Author Archives: Ian Weinfass

Ardmore has blamed inflation, supply-chain failures and “some poor management” as the reasons it suffered a £10.8m pre-tax loss for the year ending 30 September 2023. Newly released financial results show that the main contractor’s turnover dropped to £403.1m from £435.1m – falling far short of the £447.8m it expected…

The government expects up to £775bn to be spent on infrastructure and construction across the public and private sectors in the next decade. The long-awaited National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline from Whitehall's Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) outlines 660 projects over the next 10 years. The document was released this…

Wates has appointed former Legal & General Modular Homes boss Rosie Toogood to its executive committee. Toogood joined the offsite housing arm of L&G in 2017 from Rolls-Royce, where she had been business development director of its aerospace business. L&G announced the closure of its modular business in May 2023,…

A senior figure in the crane industry has called for mobile cranes to be subject to the same regulations and licensing as HGVs. Peter Gibbs, who chairs the Construction Plant-hire Association’s mobile crane interest group, told Construction News that he believes the machinery should be subject to oversight from traffic…

The construction sector is still not ready for some of the significant changes emerging from the Building Safety Act, a major report has concluded. These include companies being able to demonstrate the competence of their workforce and being able to show that no one on their job is working beyond…

Kier and McLaughlin & Harvey have been appointed to Scape’s latest £3bn Utilities Works and Services Framework for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. McLaughlin & Harvey has also been appointed to lead the £1bn Scottish version of the framework, alongside RJ McLeod. The frameworks are designed to provide clients with…

Construction has more entries than any other sector in a list of the largest individual taxpayers in the UK, an analysis has found. The Sunday Times Tax List, which examines financial accounts to establish the biggest amounts of tax paid by individuals and families, said 12 building-company shareholders and executives…

Laing O’Rourke is looking to cut 60 jobs at its offsite factory in a bid to reduce operating costs. The contractor, whose latest financial results saw it plunge to a £288.1m loss on £3.3bn of turnover, blamed delays to projects for the latest round of redundancies. A spokesperson for its…

A Scottish court has upheld an adjudication that found an Amey joint venture should have been paid £1.8m over a delayed electrical substation project. Amey Power Services and UK Grid Solutions built a new electrical substation building and associated infrastructure in Fort Augustus, near Loch Ness in the Highlands, under…

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is looking to get up to £100m of support from Whitehall to expand a vaccine manufacturing facility in Merseyside, it has been reported. According to the Financial Times, the company is preparing a formal application for the cash to help expand its operations at its nasal flu…