Enabling legislation for the High Speed 2 railway line between London and Birmingham has completed its passage through the House of Commons. The hybrid bill for phase one of the HS2 scheme passed its third reading in the Commons yesterday evening (23rd March 2016) with MPs voting 399 in favour and 42 against. The Bill will now pass to the House of Lords. Subject to completing its parliamentary passage, construction remains on course to begin in 2017. Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: “Once again Parliament has backed HS2 and brought this vital new railway one step closer to reality. British contractors are now bidding to build the line, British apprentices are waiting to work on it and British cities are waiting to benefit from it. “We expect HS2 to begin construction next year. As we enter this new phase I make three pledges: we will work closely with those communities affected by the HS2 route, we will keep a firm grip on costs and we will drive maximum value for money from this new railway.” Civil engineering contractors welcomed the news. Alasdair Reisner, chief executive of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA), said: “Today’s news represents a major milestone for this once in a generation project, and will do much to boost industry’s confidence in the scheme. “HS2 will form the backbone of Britain’s transport infrastructure in the 21st century, supporting nationwide growth and prosperity. “At the same time, HS2 must be part of a wide-ranging approach to renewing the UK’s infrastructure. Following on from today’s news, CECA would like to see progress on the delivery of the second phase of HS2, which will drive growth in the north of England, and underpin the Northern Powerhouse. “The fact that HS2 has secured cross-party support mean industry has the confidence to plan for and deliver this transformative scheme on time and on budget.” Yesterday HS2 Ltd published the shortlist of contractors for seven phase one civils contracts worth £11.8bn in total. [See our report on that here.]       This article was published on 24 Mar 2016 (last updated on 24 Mar 2016). Source link

30 July 2016 – by Janie Manzoori-Stamford Built to house more than 20,000 journalists covering the 2012 Olympic Games in Stratford, E20, Here East, as the Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre is now known, has set its sights on becoming a hub for the next generation of tech occupiers: the internet industrialists. Some 18 months from completion, the Delancey-led redevelopment of the Press and Broadcast Centre is 55% let by floorspace and Gavin Poole – the man behind the ambitious plan to steal some tech thunder from the EC1 homeland – is feeling confident. “This is so unique that we’re not really worried about competition, to be honest,” says the Here East chief executive. “That’s not an arrogant point of view. We’re on the Olympic Park. It’s a unique destination, a unique development, a unique vision.” He’s not wrong. While Here East may not be the only London development targeting the growing tech sector, it is by far the biggest. At 1.2m sq ft – the equivalent of almost 90 Olympic-sized swimming pools – Here East has the capacity to support more than 5,500 jobs and to pump more than £340m into the local economy. It has already secured data centre operator Infinity SDC as a tenant. Broadcaster BT Sport is there already, while visual arts organisation SPACE Studios and dance studio Wayne McGregor have also committed to taking space in the campus. Poole has ambitions to make Here East the centre of the tech universe not for the coders, but for the makers, for the internet industrialists manufacturing the products and services of the future. He sees Here East as a place where “serious” products – broadcast content, robotics, wearable technology and software – can be developed. Central to this ambition is collaboration, says Poole, who this week announced that a new Technology Innovation Centre is to be developed at the project. The TIC, a jv between Delancey fund DV4 and ENTIQ, the team behind Canary Wharf fintech accelerator Level39, will occupy 68,000 sq ft on the ground floor of the former Olympic Press Centre. At full capacity the TIC will support as many as 500 on-site members and organisations that will have access to accelerator and incubation programmes, prototyping facilities and a state-of-the-art technology lab, designed to support new product development, business growth and collaboration. Prior to the Here East offer, internet industrialists often took space in whatever properties they could get their hands on, space that was often at the end of its use and ready to be redeveloped, Poole says. “Those sorts of spaces were great for those businesses when they were start-ups, but a lot of companies talking to us say it is time to get serious and find a proper, permanent home,” he says. All the content from this weekís magazine, including this article, is available in the new app. Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder of Pavegen, a floor tile that uses kinetic energy from footfall to generate off-grid electricity and store and analyse data, agrees. “I started my company six years ago out of my bedroom, which is where I spent another three years working on it,” says Kemball-Cook. “When we went to a collaboration incubator, it was pivotal to our growth. Innovation is not a linear process. You’ve got to be like a sponge and work with as many people as you can.” For Poole, the best way to ensure a strong sense of collaboration is careful curation of tenant mix, which he says he not only has the luxury of doing but believes is critical to the development’s success. “We’ve had people wanting to take the entire building and we said no because it skews the vision,” he says. “We threw out quite a wide net when it came to our preferred tenants and that is where the innovation is, that idea of sharing. “If someone pitched up and said they wanted to stick all their back-office accounting here, it wouldn’t work. We’ve been in that situation before and said no.” It all sounds very attractive. Collaborative space, high-quality occupiers and a high-speed digital infrastructure left behind by London 2012. But it is in Stratford and, arguably, on the wrong side of the Olympic Park. If a tech occupier wants to be close to the hedge funds and investors of Mayfair, W1, Stratford can seem a long way away. Digital connections might be almost instantaneous, but activating a face-to-face meeting could be more problematic – it takes at least 20 minutes to get to Bond Street. The fastest route into central London begins at Stratford International, which delivers passengers to St Pancras, N1, in less than 10 minutes. But the station and Here East are on almost opposite sides of the 568-acre park and while the distance between the two is equal to the distance from Liverpool Street, EC2, to Shoreditch High Street, E1, the exposed parkland between makes it feel further. It is an obstacle that is being dealt with. BT Sport has introduced a minibus for its staff and Here East will launch a formal corporate bus service in September, which will shuttle workers between Here East, Stratford International and Westfield from 7am until 10.30pm, stopping for pick-ups every four to seven minutes. “There’s no denying that some people just won’t consider it [as a location],” says Matthew Glenny, senior surveyor at JLL. “But Here East will almost certainly suit native east London tenants, people who are already based in the area. And the great thing about it is that it should be reasonably priced.” Poole says rents will be “competitive” but refuses to commit to numbers. Glenny adds: “It also sits in an area that’s very popular with millennials. When you’ve got a younger business with people under the age of 30 living in London, a lot of them will be

Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Fri, Apr 8th 2016 The portland cement market demand in 2013 was worth 3,670.8 million tons and is expected to reach 5,165.1 million tons by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.1% between 2014 and 2020. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday Transparency Market Research has released a new market report on the Portland cement market, titled “Portland Cement Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 – 2020.” The report states that the global Portland cement market, which totaled over 3.6 bn tons in 2013, is expected to amount to 5.2 bn tons by 2020, expanding at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2014 to 2020. The study analyzes the product value chain and evaluates the market based on Porter’s five forces model, analyzing the degree of competition in the market.  Portland cement is crucial for construction applications such as the construction of commercial or residential structures. Growing urbanization in Asia Pacific has led to a rise in demand for housing and other infrastructure development. This, in turn, leads to a rise in the demand for Portland cement in the region. Since nations such as India and China are expected to require basic infrastructure facilities to be built, these countries are anticipated to be the major segments of the Asia Pacific regional market propelling the Portland cement market in the future. Moreover, the Rio Summer Olympic Games in 2016 and the FIFA World Cup in Russia in 2018 will require world-class infrastructure developments for the stadiums and other auxiliary amenities. The Russian government has allocated US$16 bn for the development of essential infrastructure for the FIFA World Cup. This is expected to drive the demand for Portland cement in Russia and Brazil. One of the major factors limiting the growth of the Portland cement market is the environmental regulations put forth by several governments. Cement production is an energy-intensive process, which can cause many regions to impose various regulations regarding emissions from the cement industry. Geographically, the Portland cement market is segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. Out of these regions, 60% of the global market was held by Asia Pacific in 2013 in terms of total consumption. North America and Europe followed next as the major consumers of Portland cement. View exclusive Sample of this report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1891 Based on application, the market is