace within the sector. Sara Barnes, Pre-construction & Marketing Manager ...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Energy management and carbon reduction are becoming increasingly important to designers, operators and maintainers of buildings. The costs of operating a building are a significant part of the lifetime cost and the whole life carbon calculation for a building. Managing these, particularly in multi-occupancy buildings is a real challenge, dealing with variable demands on one side and changing tariffs and availability of supply and opportunity on the o...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome Scaffolding is ubiquitous within the construction industry. A true temporary structure that is found on virtually all building sites that requires designing and erecting accurately and professionally. Clive Dickin is the Chief Executive Officer for the National Access and Scaffolding Confederation (NASC) and heads an organisation that represents over 80% of the companies in the sector. Listen up to how Clive leads NASC to drive professionalism in the...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The UK plans to have over 50GW of solar capacity installed by 2030. The global solar Council is projecting 8TW of solar capacity in the same timeframe. The UK accounts for just over half of one percent, yet we are part of a holistic worldwide industry with global supply chains, prone to geopolitical risks. Peter Wooders founded Geneva Platform to examine and promote solutions to international supply chain risks. Geneva Platform works for a wide...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The complexity of construction projects, the changes that can happen during a project and the challenges of communication between the parties means that the sector is blighted with disputes. Many of these disputes are resolved between the parties through talking and leadership, however a pernicious few require external help to resolve. The 1996 Housing, Grants and Regeneration Act introduced adjudication into the industry as a relatively quick and ec...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome The solar sector has two big people challenges to solve if it is to deliver on its opportunity to become a major generator of the UK’s energy mix and support a “Just Transition” to a low carbon, low cost energy grid. The first is the sheer number of skilled people that it needs to design, deliver and maintain the infrastructure and the second is the diversity of thought that is needed to overcome the many challenges that it will encounter in delivering thi...

Send a Text - Feedback Welcome This podcast is a solar podcast, exposing the opportunities and challenges associated with a significant roll-out of solar generation capacity across the UK. One of the key challenges in any rapid expansion of work is to ensure that the supply chain is up to the job. Supply chains can become stressed when there is insufficient product or people to design and install the new generation once it has bee procured. Dave Tattershall is the Chairman of the ...