The Competition and Markets Authority has begun its introduction of a transitional price cap for prepayment customers. It will consult on a draft order today which sets out the technical details of how the price cap will be calculated and implemented. The final version of the order
Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Tue, Sep 20th 2016 The Arkwright Society’s recent restoration of Sir Richard Arkwright’s historic Grade I listed ‘Building 17’ at Cromford Mills has been shortlisted for one of the UK’s most prestigious heritage awards. Posted via Industry Today.
©Getty Energy companies with a ‘junk’ credit rating are succeeding is selling more bonds, as investors regain their appetite for risky corporate debt — ending the freezing out of smaller oil groups from capital markets. Lowly rated companies in the oil and gas industry have sold more debt in May
Legal & General Property (LGP), represented by Savills, has let restaurant space at One Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester to Wrap It Up! The expanding fast food operator, which has 12 branches in London, has agreed a new 10-year lease for a 875 sq ft (81 sq m) ground floor unit
Mullins criticises Policy Institute for perpetuating skills gap Published: 16 May, 2016 Plumbing entrepreneur and patron of the ‘Women on the Tools’ charity, Charlie Mullins, has criticised the Higher Education Policy Institute for perpetuating the UK’s chronic skills gap through its campaign to increase university applications. The Institute has advocated
Interserve has revealed a first-half loss of £33.8m before tax, having written off £70m on a waste-to-energy project in Glasgow. Above: Adrian Ringrose has been chief executive of Interserve since 2003 Interserve is now quitting the energy from waste business after running aground on a £146m contract with Viridor for
The latest Jobs Barometer research carried out by NEBOSH has confirmed that UK employers expect applicants to have the relevant qualifications for Health and Safety positions. Applicants are expected to have the relevant professional qualifications for a Health and Safety position before applying. The research has shown that 90% of
The Arora Group and Whitbread has announced that they have completed a new Premier Inn hotel that is directly connected to London Heathrow’s Terminal 4. Grove developments, the construction division of the company was commissioned for the new hotel, which has been built especially for Premier Inn. Premier Inn took
The Competition and Markets Authority has begun its introduction of a transitional price cap for prepayment customers. It will consult on a draft order today which sets out the technical details of how the price cap will be calculated and implemented. The final version of the order will be published before Christmas and the price cap will come into force in April 2017. After its introduction, Ofgem will be responsible for monitoring and and updating it. The cap is being introduced in a bid to keep costs down for vulnerable customers and reduce bills by around “£300 million a year” for the four million customers with prepayment meters. It will remain place until 2020 when the full smart meter rollout is complete. The cap is part of a raft of remedies from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) two-year investigation into the market, which aimed to reduce detriment to customers and increase competition in the energy industry. CMA energy market investigation chairman Roger Witcomb said: “It is unacceptable that 4 million households on prepayment meters, many of them vulnerable, face higher bills than other energy customers. This price cap will provide a real help to those customers until the disadvantages they face are addressed by the roll-out of smart meters and our other requirements.” The final report published by the CMA in June found that the cheapest available deals were £260 to £320 a year more expensive than those available for direct debit households. The CMA is also consulting on a draft order which will introduce a locational pricing system for transmission losses aimed at reducing the amount of electricity lost on the transmission network. Responses on the two draft orders are invited by 11 November 2016. Source link
Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Tue, Sep 20th 2016 The Arkwright Society’s recent restoration of Sir Richard Arkwright’s historic Grade I listed ‘Building 17’ at Cromford Mills has been shortlisted for one of the UK’s most prestigious heritage awards. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday The Arkwright Society’s recent restoration of Sir Richard Arkwright’s historic Grade I listed ‘Building 17’ at Cromford Mills has been shortlisted for one of the UK’s most prestigious heritage awards. The project to transform the former mill building into the £6.7m Cromford Creative managed workspace scheme and Gateway Centre is one of four finalists in the category ‘Best Rescue of a Heritage Site’ at the Historic England Heritage Angel Awards 2016. The Angel Awards were founded by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2001 to celebrate the efforts of individuals and local groups all over the country who have put hours of hard work and dedication into saving derelict or damaged historic landmarks and bringing them back to life. Supported by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the awards recognise those who champion their local heritage, sharing and practicing forgotten craft skills. The Arkwright Society took ownership of the complex of Grade I listed buildings on the derelict and abandoned Cromford Mills site in the early 1980s and began fundraising to bring the site back to its former glory with the aim of reinstating it as a place of public use. The project to restore building 17, the largest mill building on the site, began in earnest in 2009 and in June 2016 the building was officially opened by HRH The Duke of