Dr Miles Watkins has joined BRE to take up the key new position of Group Business Development Director. Miles will lead on formulating commercial strategies for the organisation that will further strengthen its presence in the UK and in its core overseas markets.

A professional environmentalist with an outstanding career, Dr Watkins spent 17 years at Aggregate Industries before joining BRE. His final role was as Director of Sustainable Construction, where his responsibilities included marketing, safety, innovation and external and internal communications. In his new role, his focus will be on enhancing ways of supporting customers, with an emphasis on meeting their needs and adding further value across all services.

Two Castles Housing Association is welcoming residents into their new homes after work completed on a £1.4million affordable homes scheme in Harraby, Carlisle.

Located at the former St Elizabeth’s Church Hall site on Mayfield Avenue, the development has delivered 11 high quality affordable homes for local people to rent.

West Yorkshire-based Heckmondwike FB has helped to enrich the lives of homeless people in East London, by supplying carpet tiles to Cardboard Citizens, a homelessness project supported by Oscar award-winning actress Kate Winslet.

As the UK’s leading manufacturer of fibre bonded carpet and tiles, Heckmondwike FB responded to a request from CRASH, the construction and property industry's homelessness charity, to provide the floorcovering for a new purpose-built workshop and rehearsal space for homeless people in Tower Hamlets, East London.  Heckmondwike FB supplied 130m2 of Broadrib carpet tiles for the project, which will provide a hard-wearing solution for the busy office and consultation areas in the facility.

The big story this week has been the announcement of Astley Castle in Warwickshire as the winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize. What, you may be thinking, is a 12th-century fortified manor house doing winning the UK’s most prestigious prize for new architecture? Has there been some kind of rent in the space/time continuum? Has 5D BIM finally conquered time travel?

JS Wright & Co Ltd. is one of the UK’s leading building services providers. Founded in 1890 and based in Birmingham and London, the company specialises in the design and installation of heating, plumbing, ventilation, air conditioning, and drainage solutions. 

Serving a variety of sectors, JS Wright & Co employs about 120 staff and runs multiple projects simultaneously. Like many firms in the building services and construction industry, one area that has proved particularly challenging is verifying the hours worked by individuals on site. 

A homeowner in Northern Ireland has reported a 60 per cent saving on this energy bills after having a Danfoss heat pump fitted to replace an oil fired boiler.

Simon Bamford, who lives just outside Lisburn in Northern Ireland, approached Danfoss two years ago, as he was carrying out a major refurbishment of his dormer bungalow, including adding a one bedroom extension. This would mean the house had a lower carbon footprint and he hoped would make it more affordable to run.

M&S Simply Foods, Motorvogue and Costa Coffee have signed up for the second phase of the Howard Group’s Interchange Park scheme in Bedford.

HPG Developments acquired the prime 10 acre development site, close to the Interchange Retail Park, Progress Park and the new A421 dual carriageway between the A1 and the M1.

Leading waste shredder provider UNTHA UK is dispelling any concerns that demand for recycling and waste management technologies is stagnant in the UK. Statistics from the first 12 months of the company’s online activity have been analysed, and the level of traffic is not only strong, it is continuing to grow.

The UNTHA UK website was launched on 31 August 2012, in anticipation for last year’s RWM event. In less than a week, the team dominated Google’s natural listings for key search terms, and that search engine governance has increased as the year has unfolded. Active in the world of social media, UNTHA UK’s Twitter and Linked In accounts have also delivered an increasing amount of referral traffic to the website.

There has been further good news for the construction industry in the past couple of weeks – at least in terms of the housebuilding sector. The latest NHBC rolling quarter figures – from May to July – show a staggering 30% increase on the same quarter last year. Of course, the same caveat applies as did to the figures from the Mortgage Advice Bureau covered in my last column – we are starting from a very low base, so an absence of growth would be a disaster. It may well be that the particular quarter under consideration accounts for a large leap that is not being sustained.

Sheffield-based roofing specialist, Martin-Brooks, is using the latest building techniques to help a key part of Buxton’s spa heritage hit the high notes with visitors.

Martin-Brooks has installed a new ‘upside down’ flat roof on The Pump Room in Buxton, enabling it to act as an open air stage for concerts and recitals held in the Derbyshire town.