Hertfordshire construction firm Montway has been fined £144,000 after a Romanian labourer was seriously injured when he fell off a roof during demolition work. Southwark Crown Court heard that on 25th February 2013 two workers were pulling apart the roof of a two-storey house in Golders Green in London. One
With the residential rental sector attracting more investors than ever before the first cross-industry organisation dedicated to driving the professionalism in the sector has been launched. The UK Apartment Association (UKAA) said it will focus on driving up standards of customer service and delivery to ensure that all renters
John Dizard looks forward to the summer release of a remake of the state’s 2001 power crisis ©AFP Just to add a little extra to the entertainment value offered by the US to the rest of the world, we can look forward to the summer release of a remake of
East Anglian civils contractor Bateman Groundworks has won contracts worth £12.5m with major house-builders on three developments in Norfolk. Above: Bateman Groundworks on site Bateman Groundworks is about to start work on the first phase of a Taylor Wimpey development at Wymondham that will see more than 1,200 homes built
Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust has been fined for safety failings after a patient drowned during a canoeing activity event. Mansoor Elahi, 31, from Rochdale was an inpatient at Birch Hill Hospital when the incident occurred at Hollingworth Lake, Rochdale on 5 September 2013. Manchester Crown Court heard how Mr
©Laggan-Tormore The Laggan-Tormore project, west of the Shetlands, could help revive the UK’s hydrocarbons sector For the storm-hit oil and gas sector, the UK’s northern archipelago of Shetland looks like a sunlit haven between the turbulent waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic. On Monday, oil company Total will
The main contractor on the £44 million York Community Stadium, ISG, has pulled out after major delays to the project. The council is spearheading the 8,000 seat scheme and in July this year said that delays to signing contracts would push the completion date back into 2017. ISG and its
The government has announced the biggest ever National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, worth more than £500 billion to the private planned and public investment over this Parliament and beyond. Published by the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the pipeline is up by £37 billion in comparison with the March document
Redrow chief John Tutte has hit out at environmental rules, saying they slow up work on new homes. Tutte explained that companies such as Redrow are often required to fit work in around the requirements of different species, which leaves them with “a very small window” in which to begin
Amec Foster Wheeler has announced that work is nearing completion on a major new refrigeration plant at BP’s Grangemouth site that will help maintain efficient operations across the Forties Pipeline System. Amec Foster Wheeler is providing engineering, installation, project, construction and supply chain management services for the Kinneil Liquid Petroleum
Hertfordshire construction firm Montway has been fined £144,000 after a Romanian labourer was seriously injured when he fell off a roof during demolition work. Southwark Crown Court heard that on 25th February 2013 two workers were pulling apart the roof of a two-storey house in Golders Green in London. One of them, Ioan Vancea, fell from the partly demolished roof and suffered serious injuries. No scaffolding had been provided and the work was not being supervised. Mr Vancea fell five metres to the ground and sustained a fractured spine. He was in an induced coma for two weeks and remained in hospital for three months. Two weeks later, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) paid a visit and found that demolition work was still being carried out with no supervision and asbestos debris was piled by a neighbour’s hedge, mixed in with other waste. Enforcement notices were served. Montway Ltd of Batchworth House, Church Street, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £144,000 and ordered to pay £43,606.15 in costs. The company originally pleaded not guilty, but changed its plea and sought a Newton hearing to determine numerous issues it disputed. The Newton hearing took place before District Judge Roscoe on 23rd and 24th May 2016. HSE inspector Andrew Verrall-Withers said after the hearing: “Mr Vancea’s injuries were life changing and he could easily have been killed. This serious incident would have been avoided if scaffolding had been provided. Montway Ltd’s site documents even identified it was needed.” He added: “Montway Ltd sought a Newton hearing so they could dispute numerous issues in front of a District Judge. They were unsuccessful and the Judge’s ruling confirmed she was satisfied that their approach towards the welfare of their employees was lax and casual, and it was their overall poor management of health and safety that directly led to this incident.” This article was published on 2 Sep 2016 (last updated on 2 Sep 2016). Source link
