The latest designs for HS2 west London super-hub at Old Oak Common have been unveiled. Kick-starting the UK’s largest regeneration project, the new high speed station aims to transform the former railway and industrial area, into a new neighbourhood supporting up to 65,000 jobs and 25,500 new homes. The high-speed
A new state of the art training centre will be built by McLaren Construction for Leicester City as part of a major deal between the two. “We are very excited to work on this prestigious project. It’s a wonderful opportunity to partner with Leicester City to create a facility that
Two water-related contracts, which will see upgrades completed on a North Lincolnshire pumping station and West Sussex pipeline, have been won by Galliford Try. The firm will upgrade Keadby pumping station near Scunthorpe for the Environment Agency under a £20.5 million contract. This project will be carried out in a
Bournemouth Tourism has partnered with independent global creative agency Crowd to deliver a new website for Bournemouth Beach Lodges. The site promotes beachside accommodation on the south coast of England, in the style of the traditional British beach huts, but with modern conveniences for the tourists. The visual and verbal
Capgemini will enter into a new partnership agreement with Autodesk, a leader in 3D design, engineering, construction and entertainment software, to deploy ReflectIoD, a new cloud-enabled and secure digital twin platform. The new Building Information Modelling (BIM) platform for building and infrastructure operators integrates natively 1D to 3D, point cloud,
In an attempt to boost house building, south east housing association L&Q is in talks to take over the North West’s Trafford Housing Trust. The acquisition, which is expected to be completed this June, will unlock a further £4 billion of investment in the North West by combining the capabilities
The new, long-awaited 62,000-seater Tottenham Hotspur’s Stadium is officially opening today as the team faces Crystal Palace in the Premier League. This opening comes after a host of delays and two successful testing games over the past couple of weeks. SCX, Sheffield- based engineering specialist, will be seeing its world-first dividing
This year’s Offsite Construction Awards, which celebrate the best in precision building design and delivery, have recognised a project led by ISG and Manchester City Council. The Beaver Road Primary School was named Education Project of the Year 2019 at the ceremony in London. What impressed the judges the most
20 construction and trade students have been welcomed by Stepnell to a number of high-profile building sites across Leicester. There they were offered hands-on work experience on five major projects within the commercial, conservation, education and health sectors. The students took part in up to 60 days of work in their field
Advances in AI-assisted 3D modelling have yielded numerous inexpensive scaffolding design software applications, which are changing scaffolding design methods in numerous ways. Scaffolding design software ranges from simple, free to use products to top of the range CAD applications. Most of them are generic 3D and 2D modelling platforms with
The latest designs for HS2 west London super-hub at Old Oak Common have been unveiled. Kick-starting the UK’s largest regeneration project, the new high speed station aims to transform the former railway and industrial area, into a new neighbourhood supporting up to 65,000 jobs and 25,500 new homes. The high-speed platforms will be built below ground with connections to the adjoining ground level conventional station with an overbridge to Elizabeth line (Crossrail) trains, to Heathrow and central London. The current station design also includes the potential for provision of future services to Wales and the west of England from Old Oak Common. The two halves of the station will be linked by a light and airy concourse with a soaring roof inspired by the site’s industrial heritage. The six 450 m HS2 platforms will be built in a 1 km long underground box, with twin tunnels taking high-speed trains east to the terminus at Euston and west to the outskirts of London. Passengers will be taken down to the HS2 platforms by escalators, while a new public park will be built above them. Material excavated during work on the tunnels will be removed by rail from the nearby former Willesden Euroterminal depot. The long-term planning and development of the wider site is being led by the Mayor’s Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation, which is planning a mixed-use development, with commercial, residential and leisure uses. “The arrival of HS2 has the potential to transform Old Oak Common, unlocking thousands of new jobs and homes around the UK’s best connected transport hub. Linking HS2 and Crossrail, our new station will be a landmark piece of architecture at the heart of the development, designed around the passenger to ensure seamless, accessible and stress-free travel. We want the community to be a part of the design process and we are asking for their views on the latest plans,” said Matthew Botelle, HS2’s Old Oak Common Project Director. HS2 is currently working to clear the site and prepare the ground for the start of construction, later this year.