Gloucester. Cromford Creative, which occupies the four upper floors of the building, comprises 17 flexible office units spread over 8,000 ft2. The new state-of-the-art Gateway tourist information hub is housed on the ground floor of the building. Visitors can find out what to see and do at each of the 17 designated sites within the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site and receive a personal welcome from Sir Richard Arkwright himself, via the new ‘Arkwright Experience’ attraction. The restoration project has resulted in the creation of a number of new jobs and has continued the sense of entrepreneurialism, innovation and creativity which so characterised Arkwright’s Mills in the 1700s. Judges George Clarke and Emma Bridgewater, historians Bettany Hughes and David Olusoga and the Dean of Westminster, John Hall will now select an overall winner in each award category. The public can also vote for the Angel they’d most like to win the 2016 Historic England Followers’ and Telegraph readers’ Favourite Award by visiting http://bit.ly/2bYDu9A The winners will be announced at the Historic England Angel Awards ceremony which is taking place at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End on 31 October. The award categories have been expanded this year to celebrate the efforts of those who go to extraordinary lengths to protect, save and share their local heritage. They now include accolades for Best Research Project, Best Community Action Project, Best Contribution to a Heritage Project by Young People and Outstanding Contribution to Heritage, as well as Best Rescue of a Heritage Site, which the Arkwright Society has been nominated for. Speaking of being shortlisted for this prestigious award, Sarah McLeod, chief executive of the Arkwright Society, said: “We’re absolutely thrilled that the hard work and dedication shown by the Arkwright Society to bring such an amazing piece of our local heritage back to life has been recognised with a nomination for an Angel award. “Being at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, ‘Building 17’ at Cromford Mills is one of the most culturally important buildings in the region. Preserving the rich history of Cromford is of upmost importance to us and we will continue to strive to protect this significant heritage site.” Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, added: “This year’s shortlist shows that heritage angels come in many guises and all are dedicated to saving and sharing our spectacular historic environment. “The impressive young people among those we are celebrating this year show that our historic places speak to all generations and that anyone can get involved in protecting and championing our heritage.” The Arkwright Society is an educational charity devoted to the rescue of industrial heritage buildings in Cromford. The restoration of Building 17 represents the first phase of a stunning £50m regeneration and restoration masterplan for Cromford Mills which will see Cromford Mills transform into a multi-use sustainable heritage, cultural, tourism, and hospitality business destination. The major funding partner is the Heritage Lottery Fund with a grant of £4 million. The European Regional Development Fund provided a grant of £1 million towards the Cromford Creative element of the project. The AIM Biffa Award National Heritage Landmarks Partnership Scheme is the major funding partner for the ‘Arkwright Experience’. The other main funding partners for the overall project to transform the building, that was previously on Historic England’s at-risk register, are The Monument Trust, the Architectural Heritage Fund, The Garfield Weston Foundation, J P Getty Jr Charitable Trust, Headley Trust, Sylvia Waddilove Foundation, and The Wolfson Foundation. Source link
©Getty Energy companies with a ‘junk’ credit rating are succeeding is selling more bonds, as investors regain their appetite for risky corporate debt — ending the freezing out of smaller oil groups from capital markets. Lowly rated companies in the oil and gas industry have sold more debt in May and June than in the preceding 11 months combined, and investor demand for two deals last week was so strong that bankers underwriting the transactions were able to increase both by 50 per cent. More On this topic IN Oil & Gas But while the door has slowly reopened to the sector, investors remain reluctant to extend financing to the weaker oil and gas producers as fears persist over the sustainability of $50-per-barrel oil. Recent bond sales have been clustered in branches of the energy industry with less direct exposure to the movement of crude prices: pipeline owners, oil services companies and groups controlled by sovereign governments. “$50 oil seems to be a rather nice number in today’s market to take fear out of bondholders regarding their positions,” said Richard Smith, head of leveraged debt capital markets at Mizuho. “If you are a weaker triple C credit with a lot of leverage and some hair, yes you’ll face some problems. But the higher quality names now do very well.” Brazilian oil major Petrobras, liquefied natural gas export plant operator Cheniere Energy and oil services company Weatherford International are among the handful of groups to have successfully issued debt as yields have fallen. Six companies have completed bond sales since the start of May, raising nearly $12bn, according to Dealogic. Bankers expect several other companies to tap debt markets in the coming months, as energy groups replace bank loans with more permanent financing. Banks have been cutting back reserve-based lending as the value of oil and gas assets has fallen over the past two years. “Issuers have learnt that an overreliance on RBLs can be a disaster for a company,” said David Alterman, Credit Suisse co-head of North American leveraged finance origination and restructuring. “If you look at all the big bankruptcies, they had one common characteristic, large