February 6, 2019

Second Tower at Birmingham Development Topped Out

Birmingham’s latest apartment development, The Bank, has had its second tower topped out. Contractor Wates has begun work to fit out the interior of the building, located between Broad Street and Brindleyplace, following the completion of the structure. “This topping out ceremony is the latest proof that Birmingham is a

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Deadline Approaching for Bolton Development

Following two successful drop-in sessions, the deadline for views on a £150 million development in Bolton’s Church Wharf is fast approaching. Muse Developments proposes to build around 320 homes on the Canary Wharf site, located alongside the River Croal and between St Peters Way (A666), Bank Street, Manor Street and

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IronmongeryDirect and ElectricalDirect completes major distribution centre expansion and adds 1000’s of new products

IronmongeryDirect, and sister company ElectricalDirect has completed a major expansion project, to house 1000’s more new products whilst expanding its customer proposition. Part of the Manutan European Group, IronmongeryDirect and ElectricalDirect is the UK’s largest supplier of ironmongery and electrical products to the trade. A new 100,000 sq ft warehouse,

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GBE Converge Appointed at York Community Stadium Project

GBE Converge have been appointed by SES (Engineering Services) to design and install the Security systems for the new £40m York Community Stadium and Leisure Complex. The scheme is an exciting public and private funded mixed-use destination for York and will provide a new 8,000 capacity home for York City

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A wooden Metsä pavilion in Tokyo during the 2020 Olympic Games

Metsä Group and Business Finland are joining forces in building a wooden Metsä pavilion to be used in Tokyo during the Olympic games. The pavilion will be built on the grounds of the Finnish Embassy in the centre of Tokyo, Japan. The Metsä pavilion offers multifunctional facilities which lend themselves to

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Challenges We’re Facing Within Engineering

Tate Consulting is a well-established national building services engineering company that provides a strategic, flexible, experienced and innovative approach in delivering engineering and management consultancy services for its clients. Tate Consulting’s successful reputation has been built on master planning and managing the utility infrastructure requirements for development sites and their

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Latest Issue
Issue 322 : Nov 2024

February 6, 2019

Second Tower at Birmingham Development Topped Out

Birmingham’s latest apartment development, The Bank, has had its second tower topped out. Contractor Wates has begun work to fit out the interior of the building, located between Broad Street and Brindleyplace, following the completion of the structure. “This topping out ceremony is the latest proof that Birmingham is a city quite literally on the up. Our city skyline is being transformed and The Bank is one of the exciting developments helping to make Birmingham an even better place to live, work and invest,” commented Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, Brigid Jones. Owned by Aprirose, The Bank is being developed by Regal Property Group, funded by Aprirose and designed by architect Glancy Nicholls. It consists of two residential towers that contain a total of 406 apartments. The first tower comprises 189 studio, one and two-bedroom properties, reaching 22-storeys, and is now 96% sold. It was completed in summer 2018. Meanwhile, the second tower at The Bank is 33-storeys high and will comprise 217 luxury apartments, including one, two and three-bedroom homes. It will be one of only two residential skyscrapers to measure over 100 metres tall in the city and is expected to complete by the end of 2019. “The topping out of the second tower at The Bank is a significant milestone in the regeneration of this important part of the city and my thanks go to our project team for the hard work and unrelenting commitment to ensure the rapid progress and excellent quality of this development,” commented John Carlin, Managing Director, Wates Construction Midlands. Moreover, tenants will also have access to a private gym, residents lounge and coffee bar, a private kitchen and dining room, on-site cycle storage and secure and private outdoor green space. “As Birmingham continues to thrive as the UK’s second City, schemes such as The Bank are integral to providing quality housing as the business scene continues to bloom and attract talent to the city centre. As The Bank development nears completion we look forward to it becoming not only an iconic addition to the skyline but a part of the fabric of Birmingham. The scheme represents not only a strong investment for Aprirose into a key business destination but a mark of our commitment to Birmingham’s continued growth,” concluded Manish Gudka, CEO, Aprirose.

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Deadline Approaching for Bolton Development

Following two successful drop-in sessions, the deadline for views on a £150 million development in Bolton’s Church Wharf is fast approaching. Muse Developments proposes to build around 320 homes on the Canary Wharf site, located alongside the River Croal and between St Peters Way (A666), Bank Street, Manor Street and Folds Road. “Having over 300 local residents come and engage with our consultation on Church Wharf is very encouraging. Church Wharf is a really important development for Bolton. It’s the first site to come forward under the Council’s ambitious town centre strategy and we are grateful for everyone who has shared their views on the proposals with us. The consultation period remains open, and I would encourage local residents who are yet to have their say on Church Wharf to provide feedback on the project website,” commented David Burkinshaw of Muse Developments. Ranging from one to four bedrooms, the new homes will include townhouses and apartments aimed at young people, first-time buyers and families. Further plans for the site include a new hotel, commercial offices and leisure and retail opportunities, such as a café, convenience store or bar/restaurant. The development will help improve the area around the river, with plans also in place to construct a new footbridge linking the site to Bank Street. Hundreds of local residents viewed the plans at the public sessions, as part of a consultation process, with over 95% of visitors who completed feedback forms at the drop-in event having said they agreed with plans to develop Church Wharf. “We are delighted with how the consultation has gone and the response from the community,” said Councillor Ebrahim Adia, Deputy Leader of Bolton Council. “This is the first major scheme in our masterplan where developers have revealed detailed proposals for the site. The Church Wharf plans will transform a key gateway into Bolton that needs attention and care, and we are backing the scheme through our wider £100 million investment.” Local residents can still have their say on the consultation website, with the consultation remaining open until Friday 8th February.