With the residential rental sector attracting more investors than ever before the first cross-industry organisation dedicated to driving the professionalism in the sector has been launched. The UK Apartment Association (UKAA) said it will focus on driving up standards of customer service and delivery to ensure that all renters are given the best possible experience. Its creation has been championed by Housing Minister Brandon Lewis, who is calling on the industry to work together to deliver more homes for rent and better standards for tenants. The UKAA aims to differentiate the multi-family housing market from the amateur ad hoc rental service provided by small scale landlords that currently make up the bulk of rentals. ‘I want to see the private rented sector respond to the nation’s housing needs by providing new forms of supply and improved quality and choice,’ said Lewis. ‘I welcome the UKAA as a body that can help build the capabilities of the build to rent sector in this country, bringing together the needs of private renters with the institutional capital that wants to invest in meeting their demands,’ he added. With more than nine million renters in the UK and vast potential for that number to grow, there is a huge opportunity for build to rent developments as an institutional asset class. In recent months alone, the number of developers and investors committing to projects has risen but there is still a distance to go before renting becomes the professional, service led industry backed by large institutional investors that it is in the United States. As the first international partner of the US-based National Apartment Association (NAA), the UKAA will benefit from the experience of the US multi-family industry. A federation of nearly 170 state and local affiliates, NAA encompasses over 69,000 members representing more than 8.1 million apartment homes throughout the United States and Canada. ‘The NAA is eager to bring industry training, best practices and networking opportunities to the UK. In addition, our US members are increasingly seeing opportunities for global growth and are looking to NAA for guidance when entering a new market. Our partnership with UKAA will be invaluable to our association as we address the growing need for a global rental housing industry,’ said Doug Culkin, president and chief executive officer of the NAA. As well as providing a valuable platform for the industry, the UKAA aims to lead educational training, customer service delivery, study tours and provide a suppliers’ forum, market data and a range of resources. A growing number of high profile companies and professionals from across the sector have already signed up as members including Atlas, Hermes, Greystar, Manchester Life and Savills with suppliers including Roomservice by CORT and Yardi. The UKAA is working in conjunction with all of the other industry bodies and is in the process of establishing regional branches, which are so far under way in Manchester and Scotland. ‘This evolution of the rental sector is creating some interesting dynamics and raising many questions about what renting in the UK should and will look like. There is clearly a case for using the extensive experience gained by the US and working together to create a more professional market to ultimately give renters a better service,’ said founder of the UKAA and chairman of Chainbow, Roger Southam. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE (What is this?) Source link
John Dizard looks forward to the summer release of a remake of the state’s 2001 power crisis ©AFP Just to add a little extra to the entertainment value offered by the US to the rest of the world, we can look forward to the summer release of a remake of the 2001 California energy crisis. You may remember the original: the blackouts, political outrage and suddenly accelerated power-plant and transmission-line construction. The 2001 California show also had a great villain in Enron, the failed energy, telecoms and trading company. I worry that this time we will not have such a convincing bad guy, but 2016’s California Energy Crisis will have even more misery up on the screen, what with it being summer and air conditioning and gas pumps shut down. Harder to get to the beach. Also, the coming blackouts will have the benefit of even more “earned media” by becoming a topic in the November elections. More On this story View from the US The 2001 crisis had a range of origins, of which the most important was poorly drawn legislation. The proximate cause of the February-March blackouts in the area serviced by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, mostly in northern California, was the cut-off of credit for power purchases after the parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in January. That was overcome by the state stepping in to provide credit for power purchases. This year’s rotating outages in the Los Angeles basin will be caused by a physical shortage of natural gas that can be delivered to local generators. This will be a consequence of the shutdown and draining of a leaky gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, in the northern part of LA county. There were good safety, environmental and aesthetic reasons for the authorities to shut down the Aliso Canyon storage to check every well in the depleted and repurposed oilfield. However, elected officials overreacted with an extremely rigid law that makes it difficult, but not impossible, to ever reopen the facility. SoCal Gas, which owns the storage facility, appears from my reading of the reports to have been slow, rather than negligent or greedy, in spending enough money to keep the field in good repair. A coalition of the gas, generation and transmission owners and operators issued a report last month that said a total of 14 days of power outages was likely this summer, thanks to the Aliso Canyon shutdown. My contacts in the industry say that could be on the low side. Jim McIntosh, who was the operating manager of the California electric grid during the 2001 crisis, says: “They are probably going to take my record of 13 outages away from me. I think the [Aliso Canyon] technical report was optimistic. I just do not think it is in their favour to downplay this risk with the public.” His concern would be to avoid “cascading outages”, which means an intentional cut-off of power to a swath of the LA basin could coincide with another event, such as a wildfire that causes a transmission line to go down, or a generator unexpectedly coming offline. “If [the power curtailments] get above 1,000MW, I don’t know how they will do that. A cascading outage could last for days,” he says. Now when Mr McIntosh and those whose names are on the credit roll for this crisis use the term “the public”, we cannot forget