RBLs and drawn balances that created a mess.” Rising defaults in the sector have been widely telegraphed to investors and bankers say fund managers have a better understanding of which companies to avoid. Roughly 40 per cent of global defaults this year have stemmed from the US oil and gas industry, Standard & Poor’s estimates. But investors are mindful that oil is likely to remain volatile over the coming months and that the recent stabilisation in prices could prompt more producers to bring rigs back online. On Friday Baker Hughes, the oilfield services company, reported a second consecutive weekly increase in the number of rigs drilling for oil in the US, contributing to a 3 per cent drop in the price of benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude. “If you want a 7 or 8 per cent return, energy is the place you can still find that,” said Sabur Moini, a high-yield portfolio manager with Payden & Rygel. “We are still a little cautious and haven’t bought into the fact that this is sustainable. It is very fluid and tough to say the worst is over.” 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
Legal & General Property (LGP), represented by Savills, has let restaurant space at One Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester to Wrap It Up! The expanding fast food operator, which has 12 branches in London, has agreed a new 10-year lease for a 875 sq ft (81 sq m) ground floor unit and will pay a rent of £26,500 per annum. The restaurant will be the second Wrap It Up! in Manchester, following the success of the first on Deansgate. The landmark One Piccadilly Gardens building overlooks Piccadilly Gardens Transport Interchange and was acquired by LGP’s Managed Property Fund in 2014. Since purchase, LGP has made significant improvements to the retail frontage of the building, bolstering the tenant-mix and enhancing the unit spaces. Other recent lettings include Ask and Byron Burger, as well as Pret a Manger which upsized to a larger unit. Mark Russell, senior fund manager at Legal & General Property, comments: “We are extremely pleased that Wrap It Up! has chosen One Piccadilly Gardens for its second site in Manchester, further enhancing the variety of food choices on offer at the scheme and supporting our wider improvement plans. The location benefits from a high footfall of office workers, commuters and shoppers, making it ideal for this type of healthy fast food offer.” Source link
Mullins criticises Policy Institute for perpetuating skills gap Published: 16 May, 2016 Plumbing entrepreneur and patron of the ‘Women on the Tools’ charity, Charlie Mullins, has criticised the Higher Education Policy Institute for perpetuating the UK’s chronic skills gap through its campaign to increase university applications. The Institute has advocated a ‘Take Our Sons to University Day’ to combat the falling number of male applications to university. Applications from young women have risen four-fold between 1990 and 2000 to 133,000 while the number of young men applying has grown by just 110,000. University applications continue to rise, with 343,930 young women and 249,790 young men applying for a university place this year. However Mr Mullins, who is the founder and managing director of Pimlico Plumbers, says that the pressure put on women to go to university, which has driven up those figures, is impacting on the number of women entering manual trade sectors. Currently, just 11% of the 1.5 million people working in the construction-related industries are women and, worse still, only 2% are employed in manual trades. The Women on the Tools charity hopes to dramatically increase this number to ensure women make up 50% of all those working in manual trades engaging with schools, colleges and employers to raise awareness of the range of good quality manual careers across all sectors. Mr Mullins said: “The relentless pressure on [young women] to go to university is robbing them of productive, fulfilling and lucrative careers on the tools. Do we really have half a million jobs available every year that require a university graduate? And does anyone really think that an increase of something like 500% since 1990 is an educational crisis? “What I do see here is an organisation called the Higher Education Policy Institute trying to justify its existence; an awful lot of graduates still flooding out of our universities with high debts and no real prospect of employment, which is all caused by the underlying fallacy that there is no good life without a degree. “What we need in this country are more skilled manual workers to address our chronic skills gap, and if there’s a balance that needs to be redressed it is the one where only 2% of tradespeople in the UK are women!” Source link
Interserve has revealed a first-half loss of £33.8m before tax, having written off £70m on a waste-to-energy project in Glasgow. Above: Adrian Ringrose has been chief executive of Interserve since 2003 Interserve is now quitting the energy from waste business after running aground on a £146m contract with Viridor for the Glasgow Recycling & Renewable Energy Centre. As previously reported, the company blames issues relating to the design, procurement and installation of the gasification plant. The exited business comprises six contracts with aggregate whole-life revenues of £430m that were entered into between mid-2012 and early 2015. Work is expected to complete during 2017 and that the impact of these contracts will be contained within the £70m exceptional loss provision announced in a trading update in May. Interserve’s half-year results for the six months ended 30th June 2016 show turnover up 2.4% to £1,632.9m and the business otherwise performing as expected. Headline operating profit was up 2% to £62.9m. The UK Support Services business, which now accounts for most of the earnings, has won £1bn of new work in the past six months, including a five-year contract to support the US Air