The RSPB has joined forces with Barratt Homes and Manthorpe Building Products to develop a brick that doubles as a nesting box for swifts. The largest nature conservation charity in the UK says that the number of swifts has nearly halved in the last 20 years and that new nesting boxes are required to help recover the numbers as they return to the UK every summer to breed. Swifts embark on a 6,000 mile migration to nest in the UK, however falling population numbers mean that there are now fewer than 90,000 breeding pairs arriving in the UK, which is down from nearly 150,000 pairs 20 years ago. The decline is partially linked to a reduction in the number of potential nesting sites. Manthorpe Building Products, a British based manufacturing firm, has worked with Barratt Homes and the RSPB to produce the new swift brick, which is designed for easy incorporation during the construction of new homes. The first batch of new swift nest boxes have just been fitted at the Kingsbrook development in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and overall Barratt will install up to 900 swift boxes in new homes at Kingsbrook. One of the primary aims of the RSPB and Barratt Homes partnership since it launched two years ago has been the provision of more nesting sites for swifts. By working in partnership, they commissioned the Manthorpe project to develop a new swift nest box design that is easy to install during construction. Barratt Developments Group Design and Technical Director, Michael Finn, commented: “The bricks are an industry first – they are fully drained, ventilated and are unobtrusive, by matching the colour of the bricks. They also help nurture chicks by giving them room to stand when they hatch. “Crucially too, they are much, much cheaper than any other swift brick on the market, which will help their uptake.”

Skanska is planning to introduce robotic technology for the next phase of construction of the Battersea Power Station development. Having received a £700,000 grant from Innovate UK last summer to develop the robots, the contractor’s head of innovation, Sam Stacey, says that the technology will be ready to use on the project in the space of nine months. Mr Stacey reaffirmed that Skanska is the preferred bidder for the second phase of the Battersea Power Station project and if appointed their advanced robot techniques will be ready to be used on the work for the scheme. He estimates that ‘utility cupboards’, which house M&E components for individual apartments, would be delivered 20 times quicker if they were to use robots rather than in-situ methods, adding that the company’s flying factories base in Slough had reduced cupboard construction times by 65%. In the first phase of the Battersea scheme, Skanska built 300 cupboards in situ because of constraints on the site, while 440 were built off site, which allowed them to compare the two construction methods. The cupboards manufactures offsite took 18 man hours to construct compared with 42 hours for the ones built on site. Furthermore, Stacey revealed that they were almost 50% cheaper including factory overheads and had 73% less defects. However, by using robots in factories, the company believes it can cut the amount of man hours that are required to build the cupboards to just two hours. Skanska is also looking for ways robotic technology can be used in other areas, which may soon start to appear on construction sites in the UK, while in Norway the company is working with high tech start up nLink (a mobile drilling robot firm) to develop robots that can be used to fix and drill soffits. Furthermore, the firm has been working in conjunction with ABB for the development of a robot that can set out rebar cages in Sweden.