that LA blackouts will include the homes and places of work of celebrities. You will be reminded that they feel discomfort and pain more than the rest of us do. Corporate America brings more focus to the prospective resolution of the Aliso Canyon 2016 energy crisis. Its general belief is that the California political class will stay on course with the shutdown for the first blackout, and maybe the second, but after the third rotating outage the balance of opinion might be to get the goddamn air conditioning working again. Then Aliso Canyon could be reopened to provide short-term gas storage for the swings and roundabouts of demand. Unfortunately, SoCal’s engineers will only use the inner tubing of each recommissioned well, not the full diameter, so there will be less capacity than there was before, in any event. At that time, if you and your team have a plan to present to the politicians in Sacramento, it might get passed. Berkshire Hathaway’s PacifiCorp utility in Oregon has been constructively suggesting that California should more formally join its grid management with those of other western states. I think they could well carry the day a year or two earlier than their worst-case projections. Environmental activists have been very strongly opposed to any solutions other than adding more renewable energy resources, except on vulnerable desert land. They have even commissioned their own engineering studies, one of which, the Powers report, I have read. While it makes a number of interesting points, the enviros’ study elides a few facts. Renewable “biogas” produced from sewage is credited with more than 800MW of power production. The real number is 27MW. Anyone can make a mistake. But it will take a whole state to allocate the blame. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link
East Anglian civils contractor Bateman Groundworks has won contracts worth £12.5m with major house-builders on three developments in Norfolk. Above: Bateman Groundworks on site Bateman Groundworks is about to start work on the first phase of a Taylor Wimpey development at Wymondham that will see more than 1,200 homes built in the next decade at Silfield Road. Another Bateman team will move on to Taylor Wimpey’s new site at Back Lane, Hethersett to start groundworks for the first phase of another development of more than 1,100 homes. And on a third contract, the company has started work with Bovis Homes for another development at Wymondham. The contracts begin as Bateman completes work on a Taylor Wimpey development of 128 homes at Costessey, which has taken four years. The Costessey construction team will move to start Taylor Wimpey’s Hethersett contract. Bateman Groundworks, which directly employs more than 160 people, now has teams on 15 housebuilding sites with major developers across the region. This article was published on 12 Oct 2016 (last updated on 12 Oct 2016). Source link
Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust has been fined for safety failings after a patient drowned during a canoeing activity event. Mansoor Elahi, 31, from Rochdale was an inpatient at Birch Hill Hospital when the incident occurred at Hollingworth Lake, Rochdale on 5 September 2013. Manchester Crown Court heard how Mr Elahi was participating in a pre-arranged rafted canoeing activity provided by an outdoor activities centre in partnership with Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, when he removed his buoyancy aid and jumped into the water in an attempt to end his own life. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found that Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust had failed to carry out a risk assessment for the activity or to adequately assess Mr Elahi’s suitability to attend. Mr Elahi’s family said “Mansoor was a loving, caring and immensely pleasant son, husband, brother, uncle and friend. He never failed to make those around him happy and we feel that a massive piece of our life and soul has been taken away from us. “This immensely difficult time, which has now spanned over two years, has left us with no choice but to unfortunately lose trust in the mental health services at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. We cannot help but think that if it was not for these failings then we would still have Mansoor with us today. We hope and pray that some positive changes can come from these events so patients are no longer put at risk.” Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Caroline Shorrock said: “The Trust failed to adequately assess Mr Elahi’s suitability to attend the rafted canoeing activity. Mr Elahi’s actions were entirely foreseeable as he had tried to enter the lake on a previous occasion. Had the Trust carried out a suitable assessment they would not have allowed a vulnerable person the opportunity to end his life.” Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust of 225 Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, pleaded guilty to breaches of Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation 1999 and Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and was today (29 July 2016) fined £30,000 and ordered to pay costs of £51,223.88. Notes to Editors: The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice, promoting training, new or revised regulations and codes of practice, and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement hse.gov.uk More about the legislation referred to in this case can be found at: legislation.gov.uk/ Further HSE news releases are available at press.hse.gov.uk Journalists should approach HSE press office with any queries on regional press releases. Source link