categorized into residential, commercial, infrastructure, and others. In 2013, the residential and infrastructure segments collectively accounted for over 70% of the global Portland cement market. Commercial construction applications were the third largest segment of the market. Some of the key market participants providing high-quality Portland cement are:  Holcim, Lafarge SA, Heidelberg Cement, Anhui Conch, CNBM, UltraTech Cement Ltd., and Italcementi. The report profiles these leading players and thus provides interested individuals and enterprises a competitive edge above the rest. Growth strategies implemented by the leading manufacturers of Portland cement as well as other critical data such as product price, pictures, and specifications of each company have been included. This fruitful information assists readers in making wise and informed decisions regarding investment in the Portland cement market. The global Portland cement market is segmented as follows: Application Residential Commercial Infrastructure Others (Including cement bricks, farm construction, etc.) Regional North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (RoW) Contact information Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Source link

©AFP Marcelo Odebrecht is said to have been lifting makeshift weights in a windowless cell in the south of Brazil At first glance, the event looked like any other attended by Marcelo Odebrecht during his time as chief executive of Latin America’s biggest construction conglomerate. Peering through his trademark half-rimmed glasses, the 47-year-old heir to the Odebrecht family fortune spoke carefully into the microphone, delivering what he described as his “initial considerations”. However, on the other side was not an adoring audience but Sérgio Moro, a federal judge investigating Mr Odebrecht’s role in the vast corruption scandal at Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company. Mr Odebrecht was giving televised testimony, and such appearances are expected to be the only public ones he will make for the foreseeable future after being sentenced this week to 19 years in jail for wrongdoing in relation to Petrobras. The conviction of Mr Odebrecht for corruption, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organisation is the most high-profile yet in the inquiry into Petrobras, which has cast suspicion on some of Brazil’s most powerful political and business figures. Tuesday’s sentencing even moved Brazil’s currency markets, strengthening the real as traders bet the downfall of Mr Odebrecht, a donor to the ruling Workers’ party, could hasten the government’s collapse. In his 234-page verdict, Judge Moro said Mr Odebrecht had paid large bribes to officials at Petrobras using secret offshore accounts. “Corruption with the payment of bribes worth more than R$100m and causing as a consequence equivalent losses to the public coffers deserves special reprobation,” he said. Mr Odebrecht denied any wrongdoing. In a statement, Nabor Bulhões, his lawyer, called the sentence “unjust” and a “serious legal error”. Investigators believe that for much of the past decade Petrobras executives conspired with Brazil’s largest construction companies to inflate the oil producer’s contracts. They allege that billions of dollars were stolen to fund lavish lifestyles, pay bribes and funnel money to politicians, largely from the Workers’ party, and its allies. Only a few years ago, Mr Odebrecht’s conviction would have been unthinkable. The Odebrecht group, which was founded by Mr Odebrecht’s late grandfather Norberto in 1944, has long been a linchpin of the Brazilian economy and an integral part of foreign policy. With more than 160,000 employees and engineering projects that range from World Cup football stadiums to airports and nuclear submarines, Odebrecht operates in almost 30 countries. The company has often worked jointly with the Brazilian government. Mr Odebrecht, who attended IMD business school in Switzerland, would throw dinner parties for members of Brazil’s political and business elite, establishing his place in an inner circle of the most influential. On 19 June last year, his life suddenly became unrecognisable. In a police operation across several states, the publicity-shy executive was taken into custody in the south of Brazil where he has been held without bail since. According to local media, Mr Odebrecht was sleeping on a bunk in a windowless cell and using communal showers. The methodical fitness fanatic was said to have set himself a strict exercise routine, lifting makeshift weights and spending the rest of his time reading documents related to his case. Mr Odebrecht, who is said to be an aggressive businessman used to getting his own way, scored a minor victory early on, persuading Judge Moro to allow him to supplement his prison diet with cereal bars to keep his hypoglycaemia medical condition under control. However, following his conviction Mr Odebrecht and his legal team will be focusing all of their persuasive powers on overturning Judge Moro’s verdict. “Marcelo Odebrecht will continue fighting for his freedom and his innocence,” said his lawyer. 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