North Yorkshire County Council has appointed 13 contractors to its civil engineering framework, worth up to £400m over four years. Those picked include CN100 contractors Balfour Beatty and Clugston as well as regional players and SMEs. It has appointed nine firms to its carriageway planning and surfacing framework, including Colas and Galliford Try, worth up to £200m for two years, with the option to extend for another two years. The council has also confirmed seven painting contractors for a £7m framework over four years. Its civil engineering framework has six lots, accounting for geographical coverage and financial scope, while the carriageway deal has four lots. It is understood contractors will be subject to KPIs including commitments to apprenticeships, and other authorities will be encouraged to use the framework. Winners: CECF2016:  Applebridge Construction  Balvac Ltd (Balfour Beatty) Balfour Beatty C R Reynolds  Clugston Construction  Coffey Construction  Esh Construction  Farrans Construction Trading as a division of Northstone (NI) Limited Fox (Owmby)  Fox Building & Engineering Hall Construction Services  Hinko Construction PBS Construction (North East)  CPSCF2016:  C R Reynolds  Cemex UK Operations Colas  Galliford Try Infrastructure Hanson Quarry Products Europe Ltd T/A Hanson Asphalt & Contracting Rainton Construction  Ringway Infrastructure Services  Tarmac Trading  Thomas Bow  PCF2016: Alfred Bagnall & Sons C R Reynolds Eric Wright Civil Engineering  Industrial Coating Services  Pyeroy Ltd (Wood Group) RLP Painting Contractors Taziker Industrial  Source link

Browser does not support script. Contact us The 2015 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship has launched and is inviting applications from schools of architecture around the world. A £6,000 grant will be awarded to one student by a panel of judges which includes Lord Foster and the President of the RIBA Stephen Hodder.   Lord Foster said: ‘As a student I won a prize that allowed me to spend a summer travelling through Europe and to study first hand buildings and cities that I knew only from the pages of books. It was a revelation – liberating and exhilarating in so many ways. Today it is my privilege to fund the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, which I hope will have a lasting legacy – offering the chance for discovery and the inspiration for exciting new work – for generations to come.’ RIBA President Stephen Hodder said: ‘I urge our RIBA student members to take full advantage of this wonderful opportunity provided by Lord Foster. The scholarship has been a vehicle for some remarkable pieces of work and I’m looking forward to reviewing the submissions.’ The deadline for submissions is Friday 24 April 2015. Further details and an application form can be downloaded from the RIBA website www.architecture.com/fosterscholarship. ENDS Notes to editors Application enquiries: RIBA Education +44 (0)20 7307 3678 RIBA Press enquiries: Howard Crosskey, RIBA +44 (0)20 7307 3761 First established in 2006, the scholarship is now in its eighth year and is intended to fund international research on a topic related to the survival of our towns and cities, in a location of the student’s choice. Past RIBA Norman Foster Scholars have travelled through the Americas, Europe, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle and the Far East, and Russia. Proposals for research might include: learning from the past to inform the future; the future of society; the density of settlements; sustainability; the use of resources; the quality of urban life; and transport. Past recipients of the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship: 2014: ‘Buffer Landscapes 2060’ by Joe Paxton of the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College, London, which investigated some of the measures taken to mitigate the effects of climate change, such as reservoirs, artificial lakes and rivers – and the opportunities that these landscapes offer for habitation, as well as flood protection. 2013: ‘Charles Booth Going Abroad’ by Sigita Burbulyte of Bath School of Architecture, which takes the poverty maps of Victorian social reformer Charles Booth as the starting point for an exploration of slum communities across four continents 2012: ‘Material Economies: recycling practices in informal settlements along African longitude 30ºE’ by Thomas Aquilina, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, part of the University of Edinburgh, UK 2011: ‘Sanitation’ by Sahil Deshpande, Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai, India 2010: ‘In Search of Cold Spaces – a study of northern public space’ by Andrew Mackintosh, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK 2009: ‘Ancestral Cities, Ancestral Sustainability’ by Amanda Rivera, University de Bio Bio, Chile 2008: ‘The Role of Public Transport in Shaping Sustainable Humane Habitats: Case Studies Across Three Continents’ by Faizan Jawed Siddiqi, Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai, India 2007: ‘Emerging East: Exploring and Experiencing the Asian Communist City’ by Ben Masterton-Smith, UCL, London, UK       Posted on Friday 9th January 2015 Source link

BHP Billiton will set out plans to boost earnings growth this week to woo disgruntled investors and try to dispel the gloom that a fall in commodity prices has cast over the mining industry. Putting forward a strategy to raise earnings at the world’s largest mining group by market capitalisation has become a priority for Andrew Mackenzie, chief executive, as he seeks to move BHP beyond last year’s defensive measures to withstand the commodities downturn. More On this topic IN Mining Investors dumped shares in miners last year as prices for many commodities fell to some of their lowest levels in a decade. BHP, a big oil and gas producer as well as a miner, was also under pressure as crude prices tumbled alongside iron ore and copper. While the resources sector has partially rebounded this year, most in the sector expect continued volatility in prices and doubts have been expressed about a sustained recovery. In a presentation to investors on Tuesday Mr Mackenzie is expected to say how BHP intends to increase profits in spite of the downturn. “Bottom-line growth is the focus,” said a person familiar with the miner. “There is more that we can do than people appreciate to create value for the business.” BHP’s market capitalisation is down to $70bn, less than one-third of its level at the peak of the commodities boom. Mr Mackenzie, who took over as chief executive three years ago as commodity prices were starting to slide, has so far focused on a strategy of productivity gains through simplifying BHP’s business. A centrepiece was the spin-off last year of a cluster of assets into a separate company, South32. BHP has also boosted productivity by squeezing more out of the mines and infrastructure on which it spent billions of dollars during the boom years, helping it to cut unit costs 40 per cent to levels last seen a decade ago. However, miners including BHP disappointed shareholders last year by slashing or abandoning dividends as balance sheets came under strain from lower commodity prices, with a series of downgrades in the sector from credit rating agencies. BHP, which for years sustained a policy of maintaining or increasing its payouts, cut its dividend 70 per cent at its interim results in February, with Mr Mackenzie saying that the sector had entered a “new era” when dividends had to be linked more clearly to underlying profits. The Anglo-Australian group’s underlying profit fell 92 per cent in the first half of its financial year compared with the previous year. The group reported a $5.7bn interim net loss after $6.1bn of impairments to assets including its US oil business and Samarco, the Brazilian iron ore joint venture where production is paralysed after a dam failure killed 17 people. BHP is expected to try to persuade investors that it is well protected from any renewed downturn. Mr Mackenzie has already said the group’s period of investment in coal and iron ore is at an end and that any growth is likely to focus on copper or oil. While the group has slashed capital spending, from $22bn in 2013 to an expected $5bn next year, Mr Mackenzie has said the group can “now deliver the same for less” and will start to have more choice of where to invest as it completes its largest projects. 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