Opinion

Paul Gandy is chief executive at Tilbury Douglas, vice president of the Chartered Institute of Building and serves on the board of Build UK as a contractor director As we enter a new year, it is a great time to take stock and think about the key priorities the construction industry…

Mark Lawrence is a partner at law firm Macfarlanes The Building Safety Act 2022 was the government’s long-awaited legislative response to the Grenfell Tower fire. It forms part of a wider package of regulatory and practical reform aimed at making high-risk residential buildings safer and ensuring that the responsibilities of…

Chris Doran and Daniel Barchet are partners at law firm Weightmans In 2023, the construction industry demonstrated strong resilience in the face of persistent pressure, economic fluctuation and a flurry of transformational legislative changes – leaving the industry rife with uncertainty that will likely persist as we head into the…

Graham Harle is chief executive of Gleeds Worldwide As we bid farewell to another year, I always look forward to seeing which words the various dictionaries select to sum up the preceding 12 months. I felt Collins’ choice of ‘permacrisis’ was particularly apt in 2022, the year of post-Covid economic…

Andrew Parkin is global head of acoustics and chair of the Cundall Futures Group at multidisciplinary engineering and design consultancy Cundall Change is something the built environment has struggled with, but as an industry we need to accept that it is inevitable. As net-zero carbon drives the agenda, consultancies and…

Peter Johnson is founder of cladding specialist the Vivalda Group ‌2023 was a year of unexpected announcements. First, we saw sobering trading updates on consecutive days from two well-known FTSE 250-listed building materials distributors, both admitting that sustained hikes in interest rates were having a negative impact on turnover and…

Harry King is a junior associate at law firm Quigg Golden Liquidated damages, also known as liquidated and ascertained damages (LADs), are a contractual agreement on damages that are designed to cover costs when a project runs past the agreed completion date. LADs are common in construction, as they provide…

Charlie Fitzgibbon is managing director of Edinburgh Construction The construction labour model in the UK is unsustainable, with fewer and fewer people entering the industry as a career. This may not be news – the Farmer Review, commissioned by the Construction Leadership Council, made this case back in 2016. But,…

Chris Ridge is technical policy manager at the Thermal Insulation Contractors Association (TICA) The Building Safety Act doesn’t begin and end with higher-risk buildings (HRBs); it will have a much wider impact and some aspects will apply to all building types. This includes providing evidence that individuals and organisations appointed…

Amelia Spechko is an associate and Christian Charles is a partner at law firm Fladgate The Technology and Construction Court has handed down judgment in Lendlease Construction (Europe) Ltd v Aecom Ltd, providing guidance on a range of issues that have wide-reaching, practical implications for private finance initiative (PFI) projects…