A new state of the art training centre will be built by McLaren Construction for Leicester City as part of a major deal between the two. “We are very excited to work on this prestigious project. It’s a wonderful opportunity to partner with Leicester City to create a facility that will help to shape the next generation of top sportsmen and women – for the club and for the sport. We bring our considerable experience in sports and leisure facilities to the project, as well as our reputation for quality and timely delivery,” said Kevin Taylor, Chairman of McLaren Group. The training centre will host new facilities for the Premier League football team, including 11 full-size outdoor pitches, eight smaller pitches, five training grids and two goalkeeping areas. The indoor facilities include 35 bedrooms, a hydrotherapy pool, rehabilitation facilities and dining areas for the club’s academy and first team, as well as administration offices and a media centre. A full-size indoor artificial pitch will also be located next to the main building. Furtmermore, the development contains a sports turf academy which will be used to train the next generation of grounds-people, and a 499-seat mini-venue show pitch, so that the under-23 and under-18 teams can experience a match environment. Principal contractor McLaren will complete the project, which is scheduled for completion in mid 2020, on the grounds of the former Park Hill Golf and Fishing Centre at Charnwood, supporting biodiversity with the delivery of 17 new ponds and 38,000 new trees.
Two water-related contracts, which will see upgrades completed on a North Lincolnshire pumping station and West Sussex pipeline, have been won by Galliford Try. The firm will upgrade Keadby pumping station near Scunthorpe for the Environment Agency under a £20.5 million contract. This project will be carried out in a joint venture with Black & Veatch. The station is located at the end of a complex network of rivers and pumping stations within the lowlying Isle of Axholme which spans around 200 square miles across South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. The pumps help transfer flood water from the Three Rivers into the River Trent during high tides. The station is nearly 80 years old and has reached the end of its working life. Work involves replacing the existing diesel driven pumps with six electric pumps, constructing electrical equipment buildings within the existing site and rebuilding the outfall headwall where the Three Rivers discharge to the Trent. Work starts this month and full completion is set for June 2021. The other project, worth £14.5 million, involves the laying of a 10km pipeline in Chichester, West Sussex, for Southern Water. The new waste water transfer main with three new pumping stations will run from the west of the city to the Tangmere treatment works in the east. The new infrastructure is necessary to connect three major housing developments of 3,800 homes in the catchment to the sewer network while complying with Environment Agency consents to limit storm discharges from the existing Chichester treatment works into the harbour. Both contracts will be undertaken by the Environment business unit of Galliford Try’s Infrastructure division.
Bournemouth Tourism has partnered with independent global creative agency Crowd to deliver a new website for Bournemouth Beach Lodges. The site promotes beachside accommodation on the south coast of England, in the style of the traditional British beach huts, but with modern conveniences for the tourists. The visual and verbal identity The project followed the existing brand guidelines and used photography supplied by the client. The brand-new website highlights the benefits of staying in the luxury beach lodge accommodation with attractive images of the interior and the surrounding areas. A dedicated page was created to display the nearby attractions such as Corfe Castle, the New Forest and various water-sport activities. The visuals reflect what awaits visitors on their beach lodge break and position Bournemouth as a great holiday destination. The colour scheme invokes feelings of a coastal sunrise and the typography is reminiscent of the heyday of the British Seaside in the 1930s, but with a contemporary feel. Subtle animations were used on calls to action that represent the sea rushing up the beach to provide a visual reward for those about the click. “Creating an excellent mobile experience was always key to maximising bookings and search engine rankings. With a reliance on large inspirational images, we needed to ensure that the mobile site was fast and easy to use, whilst retaining the focus on photography which was essential to generating excitement in the visitor,” said Graham Dell, Projects Director at Crowd. The website was developed on WordPress as it allows the client to edit the content of the site. Crowd built a bespoke content editor that provides an easy means to edit existing pages and create new landing pages for paid or social marketing. It provides a good balance between inspirational photography and essential information for the tourists.