©Laggan-Tormore The Laggan-Tormore project, west of the Shetlands, could help revive the UK’s hydrocarbons sector For the storm-hit oil and gas sector, the UK’s northern archipelago of Shetland looks like a sunlit haven between the turbulent waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic. On Monday, oil company Total will formally inaugurate a gas processing plant on Shetland that will process the output of its new £3.5bn Laggan Tormore field, west of the islands. More On this topic IN UK Business & Economy The presence of Amber Rudd, UK energy secretary, will be a demonstration of how important ministers feel Laggan Tormore could be in reviving the British oil and gas sector. Peak capacity from the field is estimated at 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day — 5 per cent of UK total offshore production — and Total says it expects to invest another £1bn in other fields made accessible by the Laggan Tormore infrastructure. Yet behind the good cheer, Shetlanders say their islands are far from immune to the oil price collapse. “We thought we were at the beginning of another oil boom — there was a colossal amount of work over the past few years,” said Drew Ratter, a local councillor and former chairman of the Shetland Charitable Trust, the islands’ oil fund. But Mr Ratter said the sector “went up like a rocket and down like a stick”, with low oil prices meaning field developers were regretting their investment. “The North Sea was not a cheap place to produce oil from and the Atlantic is significantly worse,” he said. “They are now completing projects [in the Shetland area] that in some cases they wish they’d never started.” BP is this month stationing a huge new floating production vessel in waters west of Shetland to extend the life of fields there for decades. But it has already put on hold its plans for a £500m gas plant in Shetland. The oil slump is affecting traffic at the port in Lerwick, the Shetland capital. “A couple of years out we could see exploration was drying up,” said Sandra Laurenson, chief executive of the Lerwick Port Authority. “With the oil price collapsing there is unlikely to be any significant spend . . . in new field development.” For Shetland, an archipelago halfway to Norway with just 23,000 people, the oil era is credited with attracting needed immigrants, transforming island infrastructure and making full employment the norm. A past levy on oil landings negotiated by astute Shetlanders paid for generous leisure and welfare facilities as well as the £200m charitable trust. But Mr Ratter said the level of provision may not be sustainable. The council has been cutting spending along with other local authorities across Scotland whose budgets are under pressure. This could be worsened by falls in income from its own oil-related rents and harbour fees. There are also concerns that the benefits of energy development are not reaching the Shetlanders as much as they used to. Locals say it has become increasingly hard to get jobs with BP, which runs the huge Sullom Voe oil terminal among low green hills on the Shetland mainland. BP appears to be “treating Shetland like an offshore installation”, complains Gary Robinson, council political leader, with all workers required to stay in company accommodation. They are now completing projects [in the Shetland area] that in some cases they wish they’d never started. – Drew Ratter, former chairman of the Shetland Charitable Trust Total says more of the 80 permanent jobs at its gas plant are filled by locals, “the better for both the island and for Total”. Mr Robinson says islanders will be watching closely — “the jury is out on that one”. Despite the concerns, Shetland is suffering much less than Scotland’s oil capital of Aberdeen, where thousands of jobs have been shed. Cruise ships are coming in large numbers. Island fisheries and aquaculture are “doing well”, says Douglas Irvine, council economic development manager. Sea produce is worth about £350m a year to Shetland, far more than the £60m contributed by energy before the opening of Total’s gas plant. The council is keen to foster growth in tourism and renewable energy, though tapping the windswept archipelago’s most obvious resource would require an expensive connector to the Scottish mainland. Mr Robinson says oil and gas will be important to Shetland for decades to come but the downturn has been instructive. “It does emphasise the need for diversification,” he says. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link
The main contractor on the £44 million York Community Stadium, ISG, has pulled out after major delays to the project. The council is spearheading the 8,000 seat scheme and in July this year said that delays to signing contracts would push the completion date back into 2017. ISG and its subcontractors were initially due to start working on the scheme in August this year and were set to complete the job in 62 weeks, however it now seems that the work will not start at all. An ISG spokesperson said that delays relating to the Judicial Review and rising cost pressures have forced them to pull out of the scheme, which is being led by leisure operator GLL. In October last year, cinema chain Vue launched a legal challenge against the stadium regarding plans for a 13 screen cinema which will be part of the project. The Vue has a 12-screen cinema down the road at Clifton Moor. Seven months prior to this, a review forced York City Council into investing a further £7 million into the initial £37 million project. A spokesperson for ISG explained: “We’ve worked for over two years, alongside our consortium partners, to realise the vision for a new community stadium at York, and successfully delivered the enabling package for the scheme in late 2015. “Our commitment to the stadium has never been in question and we have worked diligently to explore every opportunity to bring the scheme to site, however with further delays caused by the Judicial Review and increasing cost pressures, we’ve been unable to reach a consensus for the next phase of the project. We will continue to support our partners as they seek an alternative contractor.” The York Community Stadium will be home to the city’s professional football team York City FC and rugby league club the York City Knights.
