Buildings

Adrian Attwood is executive director at conservation specialist DBR A skills assessment undertaken by the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme in recent weeks quantified the number of heritage craftspeople and conservation specialists that will be needed to renovate the whole Parliamentary Estate. The extent of this project presents…

Material costs and labour issues hit the sector in 2021 but, despite this, certain areas of the industry are booming. While some jobs have been slowed down by politics, others have been kickstarted by the right political decisions. Here are 10 projects that the industry will be watching in the…

Colin Jones is a partner at law firm HCR, writing on behalf of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL) Regulatory Sector Focus Team The short-term response to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire tragedy has, understandably, focused on high rise buildings with multiple occupancy. With inquiries concluding that the building safety…

Reaction has swiftly followed chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Autumn Budget announcement – Construction News takes a look at how the industry is responding. Refresh to update.

Building safety Addleshaw Goddard partner Peter Hardy: “The levy on developers with profit of more than £25m to help pay for cladding will need to be…

Winner: Zed Pods Our winner describes itself as “an environmentally led modular housing developer with a passion for creating 100 per cent affordable, net-zero-carbon housing solutions in difficult-to-develop, constrained sites like infills, flood zones, garages and hardstanding”. “A fantastic SME, punching above its weight and driving the net-zero carbon agenda…

Winner: Willmott Dixon – The Pears Building, Immunity & Transplantation Research Facility The Pears Building provides a new home for the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (IIT), allowing researchers to collaborate with clinicians at the neighbouring Royal Free Hospital. Willmott Dixon’s client for the design-and-build contract, the Royal Free…

Winner: Willmott Dixon – Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, University of Warwick The University of Warwick’s new Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building (IBRB) is a six-storey, 7,000 square-metre facility for up to 300 biomedical researchers. It comprises five floors of labs, plus social and collaborative spaces and a 400-seat lecture theatre. It…

Winner: Kier – HMP Five Wells The £253m HMP Five Wells project will deliver 1,680 new prison places, as part of the Ministry of Justice’s aim to modernise the prison estate, to make it more efficient, safer and better focused on rehabilitation. A core goal is to optimise design, procurement,…

Winner: TopHat – Low Carbon Homes TopHat said its White Road project for Medway Council represented a showcase of what can be delivered using offsite construction, with the project’s 20 homes accounting for less embodied carbon than one traditionally built home. Once occupied, each of the houses should deliver a…

Progress on protecting buildings from the impact of climate change is behind where it should be, and the need is only becoming more urgent. Greg Pitcher reports

“Climate change has arrived.” That was the clear message in a key paper handed to ministers this summer. The declaration in the Climate Change…