Author Archives: Contributor

The Construction Playbook is the latest initiative from the government to address the challenges prevalent within the construction industry. It provides guidance and sets expectations for how all supply chain parties should engage with each other when working on public sector projects. One of the challenges where the playbook will…

Plans for a £288m London Centre for Music have been axed in favour of an upgrade to the existing Barbican Centre. The 14-storey concert hall was due to be built on the south-eastern edge of the Barbican Estate – where the Museum of London is currently located – and provide…

The construction industry has made great strides with health and safety, especially around worker safety and preventing physical injuries and deaths. But there are huge improvements that still need to be made in protecting the mental health of workers. “Remember that an employer’s duty under the Health and Safety at…

Today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science. With so much brilliant innovation going on in the scientific world at present, it feels like a great opportunity to encourage more organisations to consider the outstanding talent that is waiting to be discovered. Historically, construction and engineering have been…

The new year is barely under way, yet it has already brought with it momentous change – new vaccines for COVID, being delivered at phenomenal pace; a potentially balanced political backdrop with the USA electing a more stable President; and, most importantly for our market, some resolution on Brexit. While…

Payment has been creeping up the agenda recently in Construction News. In December, it published an Oracle-sponsored panel discussion and, last month, it published its latest CN Payment 100 list, analysing how promptly the UK’s largest contractors pay their suppliers. But looking at the landscape today, we can see that…

The arrival of the Construction Playbook is a milestone moment for the industry and its clients in the public sector. But its publication marks the beginning of the journey rather than the endpoint. The document is a roadmap that we must all now follow. The central messages in the playbook…

Like so much of the UK economy, the construction sector was severely disrupted by the impact of COVID-19 throughout 2020 and now faces a challenging recovery. Although classed as an essential service, the immediate reaction to the first lockdown was for contractors to close sites, halting activity across the sector.…

The new year might have only just got going, but already the construction industry has a new minister. Kwasi Kwarteng was promoted to business secretary and with it Anne-Marie Trevelyan became our third construction minister in the space of just 19 working days. Yes, you read that right, nineteen working…

Lone-working in the construction industry has typically been the preserve of site-based staff, particularly in the infrastructure sector. The pandemic has changed this, however. The government’s call that “everyone who can work from home must do so” has meant many office workers are now working at home on their own,…