Talk – SpecNews

Construction boss fired from The Apprentice Ι Construction Enquirer

Lord Sugar pointed his famous finger at “construction operations executive” Elle Stevenson this week as she was fired from reality TV show The Apprentice.
The teams were led by Stevenson and Brett “the Builder” Butler Smythe battling it out to represent construction.
The latest task was loosely based on construction as the two teams were charged with winning and carrying-out DIY jobs across London.
She was then fired from the boardroom within minutes of the result being revealed without having the chance for the traditional few minutes of bickering and pleading.
To share your stories email Grant Prior or Aaron Morby… always off the record

Civils contractor faces £400,000 illegal worker fine Ι Construction Enquirer

The raid, carried out with the cooperation of the main contractor on the job, found the illegal workers were all employed by civils subcontractor Sword Construction.
Twenty illegal workers have been arrested after being found working at a construction site on the Capenhurst power station in Cheshire.
Tough new measures to tackle illegal workers and punish firms employing them are being introduced in the Immigration Bill currently progressing through Parliament.
Immigration officials swooped after a tip-off and found 20 Indian men aged between 30 and 50 working on the job without visas.
If proof is not provided, this is a potential total of up to £400,000.

£30m Durham shopping centre revamp OK’d Ι Construction Enquirer

Durham County Council has granted planning for a £30m redevelopment of The Gates shopping centre.
Fund manager owner Clearbell Capital hopes to get work started on its scheme early in the New Year and the new centre will open in two stages in 2018.
To share your stories email Grant Prior or Aaron Morby… always off the record
A contractor has still to be appointed the the project, which will include a cinema and a new riverside promenade of restaurants and 250-bed student accommodation and refurbishing over 20 shops.
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Birmingham bins £1.5bn Carillion green deal Ι Construction Enquirer

Birmingham City Council has torn up its green deal contract with Carillion, originally trumpeted as worth £1.5bn when signed in October 2012.
The council took the decision this week to terminate the Birmingham Energy Savers programme in reaction to the Government’s decision to axe funding in July for the national Green Deal Finance Company and the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund.
The eight-year contract was estimated to be initially worth up to £600m for Carillion.
To share your stories email Grant Prior or Aaron Morby… always off the record
At the time there were high hopes that this service agreement would be rolled out to the wider West Midlands area making it worth up to £1.5bn over the period.

McLaughlin & Harvey set for £65m Luton Airport job Ι Construction Enquirer

Northern Irish contractor McLaughlin & Harvey is tipped to take the biggest building package in the £100m expansion London Luton Airport.
Sources also told the Enquirer that a contract award is imminent for the improvements to the terminal building and construction of a new two-storey pier.
Whitemountain’s job is to turn the existing approach road to the terminal building into a dual carriageway, remodelling of the set-down area and the repositioning of the coach terminal.
A deal would mean contractors from Northern Ireland had bagged two of the three main packages on the programme.
The £100m investment is set to transform the airport by improving overall customer experience and increase capacity from 12m to 18m passengers per year by 2026.

Binladin suspended over crane tragedy Ι Construction Enquirer

The government of Saudi Arabia has suspended construction giant Saudi Binladin Group from working on new contracts following Friday’s crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque which killed 107 people.
The crane toppled over at Mecca’s Grand Mosque last Friday, less than two weeks before Islam’s annual hajj pilgrimage.
The company, one of the largest contracting companies in the kingdom, had been carrying expansion work at the Grand Mosque.
An official statement referred without elaborating to the responsibility and “shortcomings” of the company following an investigation into the crane crash that also injured 238 other people.
The company is believed to have attributed the collapse to a lightning strike breaking a cable that was used to secure the crane.

Balfour to build £350m Manchester campus Ι Construction Enquirer

Balfour Beatty is being lined-up to build a new £350m engineering campus at the University of Manchester
The Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD) will be one of the largest, single construction projects ever undertaken by a higher education institution in the United Kingdom.
Balfour Beatty is one of the framework partners alongside Laing O’Rourke and Sir Robert McAlpine.
The MECD project is being delivered through the University’s Construction Partnering Framework which was established in June to deliver up to £1bn of work over the next eight years.
To share your stories email Grant Prior or Aaron Morby… always off the record
Architects Mecanoo have been appointed to the project which is set to open in 2020 and will be located opposite the new National Graphene Institute on Booth Street East.

Cheshire firm nabs £11.5m Harrogate Council offices Ι Construction Enquirer

Warrington-based Harry Fairclough Construction has beaten rival national contractors to secure the job to build new civic offices for Harrogate Council.
The new council offices will be built at Knapping Mount, a brownfield site originally earmarked for housing, which councillors approved planning permission for back in March.
The existing building at Crescent Gardens is being sold to developers to help finance the project, which will see five council offices rationalised into one site.
London architect Farrell & Clark designed the civic building and offices to achieve BREEAM Very Good rating.
The £30m turnover contractor nabbed the job with a £11.5m bid against Interserve’s Yorkshire office, Graham Construction and McLaughlin & Harvey.

£22m Worcestershire Parkway gets green light Ι Construction Enquirer

Members of Worcestershire County Council’s Planning and Regulatory Committee have rubber stamped the plans to build Worcestershire Parkway, near Junction 7 of the M5 for Worcester.
Contractor Osborne has got the green light to start work on a new £22m rail station in Worcestershire.
Osborne will build a single platform on the Cotswold Line and two platforms on the Birmingham to Bristol Line.
Under the plans, the proposed station in Norton would include up to 500 car parking spaces, with provision for people with disabilities, bus stops and a taxi rank.
Work on the station, which will link the Cotswolds and Birmingham to Bristol lines, is being paid for by both the county council and the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Barratt London to start twisting tower Ι Construction Enquirer

Barratt London is preparing to start construction of a 28-storey twisting tower on one of the last remaining Thames riverfront sites in Wandsworth.
Barratt London has allocated 20% of the apartments for on-site ‘affordable’ housing and is committing £1.6m to improve local infrastructure.
This optical twist is achieved by the diagonal lines of tapered solid balustrades jutting against the horizontal lines of the balconies.
Designed by local architects Patel Taylor, wraparound balconies, rotated at an angle of two degrees, appear as a series of ‘rotating discs’.
The ground level features a double-height glazed residential lobby and a riverfront retail unit. The mezzanine level contains a second floor to the retail unit, a gym for residents, staff facilities and management welfare facilities.