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IronmongeryDirect and ElectricalDirect completes major distribution centre expansion and adds 1000’s of new products

IronmongeryDirect, and sister company ElectricalDirect has completed a major expansion project, to house 1000’s more new products whilst expanding its customer proposition. Part of the Manutan European Group, IronmongeryDirect and ElectricalDirect is the UK’s largest supplier of ironmongery and electrical products to the trade. A new 100,000 sq ft warehouse, which is the equivalent of two football pitches, will now house over 30,000 products for both IronmongeryDirect and its co-brand ElectricalDirect all available for next day delivery. The new facilities will also have 2,000 pallet storage locations. Managing Director of the Manutan Traders Division, Wayne Lysaght-Mason, commented: “We took the decision to double the size of our warehouse in order to continue our 20% year on year growth, cement our market leading proposition and drive ambitious range extension. Whilst giving our sister brand ElectricalDirect a strong base for growth. “At the same time, we have expanded our call centre, while all other departments have been moved into modern, purpose-built office space.” The new warehouse officially opened on Thursday 17th January by Xavier Guichard, Chief Executive Officer at Manutan Group and Wayne Lysaght-Mason. They were also joined by the rest of the Manutan Group Management Board, along with over 200 staff to celebrate this significant landmark. Wayne added: “IronmongeryDirect will now benefit from an upgraded and expanded distribution centre, enabling an improved customer experience. The expansion will improve all areas of the business, providing a major boost for our revenue and profitability growth.” The expansion also allows the organisation to bring in the fulfilment of ElectricalDirect orders under one roof, enabling the service and product range to be greatly improved. Wayne concluded: “Our customers can expect to receive the same great service, ordering up to 8.00pm 7 days a week for next day delivery, but with the addition of a number of new and exciting products which will further complement our already market leading range”. In 2019 IronmongeryDirect is also celebrating its 50th year supplying architectural ironmongery to tradespeople. Starting out as a traditional ironmongers, today customers can browse over 17,500 products in the catalogue and online. With the UK’s biggest range of quality products in stock for next day delivery as standard, an award-winning service and low trade prices, IronmongeryDirect is proud to be the masters of their trade. Orders can be placed as late as 8pm for next day delivery from Sunday through to Friday and by 4pm on Saturdays. Free, no quibble returns are available on all products.   For more information, visit IronmongeryDirect.com or call their team of specialist advisors on 0800 168 28 28.

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GBE Converge Appointed at York Community Stadium Project

GBE Converge have been appointed by SES (Engineering Services) to design and install the Security systems for the new £40m York Community Stadium and Leisure Complex. The scheme is an exciting public and private funded mixed-use destination for York and will provide a new 8,000 capacity home for York City Football Club and York City Knights RLFC. It will also offer a swimming pool, fitness and active play facilities, as well as a new community hub providing health and wellbeing services and commercial leisure uses for the city and beyond. GBE Converge will be working with partners Honeywell for Intruder Detection Systems, HIK Vison for CCTV, and xPLAN for Access Control ensuring the facility has a fully integrated, bespoke and future-proofed security solution. GBE Converge are scheduled to complete their work in May 2019 with the complex opening during the summer. Andy Westgarth, GBE Converge’s Business Development Manager commented “We are delighted to be working with our long-standing client SES (Engineering Services) and to be part of this exciting project that will serve as a real asset to the York community”.

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A wooden Metsä pavilion in Tokyo during the 2020 Olympic Games

Metsä Group and Business Finland are joining forces in building a wooden Metsä pavilion to be used in Tokyo during the Olympic games. The pavilion will be built on the grounds of the Finnish Embassy in the centre of Tokyo, Japan. The Metsä pavilion offers multifunctional facilities which lend themselves to many kinds of events: exhibitions, seminars, celebrations and relaxation. It will serve as a meeting place for Finland’s Olympic team during the Summer Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. The Metsä pavilion is an excellent example of the advantages offered by industrially manufactured wood elements. The building uses Kerto® LVL (laminated veneer lumber) products produced by Metsä Wood, part of Metsä Group. Building with Kerto® LVL elements is fast and the lightness of the material enables construction on top of existing buildings, as is the case in Tokyo. Similar elements can be used also in buildings of larger scale. “The pavilion takes advantage of high-quality wood products – which function as a long-term carbon store – in a variety of ways. The pavilion can be transported to the site as ready elements, unloaded, moved again, and re-assembled. This is in line with Metsä Group’s goal to replace fossil-based products with renewable and recyclable materials,” says Mikko Saavalainen, SVP, Business Development, at Metsä Wood. The Kerto LVL products to be used in the pavilion’s construction are ecologically sustainable and efficient in terms of their material. The production process of the materials and elements generates very little waste. The elements will be pre-assembled at the plant of Metsä Wood’s partner company and, thanks to this, assembly on site will be rapid. The architectural design of the Metsä pavilion will be carried out by Helin & Co Architects. The design is based on the Kerto® LVL-based elements freely available to everybody in Metsä Wood’s Open Source Wood service.

