Croydon’s newest school, Harris Primary Academy Haling Park in South Croydon, has celebrated reaching the completion of the highest part of the building with a traditional ‘topping out’ ceremony.

Croydon is facing the largest proportional rise in school-age young people in the whole of England and the £5million school will help meet this demand by admitting 60 new pupils each year, eventually providing places for 480 children.

Ground has been broken as Benenden Hospital’s £45 million redevelopment gets underway.

Representatives from Benenden Hospital and from Willmott Dixon Construction, who won the contract to do the work, put spades into the ground this week, heralding the start of phase one of the two and a half year programme.

Galliford Try has been selected to build a proposed £5 million Extra Care housing scheme for older people in Alnwick.

The Isos Housing project, to be known as Weavers’ Court, is designed to provide 58 affordable one and two bedroomed apartments, half for sale through shared ownership, and half available to rent.

Around £2 million of funding for the venture will come from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and is part of a national programme to build 3,544 new homes.

Groundforce Bridge, the temporary bridge division of hire specialist Groundforce, has supplied a 10m x 6m Vehicle Bridge, and 7m Vehicle Bridge to allow contractor Babcock, reach and remove an electricity pylon in North Wales, under critical scheduling and site conditions.

The project, for the Energy Alliance, involved the emergency demolition and replacement of a dilapidated tower, complicated by the fact the structure was located on the estuary of the Afon Dwyryd, near the Penrhyndeudraeth toll bridge in Gwynedd.

The construction of new state-of-the-art Keir Hardie Primary School in Canning Town continues apace with the completion of the school’s rooftop garden and running track. To mark this milestone, The Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, Ian Sutcliffe, executive chairman at Countryside and 15 pupils from the school conducted a celebratory tree planting ceremony on the rooftop garden. They were joined by Affinity Sutton, Countryside’s housing association partner, Jerram Falkus, contractors on site, Baily Garner consultants, staff and children from Keir Hardie Primary School and local residents from the Fife Road Regeneration Group.

The ceremony took place in the morning on Wednesday 19 March and after short speeches from Sir Robin Wales, Ian Sutcliffe and Violet Otieno; head teacher at Keir Hardie School, the tree planting of a Tibetan cherry tree began, assisted by pupils from the school.

At the Grand Arcade shopping centre in Cambridge, the upgrade of two main customer entrances had to meet exceptionally high performance standards. Specified to improve internal comfort levels for customers and reduce energy costs for retailers, a series of automatic swing doors from industry leader DORMA proved the perfect solution.

Designed by architects Chapman Taylor and built by Coulson Building Group, the £220 million Grand Arcade originally opened in 2008. With concerns about heat loss from the premises, owners Universities Superannuation Scheme re-appointed Coulson to install two new entrances – featuring toughened glass and DORMA ED 250A automatic closers to minimise energy loss.

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has undergone a significant transformation since the London 2012 Olympics with the iconic Aquatics Centre ready to provide world-class facilities for both elite athletes and the local communities.

For the reliable and efficient closing of doors throughout the venue, high quality door controls and floor springs from DORMA will offer a gold medal experience for visitors each and every day.

WORK HAS started on Leeds College of Building’s new £16million education and training facility which is located on land that was purchased last year from Yorkshire Design Group at Hunslet Lane and Black Bull Street in the heart of Leeds City Centre.

Leeds College of Building has appointed GB Building Solutions as the lead contractor and AECOM as project managers.  The new all purpose 8,000 square meter building will take approximately 51 weeks to build.

The search has begun for hundreds of staff to help deliver one of Europe’s biggest civil engineering contracts - the £600m Mersey Gateway Project.

Merseylink – the consortium named as the Preferred Bidder by Halton Borough Council for the contract to build the new Mersey Gateway bridge over the river between Runcorn and Widnes in the North West of England – has started a drive to recruit a number of key positions within the early delivery team.

Willmott Dixon, one of the UK’s largest construction companies, has been awarded a design and build contract to construct the University of Bedfordshire’s new library building in Luton.

Spread over seven floors, the iconic building will become a landmark in the town centre incorporating 7,400 sq meters of space, connecting to the rest of the University’s Luton campus via a bridge link.