Kier has handed over the new Broadmoor Hospital to the West London NHS Trust, after the firm announced it would take £25m of losses on the redevelopment project. Following the Trust’s choice to approve the takeover of the five new hospital buildings, work will now begin on preparations to transfer patients currently being cared for in Britain’s oldest high secure psychiatric hospital to a state of the art of the facility. Carolyn Regan, chief executive of West London NHS Trus

Plans to build 55 affordable new council homes on the site of a previous primary school in Dumbarton have been approved by councillors. The 1.9-acre area has been unoccupied since the former Aitkenbar Primary School was demolished in 2016. The new development will see the site renovated into mixed housing including 24 one-bedroom flats, two, three and four-bedroom semi-detached houses, two three-bedroom accessible bungalows and four-bedroom detached homes. A tree-lined road w

IKEA Greenwich has accomplished an ‘Outstanding’ BREEAM UK New Construction certification, a sustainability rating and accolade held by just 320 buildings around the world. The sustainable store is the very first in the UK and only the second retail unit in the world to receive the sustainability rating with over 90%. IKEA Greenwich was designed and built to reach the highest BREEAM rating possible and by reaching ‘Outstanding’, it has achieved the highest rating of any IKEA

Balfour Beatty’s experienced drone pilots Craig Matthews and Wayne Hughes shared their experiences. The smart motorways project In 2015, Balfour Beatty – in partnership with VINCI Construction – was selected to produce a Smart Motorway package on the M4, M5 and M6, worth up to £607.4m. Among the projects was a 13.6-mile section of the M6, from Junction 2 at Coventry to Junction 4 near Coleshill, at a cost of £212m. Once the two-year upgrade work is completed, the transformed

Lives are still being put at risk by companies lacking to manage exposure to asbestos, according to the IOSH (Institution of Occupational Safety and Health). Since the start of 2018, 135 companies or individuals have been ordered to terminate work activities because of non-compliance with asbestos regulations, with a further 130 being warned they must improve. A further 31 companies or individuals have been prosecuted for breaches, with fines ranging from £1 up to £200,000 an

Heathrow Airport has revealed the 18 shortlisted sites that remain in the running to become offsite construction centres and help deliver the expanded airport. The shortlisted sites all vary in location, size and age. They have made it to this stage due to a strong base of local support, their area’s thriving supply chain, convenient connectivity links and the possibility to tap into a skilled workforce. The shortlisted sites have been selected from a list of 65, all of which

A new report published by CITB (Construction Industry Training Board) shows that construction can gain major rewards from digital skills and technology, but only if it takes crucial action in the next five years. CITB’s report, Evolution or Revolution?, looks at a range of situations for the pace of technological change in construction which will inform the forthcoming CLC Future Skills Plan. The research finds that as a less-automated sector, construction stands to achieve m

A total of 18 buildings are being taken down to make way for the construction of a flight simulator facility, a maintenance unit, new hangars and storage facilities at RAF Lakenheath as part of a Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) project. Last November, DIO awarded a contract worth £160m to Kier VolkerFitzpatrick to provide infrastructure to ready RAF Lakenheath for the aircraft in late 2021. The Suffolk airbase will be the very first permanent international site for

Open Doors, a campaign which sees live construction sites open their doors to the public, has started today (18 March) and will be open until 23 March with over 6,000 visitors taking part in site visits. The Open Doors campaign, which is run by Build UK in partnership with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), hopes to inspire young people and career changers to consider and explore a dynamic and exciting career in the construction industry. According to the most r

As Kit Malthouse admits that the government will fail to keep its promise of building 200,000 ‘starter homes’, the National Federation of Builders (NFB) has said it is not surprised by the scheme’s collapse. In 2016 the Government allocated £1.2bn to the ‘starter homes’ programme, which intended to build 200,000 properties exclusively for first-time buyers at a 20% discount on their market value. The National Federation of Builders (NFB) has said it is “not entirely surprised