Leading scaffolding contractor, XERVON Palmers, are in the final stages of a 14-month contract worth c£20 million to deconstruct the train shed roof at the historic, busy London Bridge Railway Station – opening up the station to the sky for the first time in over 100 years. 

There has been a great deal of hullabaloo in the mortgage industry about the imminent upsurge in property prices, following on (predictably) from the government’s Help-to-Buy scheme and other initiatives, resulting in what developers are hoping for and the mortgage industry is trying to create: yet another house price boom, pricing young families out of the market yet again. When are we going to learn?

At the $8 billion development of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Financial District – the world’s first major financial district of the 21st century – leaders in temporary collective protection, COMBISAFE, has supplied a range of solutions to ensure the highest standards of health and safety are delivered across many of the site’s 40 multi-storey towers.

HIGHWAYS maintenance and civil engineering contractor, JPCS, has bolstered its senior management team with the appointment of highways expert Rosie Shanks.

Rosie joins JPCS as commercial and business development director and brings more than 20 years’ experience in the highways and local authority sector.

CISRS Training Manager, Dave Mosley recently attended the annual Scaffolding Skills Challenge day at Newcastle College – to congratulate the young scaffolding apprentices. 

The annual event was sponsored by NASC members, Pyeroy and saw Newcastle College-trained Year 1 and 2 scaffolding apprentices compete in front of an audience of North East employers to see who could erect the safest and most technically accurate structure.

Sika – a global leader in technologically advanced products for the construction industry – has supplied its ComfortFloor system for the innovative and high-end refurbishment of a Victorian house in Surbiton, Greater London.

Combining noise suppression and durability with a flawless finish, Sika ComfortFloor proved to be the ideal solution – meeting the client’s aesthetic requirements, whilst delivering a hard-wearing system that guarantees outstanding long term performance. With this excellent technical and aesthetic solution, Sika helped to create a flooring system that also blended seamlessly between the building’s kitchen and outdoor patio space.

A new website is set to help the UK’s construction industry dispose of its polythene waste in a greener, more sustainable way. www.bpirecycling.co.uk  has been launched by Europe’s largest polythene waste recycler, bpi.recycled products, to outline the impressive breadth of material it can recycle and to highlight the lower carbon footprint nature of its operations and its second life products.

In contrast to my post last month, when the story on infrastructure projects was all about small-scale local activity, this week the emphasis has been on ideas for BIG infrastructure projects – some completely off the wall, but others with a modicum of practicality about them.

It was all down to a series of articles on the Beeb website detailing some of the dreams of architects and planners. First out of the blocks were five ideas which were postulated by their proponents to “improve life in the UK”. The first clutch all seemed to build on existing or past entities to help us get around: a tunnel at Welwyn North, a motorway for the east, a bridge to the Isle of Wight (my favourite), a Channel road tunnel and trams for Liverpool and Leeds.

The latter doesn’t seem to be anything special – we have them in Manchester, Sheffield and famously Blackpool, so why not all the major cities? The idea is for the systems in Liverpool and Leeds to replace the hugely expensive HS2 project and is being supported by the think tank the New Economics Foundation.

The author of its report on the plan, David Theiss, said: “Our research shows the government is backing the wrong horse. Instead of pouring billions of pounds into a single line that will take twenty years to complete we should be spreading our bets on a wider range of transport investments that offer better value for money.”

NASC member apprentices from across the UK have been recognised in the recent National Construction College (NCC) Scaffolding Apprenticeship Awards – with over 50% (13 of 24) of the 1st and 2nd year nominees across the whole of the UK.

NASC apprentices did particularly well north of the Border at NCC Scotland – with 83% (five from six) of the nomination places going to NASC apprentices: Maritime Scaffolding of Aberdeen had two of their employees – Kyle Norwood and Richard Moir – receiving runner-up prizes in the 1st Year Scaffolding Apprentice category. And Aaron Tracey (Interserve Industrial Services) and George Thomson (Cape Industrial Services) also both received Year Two Runner Up prizes.

Bad weather can wreak havoc in the construction sector causing costly delays and safety issues but this is compounded when building on the English coastline in the middle of winter.  In a bid to combat frequent high winds as well as driving rain during the re-roofing of a leisure facility on the Devon coast, workers required a temporary roof to protect the site from the elements - the UBIX® Temporary Roofing System from COMBISAFE® was up for the challenge.