Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Mon, Apr 18th 2016 Roof slates from Welsh Slate feature on a refurbished building at the heart of the regeneration of Kings Cross. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday Some 6,400 natural slates from Welsh Slate have helped restore to its former glory the roof of the first purpose-built gym in England, albeit now as a designer restaurant. More than 600m2 of Welsh Slate’s 500mm x 300mm Penrhyn Heather Blue County-grade slates have been used on the main and clerestory roofs and flank roofs of the dormer windows of the Grade ll listed German Gymnasium – a landmark in the King’s Cross regeneration masterplan. They were specified by architects Allies and Morrison to return the roof to its former appearance after the original Welsh Slate roof (which is an important early example of the use of laminated timber to enable broad spans) was removed and the building was left with only a bituminous felt covering across the structure. They also match the slate roofs of the adjacent St Pancras Station and Great Northern Hotels. The new roof over trusses up to 20m wide was installed over four winter/spring months by Attleys Roofing who were reliant on multiple, small deliveries due to the tight site, lack of storage and range of materials required to bring the roof up to today’s standards – insulation, vapour control layer, counter battens, felt, battens and Welsh slates. After a 17-month rebuild the renovated building was officially opened to the public by restaurant group D&D London in November (2015). Originally designed by Edward Gruning and built in the 1860s, the German Gymnasium was influential in the development of athletics in Britain. The building cost £6,000 and was funded solely by the German community in London with the intention of promoting strength-based gymnastics for men and women. The National Olympian Association held the indoor events of the first Olympic Games there in 1866 and they continued there annually until the White City games in 1908. After the First World War the building was taken over by the Great Northern Railway and converted to offices, being sub-divided into cellular offices, with first floor, staircase and internal partitions inserted to divide up the overall single volume. It remained in the ownership of the railway operators under various acronyms until it was drawn into the overall masterplan for the redevelopment of King’s Cross. The earlier demolition of the buildings around it and the emerging context have allowed the public realm surrounding it to become a more dynamic space, the building becoming both a way-finding landmark and a destination in its own right. Allies and Morrison were commissioned by developer Argent to restore and repair the fabric of the building to a shell and core finish to enable subsequent fit out by one of three shortlisted restaurant operators. Conran and Partners established the restaurant concept design and completed the fit-out which includes a new steel mezzanine and staircases. Andrew Rixson of Allies and Morrison said: “The design of the roof is complicated by the increased depth of the new roof build-up in that the additional thickness of the roof sets the new slate tiles above the level of the brickwork details of the existing gable parapets. “To resolve this, our design approach separates the slates from the brickwork by introducing hidden gutters, valleys and leadwork detailing around the perimeters of the roof. These details are adapted into various different forms due to the variety of conditions found within the existing roof and the deformation of the timber roof structure over time but reconcile the precisely constructed new roof elements with the unevenness of the Victorian brickwork.” He added: “Welsh Slate provided technical advice throughout the design phase through telephone consultation and product literature. The slates could be used in a consistent tile size with even colour and their fixings hidden by the overlapping of each tile. We were also able to resolve design problems using the integrated and unobtrusive service penetrations, which are pleasing architecturally and from a conservation perspective, by avoiding the need for a proprietary vent pipe protruding above the pitch of the roof.” Tina Attley of Attleys Roofing said: “The Welsh Slate has provided the aesthetics required by the client and the architect and at the same time has kept it in keeping with the area. Everyone is really pleased with the roof.” ENDS   Source link

Far from having years to work out how to curb the risks of climate change, we face a moment of truth ©Getty Beijing in December: People wear protective masks after pollutant PM 2.5 registered nearly 25 times the acceptable standard set by the World Health Organization Virtually all new fossil fuel-burning power-generation capacity will end up “stranded”. This is the argument of a paper by academics at Oxford university. We have grown used to the idea that it will be impossible to burn a large portion of estimated reserves of fossil fuels if the likely rise in global mean temperatures is to be kept below 2 degrees centigrade. But fuels are not the only assets that might be stranded. A similar logic can be applied to parts of the capital stock. February was the warmest month on record. The current El Niño — the warming of the global climate triggered by the Pacific Ocean — has boosted temperatures, just as it did in 1997-98. The recent supposed pause in rising temperature was relative to the sudden jump at that time. A comparison between 1998 and today shows that temperature continues to climb, together with atmospheric stocks of carbon dioxide. This reminds us of the realities of climate change. More On this topic Martin Wolf Moreover, two forms of inertia govern climate policy. First, infrastructure in power generation, which generates a quarter of all anthropogenic emissions, is extremely long-lived. In the EU, 29 per cent of thermal power plants is more than 30 years old and 61 per cent is more than 20 years old. Second, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries. Thus it is necessary to think not of annual flows but of cumulative emissions or of a global carbon budget. The Oxford paper assumes (optimistically) that emissions from all other sectors proceed in accordance with the emissions pathway judged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to