Risk management comes in multiple forms. For construction, risk exists at every step of the process; before, during, and even after a project is complete. Technology continues to take hold at all such stages, helping contractors and owners become better at risk management on a day-to-day basis.

For example, iSqFt, www.isqft.com, Cincinnati, Ohio, came to market late last year with a solution to help contractors and subcontractors seeking to be prequalified for new work, as well as manage information of prequalified companies. The company worked in conjunction with ConsensusDocs to offer online access to industry-standard documents associated with best practices for prequalifying contractors and subcontractors through use of the ConsensusDocs 721 Subcontractor Prequalification Statement.

Bam Construct, Brookfield Multiplex and Mace are all understood to be in the running to renovate the famous building on Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, London.

Saatchi & Saatchi’s HQ is to be part-demolished and rebuilt with 55 new homes and 323,000 sq ft of office space in one of the West End’s biggest development projects.

The advertising agency was behind such campaigns as ‘Probably the best lager in the world’ for Carlsberg and ‘Labour isn’t working’ for the Conservative Party. It is due to vacate the building in March this year, after which work will commence.

SIG Roofing & Roofline has announced the completion of its acquisition of SR Timber Ltd in a move which it says will strengthen the group’s commitment to ensuring continuity of supply of roof battens.

Talk of SIG acquiring SR Timber had been circulating in the roofing industry since before Christmas but SIG only made an announcement yesterday.

The move has raised questions about whether SIG intends to continue buying battens from other suppliers - something that has not yet been made clear.

The legal action against the government from solar firms claiming lost earnings caused by illegal changes to the solar electricity feed-in tariff has swelled to £50m after more firms joined the action.

Prospect Law said it has issued a Letter Before Claim to the Department of Energy and Climate Change on behalf of a further five solar installation and construction companies, bringing to eight the number of firms taking action against the government.

The request brings the total demand for compensation of losses incurred by the unlawful cuts to the solar feed-in-tariff (FIT) to approximately £50m, up from the initial demand of £2.2m made in July.

The Prefabricated Access Suppliers’ & Manufacturers’ Association (PASMA) has reported a “record breaking 60,000 candidates attended and successfully completed a tower training course at an approved PASMA training centre” in 2012. This compares with 50,000 for the previous year – an increase of 20 per cent.

PASMA is a trade association for the mobile access tower industry representing the interests of manufacturers, suppliers, specifiers and users. The association delivers and oversees the industry standard training scheme and liaises with key regulatory authorities and standards-setting bodies in the work at height sector.

Will we soon see more construction companies deploy ERP (enterprise-resource planning) technology in the cloud? For the construction industry, cloud-based software allows for easy access to project information from any device, which is well suited for an industry that needs to carry data back and forth between the jobsite and the office.

The use of the cloud has grown leaps and bounds in recent years. A recent IBM, www.ibm.com, Armonk, N.Y., developerWorks survey of more than 2,000 IT professionals worldwide shows 91% believe cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary way organizations acquire IT by 2015. This is certainly a growing trend in the construction industry as well, as more solution providers offer cloud-based solutions and contractors continue to turn to the cloud.

Back in July I was waxing lyrical about a TV documentary on the new station at Canary Wharf, part of the massive Crossrail project. Crossrail issued an update on progress at the station this week. Fascinatingly, it has completed the 7.6m diameter 'tunnel eyes' – one at each end of the station box. These are target points for two huge tunnelling machines that will, everyone is confidently predicting, emerge into the station to connect it to the Crossrail network.

The tunnel box itself is an engineering masterpiece, having been built 'top-down' into the river basin and delivered five months ahead of schedule. The project to construct the rail link across London is nearly as impressive as the original Underground project in the 19th century.

The package is available to members of the National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC), as well as those registered as a CompetentRoofer.

ECIC said the scheme is suitable for contractors who specialise in roofing disciplines such as pitched and heritage roofing, green roofing and waterproof coatings.

Workers bidding to work on the London 2012 Olympic Games for Balfour Beatty were subject to blacklist checks, the firm has admitted.

Building can reveal a letter sent to Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) chief executive Dennis Hone from Balfour Beatty construction chief executive Mike Peasland (pictured below) said the firm, which built the Olympic aquatics centre, used the services of blacklisting organisation the Consulting Association (TCA) in 2008 to check on 12 prospective Olympics workers, all of whom were later employed.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has launched an investigation into suspected anti-competitive conduct concerning provision of training services to the construction industry.

The investigation relates to allegations that certain businesses have entered into anti-competitive agreements.

Details are scant and the businesses under investigation have not been named, but the OFT announcement suggests that its concerns focus on the activities of a trade association.