Force bases in the UK, worth £230m over the term. UK Construction business says that trading in the building and fit-out areas remains good. And the international business has grown by 17% in construction and by 43% in support services. There is no resolution yet of the strategic review being undertaken at RMD Kwikform and the Equipment Services division. A conclusion is expected later this year, chairman Glyn Barker said, but there was no hint as to whether this meant it would be sold. However, Equipment Services contributed £23.5m to group operating profit, an increase of 26% from the same period of 2015, with the operating profit margin improved from 17.9% to 21.4%. Revenue for the division was up 5% to £109.9m (2015 H1: £104.2m). Revenue generated from UK construction during the period was up 8% to £468.3m, excluding the now discontinued waste-to-energy business. The construction business has steered away from larger projects in recent years, with the substantial majority of UK construction contracts valued at less than £10m. The occasional larger project includes a new £25m contract to build the Fleming Park Leisure Centre in Hampshire. Chief executive Adrian Ringrose said: “Trading in the first half of the year, across the vast majority of our divisions and our regions, has been good, in markets that offer both opportunities and challenges. We delivered a strong cash performance and grew revenue and headline operating profit. “We are taking action to exit the Energy from Waste sector. Our assessment of the aggregate impact of exiting this sector is in line with the £70m exceptional charge we announced in May. “Despite the increased political and macro-economic uncertainty following the UK’s EU referendum, our outlook for the current year remains unchanged. This, together with our significantly improved cash flow and healthy future workload, underpins the Board’s confidence in our prospects and a further increase in the interim dividend.” This article was published on 10 Aug 2016 (last updated on 10 Aug 2016). Source link
The latest Jobs Barometer research carried out by NEBOSH has confirmed that UK employers expect applicants to have the relevant qualifications for Health and Safety positions. Applicants are expected to have the relevant professional qualifications for a Health and Safety position before applying. The research has shown that 90% of the job advertisements in the Safety, Health and Environment sectors specifically asked applicants for at least one NEBOSH qualification. This percentage is up from 83% when the research was carried out last year. The NEBOSH Jobs Barometer Survey is research that takes place every year. The Barometer reviews 100 health and safety positions that are advertised nationally in the UK. The research looked at positions available between the 25th January 2017 and the 24th February 2017. 50% of all the positions advertised during this period specified a NEBOSH Diploma, which is a degree equivalent degree. In these potions, where a NEBOSH Diploma was required, the advertised salary was up to £49,000. This is 16% above the £42,000 top end salary that was advertised when a Diploma was not specified. More employers are requiring a higher level of qualification from their applicants, it is thought that this is an attempt to reward those who have chosen to continue their professional development. 51% of vacancies advertised nationwide wanted a NEBOSH Certificate-level qualification, this is an increase from the 45% found last year and the 38% that were found in 2015. It is thought that the top industry qualification is NEBOSH and it is often specified when advertising jobs as the preferred qualification. It has also been found that the position is more likely to require a NEBOSH qualification if the hiring manager has followed the same qualification route and has had a positive experience. Construction and engineering are thought to be the dominant sectors in the Safety, Health and Environment positions, although they have experienced a fall from 39% to 35% of the job advertisements since last year.
The Arora Group and Whitbread has announced that they have completed a new Premier Inn hotel that is directly connected to London Heathrow’s Terminal 4. Grove developments, the construction division of the company was commissioned for the new hotel, which has been built especially for Premier Inn. Premier Inn took legal possession of the new development this month and it is hoped that the hotel will be open to guests in May. Terminal 4 is the sixth project The Arora Group has undertaken with Premier Inn over the course of the last six years. This means that The Arora Group is making an important contribution to the UK expansion of Premier Inn. This project also allowed The Arora Group to improve their expertise in airports and their end-to-end development capabilities. Premier Inn is planning to expand so that they can offer 85,000 bedrooms by 2020. At the minute, the hotel chain has around 68,000 bedrooms operating on more than 750 sites. The Arora Group was commissioned by Whitbread to deliver Premier Inn’s new London Hotel. This continues the companies’ previous working relationship which has seen new hotels opened at key locations for transport hubs around the UK. Some of these locations include Aberdeen Airport, London Stanstead, London Holborn and London Gatwick’s North Terminal. The hotel located near London Gatwick is currently the largest Premier Inn in the UK, with more than 700 bedrooms. The new Heathrow hotel includes 613 bedrooms and is linked to Terminal 4 through a short covered walkway. The hotel has rooms that meet the new Premier Inn ID4 specification, and also includes 322 cover restaurant that has been branded ‘Thyme’. The restaurant will serve meals throughout the day including the popular and award-winning Premier Inn breakfast. The hotel also benefits from the free Heathrow Connect train as well as the Heathrow Express.