give a 50 per cent chance of keeping the temperature increase below 2 degrees. It assumes, as well, that new generating plants are operated to the end of their normal economic lives. Under those assumptions, capital stock created after 2017 would break the global carbon budget. Yet, in the past decade alone, the emissions implied by the investment in power generation have been rising at 4 per cent a year. To shift suddenly to zero emissions would appear inconceivable. Accelerated declines in emissions from other activities would alleviate the pressing nature of this dilemma, but only modestly. Worse, the dependence of transport fossil fuels is likely to be harder to reduce sharply than that of power generation. Indeed, decarbonisation of power generation will have to make a vital contribution to decarbonisation of transport through growth in use of electric vehicles. Within power generation itself, there are four options. The first would be a more or less immediate shift to zero-emissions technologies. The second would be retrofitting of conventional capacity with carbon capture and storage. The third would be to replace new capital stock with zero-emissions capacity early in its life. The last would be early introduction of technologies to remove atmospheric stocks of carbon. Production costs of zero-carbon energy, including renewables, biomass, hydroelectricity and nuclear power, are falling rapidly. Challenges remain, notably grid integration and storage. The question is by now more when than whether. It is not going to be next year — not even if assisted by an accelerating rise in energy efficiency. Again, some form of carbon capture and storage seems a vital part of any solution. But these technologies remain largely untried and expensive. That is one reason why a rapid shift in investment patterns appears crucial. The option of proceeding with investment in a conventional plant only to then scrap it early would be wasteful and ineffective. Cutting the average life of generating plants by a decade would delay the “commitment year” — the point of no return — to no later than 2023. This leaves us with little time to transform the world’s investment path. It would seem wiser to install zero-emissions capacity faster now instead. That is likely to be particularly beneficial because the costs are falling with cumulative production. In the last resort, carbon removal or other forms of geoengineering might be employed. Yet all such technologies create technical, and even geopolitical, risks. If, for example, a country unilaterally intervened directly in the climate, the consequences for global relations would be unsettling or catastrophic. Far from having years to work out how to curb the risks of climate change, we face an imminent moment of truth. This also raises urgent policy questions. If carbon pricing were to deliver the desired shifts in investment, it would require credible commitment over the long term. But commitments for the long term can barely be credible. A novel approach would be imposition of cumulative emissions caps. Alas, their credibility would be low even if they could be agreed at all. An alternative might be licensing of new and existing power plants, to force shifts in technology and accelerate closure of capacity. But such licensing would again have to be imposed quickly: otherwise, a race to build soon-to-be grandfathered conventional capacity would ensue. It would also be possible either to subsidise or to tax specific technologies. But this has already proved vulnerable to capture by existing or newly created vested interests. Finally, it is possible — indeed, desirable — to invest in research and development. It is a long-time scandal how little is invested in such R&D relative to subsidies to fossil fuels by governments. After last year’s Paris climate conference, the world congratulated itself on having agreed a new process, even though real action was postponed. Yet, given the longevity of a large part of the capital stock, the time for decisive change is right now, not decades in future. But the world is not really serious about climate, is it? It prefers fiddling while the planet burns. martin.wolf@ft.com Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016.

©AFP For most companies, generating returns above the cost of capital is the norm. In the cement business, it is the exception; the achievement merited its very own bullet-point in HeidelbergCement’s annual results statement. There was no such line in the LafargeHolcim’s report, also released on Thursday. A glance at the other key points reveals why. Lafarge’s sales were flat in currency-adjusted terms, and operating profit fell — even after adjusting for currency and one-off costs arising from the mega-merger that created the company. There was a SFr3bn ($3bn) impairment of assets and net debt stands at SFr17bn, against a market value of SFr25bn. Over at Heidelberg, profit is rising, debt is falling and the dividend has just been increased by 73 per cent. Since the merger closed last July, LafargeHolcim shares have fallen almost 40 per cent. Heidelberg’s are flat. The obvious conclusion is that Heidelberg is being rewarded for sticking to its knitting while Lafarge and Holcim are paying the price for an empire-building, ego-driven merger that proved difficult to execute. A more cynical argument is that Heidelberg did an equally bad deal when it bought Hanson in 2007 — and is simply further ahead in its financial rehab. Which is right? Buying Hanson was a terrible deal in many respects. Heidelberg paid 12 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, in cash, just as the cycle peaked (it trades at seven times now). A year later, interest costs were 50 times dividends. At LafargeHolcim, which was, thankfully, an all-share combination, the two are more or less equal even now. Heidelberg is also more exposed to the areas where demand is growing, such as the UK and Africa. Lafarge is suffering from its larger relative presence in Latin America and Asia, where demand growth is sluggish. Overall, cement sales in 2015 were 256m tonnes — 68 per cent of capacity. It is cutting costs, and one day, its results will look like Heidelberg’s do today. But until both companies can create value routinely, rather than now and again, their shares are best avoided. Email the Lex team at lex@ft.com 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