Capgemini will enter into a new partnership agreement with Autodesk, a leader in 3D design, engineering, construction and entertainment software, to deploy ReflectIoD, a new cloud-enabled and secure digital twin platform. The new Building Information Modelling (BIM) platform for building and infrastructure operators integrates natively 1D to 3D, point cloud, geographical information, and Internet of Things (IOT) data while offering value added services to improve operations and maintenance. This agreement is a step towards meeting the ever growing needs of enterprises for standardized brownfields management along their entire lifecycle. The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, with 75% living in cities. Globalization and urbanization are driving unprecedented demand for new and rehabilitated buildings and infrastructure. Given this context, a BIM single source of truth enabling data centric collaboration across the extended enterprise is a requirement. Capgemini’s services in Digital Engineering and Manufacturing are leading the convergence of the physical and digital worlds to boost its clients’ competitiveness. Its solutions, particularly for the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) sector, leverage model intelligence, digital workflows and powerful data insights to shape smart factories and assets, comfortable and secure buildings, and data-enabled infrastructure towards an efficient, sustainable and livable future. Backed by Capgemini and Autodesk’s expertise, ReflectIOD will provide operators with consistent services from handover to operations, including design reviews in operations, progressive handover and commissioning, support for real time diagnosis and inspections, IoT alerting to prevent fluctuations, remote assistance and asset revamping. “The essence of a digital twin is data- centric collaborations. Capgemini’s agreement with Autodesk will provide BIM operators with a unique cloud- enabled and secured digital twin platform. This collaboration gathers a unique set of digital transformation skills and technologies,” said Jean-Pierre Petit, Director of Digital Manufacturing at Capgemini. The platform integrates Autodesk Forge APIs and geographical information systems, as well as Capgemini integration services and platforms such as X-IoT for device management, and Andy 3D for remote assistance and asset revamping on hybrid 3D. It can be configured according to industry and project specific requirements and is adaptable to change following agile and incremental implementation. Furthermore, as certified Forge Systems Integrator, Capgemini can support and advance its clients Forge based initiatives.
In an attempt to boost house building, south east housing association L&Q is in talks to take over the North West’s Trafford Housing Trust. The acquisition, which is expected to be completed this June, will unlock a further £4 billion of investment in the North West by combining the capabilities and resources of the two housing associations to create 20,000 new homes over the next 10 years. “L&Q has an ambitious plan to build 100,000 quality new homes over the next 10 years to tackle the national housing crisis. We see THT as a gateway to the North West, an area of outstanding growth that needs more high quality, affordable homes. We are excited by the opportunity to invest in the North West with a partner that shares our social purpose, values and ambition, has excellent local knowledge and a strong reputation for innovation and delivery,” said L&Q group chief executive David Montague. L&Q’s acquisition focuses on long-term investment and growth that include savings by removing duplication and increasing efficiencies. The company has also pledged to spend £2 million each year improving the standard of THT’s existing homes, as they come up for re-let. “This is a unique creation that will be built on true partnership and the strength of our vision, and the people who will deliver it. As part of L&Q, we’ll create significant social impact in the North West at scale and pace and strive to find solutions to the national housing crisis. We will deliver an extensive programme of new development and regeneration projects, as well as improving homes and services for our existing customers,” added Larry Gold, Acting Chief Executive of THT. AT the moment, THT is involved in joint venture partnerships with Galliford Try, Wates and Wilmott Dixon to build homes for rent and sale across Greater Manchester and the North West of England. L&Q is one of the UK’s leading housing associations and developers, managing more than 90,000 homes across London and the South East.
The new, long-awaited 62,000-seater Tottenham Hotspur’s Stadium is officially opening today as the team faces Crystal Palace in the Premier League. This opening comes after a host of delays and two successful testing games over the past couple of weeks. SCX, Sheffield- based engineering specialist, will be seeing its world-first dividing retractable pitch on display at the match. The grass surface, which can be rolled back to reveal a bespoke NFL pitch below, is the result of the vision and expertise of SCX Special Projects, the bespoke engineering arm of the SCX group. The innovative system allows the venue to be used for music concerts and other events in addition to regular football matches and NFL games. “It has been a phenomenal success, equal to what we have achieved with the retractable roofs for Centre Court and No.1 Court for the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon, and within a very tight timescale,” said SCX’s Project Director, Danny Pickard. “The Tottenham pitch went from being perceived as the highest risk part of the project – with all the moving parts, the turf joins and an engineering concept that had not been tried before – to something neither we nor the client had to worry about. It’s fantastic. Everything was completed on time despite the huge scale of the project, and communication has been the key. We have a really great client in Spurs,” Danny added. The retractable real grass surface splits into three pitch-long steel trays. When the trays slide together, the join is invisible and imperceptible to the players. The trays, weighing more than 3,000 tonnes each, can be rolled under the new South Stand to reveal the NFL artificial surface in a process taking about 25 minutes. The mechanical tests included the sideways movement of the side trays to meet the centre tray, the defining feature that makes the pitch a world first.
