Galliford Try Construction has slammed J Reddington’s management and “extraordinarily poor” safety performance on the site of the Olympic Athletes’ Village build, as the contractor filed an £8m legal counter claim.

In August, J Reddington Ltd launched a £7m claim against the contractor, relating to the construction of the Athletes’ Village for London 2012.

The man fined £5,000 for holding a blacklisting database in 2009 has revealed Sir Robert McAlpine paid that and other costs, and said that he was the wrong person to prosecute.

Ian Kerr, the former owner of The Consulting Association – which was shut down after an Information Commissioners Office raid in 2009 – spoke for almost three and a half hours in front of the Scottish Affairs Committee on blacklisting yesterday.

A demolition firm has been fined thousands for a health and safety breach – while its boss was recovering from being tortured by burglars.

Brendan O’Halloran’s company Excavating and Contracting (UK) Ltd, was fined £5,000 after a huge slab of concrete collapsed on to a workman at Lancashire Cricket Club.

The firm had been hired to demolish a stand at the Old Trafford ground, but Mr O’Halloran was off work after being attacked at his home.

Southampton Football Club has been ordered to pay out almost £60,000 to Solent Interior Systems Ltd after a payment row was taken to court.

The Technology and Construction Court in London has ordered the club to pay the contractor, along with VAT, interest and legal fees, within 14 days, after it heard that a final instalment of fees had been missed.

Southampton FC sent no representation or counsel to the hearing on Thursday, informing court officials the day before by e-mailing that they would not be attending.

Legal proceedings have begun against the UK government after the European Commission found it failed to deliver a number of environmental regulations.

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive came into force in 2010, and required all EU states to enhance their building regulations and to introduce energy certification schemes for buildings. The directive was part of a move towards new and retrofitted nearly-zero energy buildings by 2020.

The European Directive also states that an up-to-date Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) should be made available whenever a residential property is put up for sale or rent, while Display Energy Certificates (DECs), which detail a building’s energy consumption, should be on display in public buildings.

The chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority has insisted that it has seen no evidence of contractors using blacklisting on the construction of the Olympic Park.

Speaking at the London Assembly budget and performance committee this morning, Dennis Hone insisted that the ODA would have “gone after” contractors if it had seen blacklisting in practice.

A scaffolding firm and its director have been fined after a worker suffered “life-changing injuries” in a 2.5m fall from a scaffold platform.

The unnamed worker, from Rainham in Kent, suffered severe head injuries and needed surgery to remove the frontal lobe of the brain. He spent many weeks in hospital and is unlikely to be able to work again.

The man fell from the first lift of the scaffold as it was being dismantled at a property in Meopham near Gravesend in Kent on January 25 this year. He was passing boards down to another worker when he lost his footing and fell to the concrete below.

31-year old Melanie Day has been disqualified from managing, directing or in any way controlling a company until November 2019, after siphoning off payments from an insolvent firm.

An investigation found that S.T.S. Building Services Ltd was making payments to Ms Day and her sole trader business, at the expense of creditors, at a time when Ms Day knew the firm was insolvent.

The Judge confirmed that between 3-4 June 2010, Ms Day transferred £100,000 from STS into her sole trader business, claiming it was a sub-contractor, and to herself.

Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna will table a series of Parliamentary questions calling for an investigation into allegations contractors used blacklists on Olympic 2012 contracts.

Mr Umunna will ask the culture secretary to investigate whether contractors used public monies received under public contracts to pay to obtain information on construction workers from lists maintained by the Consulting Association.

The move comes after Ucatt general secretary Steve Murphy called for a public inquiry into the practice at a Scottish Affairs Select Committee hearing yesterday.

A recent federal appellate court held that there may be situations in which a contractor’s intentionally low bid for a federal contract could give rise to liability under the False Claims Act (FCA).

At issue in Hooper v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 2012 WL 3124970 (9th Cir) was the bid of Lockheed in 1995 to provide software and hardware support for space launch operations.  The contract was a cost reimbursement plus award fee contract.  Thus, Lockheed would be reimbursed its costs and would be paid a fee depending on the quality of its performance.  In evaluating Lockheed’s proposal the Air Force analyzed Lockheed’s proposed costs.  It found that while Lockheed’s proposal presented some “risks” that may lead to “cost growth beyond the target costs” outlined in the proposal, Lockheed’s proposal presented the best overall value to the Air Force.