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Challenges We’re Facing Within Engineering

Tate Consulting is a well-established national building services engineering company that provides a strategic, flexible, experienced and innovative approach in delivering engineering and management consultancy services for its clients. Tate Consulting’s successful reputation has been built on master planning and managing the utility infrastructure requirements for development sites and their experience spans across every market sector; including logistics, industrial, residential and mixed use, commercial, education, retail and leisure. For more information please visit; https://www.tateconsulting.eu   As engineering experts, Tate Consulting explain the five main challenges…. Developments in Technology Whilst new digital technology like BIM is changing the way we operate, the speed of innovation and implementation can be slow within teams that aren’t used to the idiosyncrasies of drawing in 3D compared with traditional 2D methods. And as the industry makes greater use of offsite construction methods such as pod bathrooms, offsite manufactured services cupboards and whole building offsite methods, there can be difficulties in front loading design processes to accommodate these techniques at an early stage. The use of smart technology is constantly evolving and therefore our knowledge and implementation needs to keep up. Smart Buildings can present real opportunities for the client to optimise the planning, usage and help them to manage the building more intelligently in order to make it more efficient, better maintained, improve living, working and leisure environments and to create a unique building experience tailored to individual needs. But technology developments within our sector are still largely a new and unfamiliar inclusion to the majority of contractors, so there is a requirement for educating contractors and clients of the benefits, disadvantages and realistic limitations of smart technology systems. Also, managing expectations is still difficult as some clients are generally unaware of exactly what they want to achieve and require detailed guidance on the best use of available technology. The key to successfully implementing smart technology is to discuss and understand the client’s needs and help to educate them on how this can be achieved. It’s important to remember that innovation and technology won’t succeed if they don’t fulfil the clients’ needs, smart technology is only a means to an end and while initial interest in a new product may initially peek the client’s interest, it will soon become a fad if they are stuck with a white elephant which offers little in the way of return. Offsite Construction There are often difficulties in adopting offsite construction methods although they are shown to be quicker for the contractor with less waste and associated carbon emissions compared with traditional building techniques. However, for the greatest value and cost efficiency to be achieved, buildings need to be designed from an early stage for offsite construction rather than late in the process after main contractor appointment.   Payment Terms Another on-going problem within our industry is payment in terms of subcontractors. Most people will have seen the recent news headlines and social media posts that went viral after a mini-digger operator was filmed destroying the entrance to a new hotel in Liverpool – on the day it was due to be completed – allegedly because he had not been paid. This is not a scenario anyone within the industry wants to see but also not really a surprising one as it’s often the smaller firms and individuals who suffer. A good example of this was the demise of Carillion last year. Lessons need to be learnt from these mistakes by enforcing fair payment policy and legislation.    Regulatory Changes The new revisions to The BS 7671 wiring regulations and the new BREEAM standards are now in effect, and whilst the changes are generally not too dramatic at these early stages there is still a lot of grey areas around their interpretation which will need clarifying and amending over the coming years. With the restructure of the BREEAM New Construction in particular we are now having to target a number of key criteria earlier in the project, which puts more onus on the client to involve a BREEAM advisor/consultant at the early stages of development. This is to prevent credits being missed and the need to then chase more difficult/costly credits later in the project. Also, as these amendments are new it is yet to be seen how the audit process will interpret the changes in evidence requirements. Therefore, assessors will have to be stricter whilst they get used to what will and won’t be accepted.   Staff retention and shortage One of the major challenges within engineering is staff shortage and disappointingly it’s still much more a male-orientated role with just 12% of engineers being women, something the industry needs to actively help change. More needs to be done to educate young people on the marketability and benefits of a career in engineering, but for real change to happen this problem needs to be tackled within early education to push science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industries. Retaining staff within construction and engineering is a constant headache and as a younger new breed enters our industry we need to acknowledge that we need to adapt a new approach in welcoming them and offering the same benefits and perks they’d receive within other industry sectors. This is an area we at Tate Consulting want to improve on in 2019 and are actively looking to recruit new people to join our team in Leeds and expand our London office by offering substantial career incentives as well as a very competitive salary package. If you’re interested in working with us please email; jeff.bearcroft@tateconsulting.eu

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