This year’s Offsite Construction Awards, which celebrate the best in precision building design and delivery, have recognised a project led by ISG and Manchester City Council. The Beaver Road Primary School was named Education Project of the Year 2019 at the ceremony in London. What impressed the judges the most was ISG and Premier Modular’s integrated team approach to the project, which saw Beaver Road achieve RIBA Stage 5 in 19 weeks from a standing start and beat 32 other projects to win the highly-sought-after award. Volumetric, offsie manufacturing was used for the £7.2 million Beaver Road scheme to ensure the school could open ahead of the 2018/2019 academic year. This application saved at least 10 weeks against a traditional build programme. Ahead of the academic year in 2018, the ISG and Premier Modular team completed six projects for the council. This wider programme of schools was also recognised at the event, coming highly commended in the BIM/Digital Construction Award category. All six projects were to BIM Level 2, including a fully integrated asset information model. “Early engagement of the right supply chain and standard repeatable designs – informed by lessons learned from two earlier modular school schemes – allowed us to ensure design for manufacture from the outset,” said Neil Walker, framework director at ISG. “The speed of the wider schools programme, including the project at Beaver Road, was extraordinary. Together the project team delivered six schools, with a construction value of circa £31 million in just 57 weeks from a standing start.”
20 construction and trade students have been welcomed by Stepnell to a number of high-profile building sites across Leicester. There they were offered hands-on work experience on five major projects within the commercial, conservation, education and health sectors. The students took part in up to 60 days of work in their field of choice over the last three months. The sites they worked on included St Martins Lodge, Percy Gee Building students’ union, Friars Mill commercial offices, De Montfort Mews student accommodation and Langwith Medical Centre. The scheme was delivered in partnership with Leicester Employment Hub and Leicester College “We have been working closely with Leicester Employment Hub to identify suitable placement opportunities for students looking to build a career in construction and enhance their knowledge. Thanks to our expertise across different sectors, we have been able to offer valuable placements on projects that will have a lasting impact on local people.Tom Sewell regional director from Stepnell said: “The site teams have really enjoyed coaching the students and their enthusiasm to learn and ask questions has meant that they have made the most of the time with our employees. “Investing in the communities we work within and the future generation of the workforce is something we’re really passionate about at Stepnell and we look forward to securing more work experience opportunities for young people in the future.”
Advances in AI-assisted 3D modelling have yielded numerous inexpensive scaffolding design software applications, which are changing scaffolding design methods in numerous ways. Scaffolding design software ranges from simple, free to use products to top of the range CAD applications. Most of them are generic 3D and 2D modelling platforms with added features to enable scaffolding design. Others are entirely dedicated to scaffold design and incorporate particular functions unique to scaffolding. Advantages Of Using Scaffold Design Software Many building contractors are turning to computer-aided design applications to draw up their scaffolding plans. Here’s why: Design applications are readily available and easy to use. Some of them don’t cost even a penny; several online platforms can instantly design a scaffolding plan for free given specific parameters. For contractors looking for a quick, simple solution, these applications come in handy. A majority of design applications feature a user-friendly interface and intuitive functions developed to prioritise ease of use. You don’t have to be a tech guru or a design expert to find your way around the programme’s features to create a working model. Disadvantages Of Using Scaffold Design Software Solely using CAD applications to design scaffolding has its downsides. Regardless of how dependable and precise the software is, you still need a human touch. For one, the design software can only handle so much intricate detailing and scale. It’s not designed to take over the entire project but rather guide the user on some of the key aspects and create a basic model for the design. Even the most advanced software is limited to a narrow range of simple designs that are often insufficient for challenging projects. This lack of flexibility and inability to scale leaves design software struggling in large projects. Hiring Professionals Outsourcing scaffolding design to experienced professionals saves you the trouble of having to deal with frustrating computer-generated designs that don’t fit your project. Design applications are great at solving predictable problems, but they cannot match up to the adaptive judgement and problem-solving skills of a design expert. A designer will give thought to your needs and develop a suitable plan that is fully compliant with health and safety regulations while still being practical and economical. From experience, the designer can also offer you guidance and suggestions to steer your project in a more productive direction. At Access Design & Safety. We have years of experience in designing and inspecting scaffolding for construction and other projects. We supplement our professional expertise with the latest CAD solutions to deliver modern designs that are fully compliant with the newest safety codes. Don’t get frustrated over flawed, non-insured, non-compliant DIY designs – get in touch with us for a stress-free scaffolding design specifically for you.