The government has announced the biggest ever National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, worth more than £500 billion to the private planned and public investment over this Parliament and beyond. Published by the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the pipeline is up by £37 billion in comparison with the March document and will include 20 new schemes, such as the Cambridge to Oxford Expressway. The pipeline will help to deliver important local schemes throughout the UK, including housing, flood defence, broadband and transport. It contains: More than £500bn of planned investment, with more than £300bn of this to be invested by 2020/21; More than 720 projects and programmes across transport, housing and digital to fire up the nation’s infrastructure. The pipeline will include major schemes including the Thames Tideway Tunnel, the rollout of smart meters, and upgrading the A14. The idea behind the pipeline is that it provides a single source of data for both government and the private sector, giving greater certainty for investors and suppliers. The government claims that today’s pipeline is the largest and most comprehensive ever. However, it relies on private finance to make up more than half of the pipeline to 2020/21. The publication of the pipeline has come soon after the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement announcement of the new £23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund. The new fund will include infrastructure investments of over £2.6 billion to improve transport networks; a multi-million pound package to accelerate the future of broadband; and £7.2bn to support the construction of new homes. The government has also today published a new funding and finance supplement to help attract further private sector investment into some of the UK’s most important infrastructure projects. Chief executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), Tony Meggs, said: “Creating the IPA has enabled us to produce a more comprehensive pipeline. Having the visibility and certainty of a pipeline of construction and infrastructure investment allows industry to invest strategically for the market, not just tactically for the project.”
Redrow chief John Tutte has hit out at environmental rules, saying they slow up work on new homes. Tutte explained that companies such as Redrow are often required to fit work in around the requirements of different species, which leaves them with “a very small window” in which to begin construction work. The head of the Flintshire based company explained: “If you get planning permission you will not be able to start on site if you have ecology issues because of hibernation seasons. “One particular site [near Cheltenham] had dormice, so that meant we can’t start on the site until spring next year, but then the issue is you have the bird nesting season. So there’s a very small window of trying to start work on a site.” Mr Tutte also criticised EU legislation which protects the great crested newt, a species which has seen a dramatic decline in the UK in recent decades due to the loss of habitat and pesticide pollution – and conservationists say that decline is continuing. Numbers are even lower in continental Europe making the UK population even more important in conservation terms. However, Mr Tutte said: “The UK has the largest colonies of great crested newts in the whole of Europe. We haven’t got a shortage, there’s no threat to great crested newts in the UK, but it’s European legislation.” Destroying great crested newt habitat can lead to a fine or imprisonment. Developers are required to comply with laws protecting newts when they seek planning permission. They may have to halt work on a site if a pond inhabited by newts is discovered. Changes to the rules introduced last year by Natural England allow housebuilders to remove newts to another colony away from the site. But Mr Tutte added, this depends on the time of the year. “You can’t collect and transport the newts to new sites if the temperature is below 5 degrees. So it writes off the winter for being able to do those works on the site,” he said.
Amec Foster Wheeler has announced that work is nearing completion on a major new refrigeration plant at BP’s Grangemouth site that will help maintain efficient operations across the Forties Pipeline System. Amec Foster Wheeler is providing engineering, installation, project, construction and supply chain management services for the Kinneil Liquid Petroleum Gas (KLPG) Chilldown Project located at BP’s Refrigerated Liquid Petroleum Gas (RLPG) site in Grangemouth, Scotland. Amec Foster Wheeler’s completions and commissioning specialist, qedi, is providing commissioning support for the project. Jim Lenton, Amec Foster Wheeler’s Interim President Northern Europe and CIS said: “We are proud to deliver this project for BP using our leading brownfield and onshore engineering experience and expertise. We have been working with BP at Grangemouth since the 1970s and we are delighted to have been a part of an impressive collaboration to successfully maintain the efficiency of the Forties Pipeline System.” Mark Thomas, BP’s Regional President for the North Sea, said: “The UK-based engineering services industry offers a wealth of expertise and capability which is being demonstrated through the safe and efficient delivery of this complex project. It is great to see so many companies from all parts of the UK working together to contribute towards a project that will, once complete, maintain efficient operations across the Forties Pipeline System for many years to come.” The RLPG plant currently operates with R22, a colourless, refrigerant gas. EU legislation requires the replacement of R22 and Amec Foster Wheeler provided the conceptual design study identifying R410a as a suitable more environmentally friendly and efficient replacement refrigerant. Refrigeration is required to chill the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to enable storage and eventual transportation by ship to market. Without refrigeration, the Forties Pipeline System would be unable to operate. The UK supply chain has played a vital role in this project with BP and Amec Foster Wheeler drawing on the capabilities of a highly skilled local workforce to achieve successful delivery.
