Author Archives: Contributor

The new year is barely under way, yet it has already brought with it momentous change – new vaccines for COVID, being delivered at phenomenal pace; a potentially balanced political backdrop with the USA electing a more stable President; and, most importantly for our market, some resolution on Brexit. While…

Payment has been creeping up the agenda recently in Construction News. In December, it published an Oracle-sponsored panel discussion and, last month, it published its latest CN Payment 100 list, analysing how promptly the UK’s largest contractors pay their suppliers. But looking at the landscape today, we can see that…

The arrival of the Construction Playbook is a milestone moment for the industry and its clients in the public sector. But its publication marks the beginning of the journey rather than the endpoint. The document is a roadmap that we must all now follow. The central messages in the playbook…

Like so much of the UK economy, the construction sector was severely disrupted by the impact of COVID-19 throughout 2020 and now faces a challenging recovery. Although classed as an essential service, the immediate reaction to the first lockdown was for contractors to close sites, halting activity across the sector.…

The new year might have only just got going, but already the construction industry has a new minister. Kwasi Kwarteng was promoted to business secretary and with it Anne-Marie Trevelyan became our third construction minister in the space of just 19 working days. Yes, you read that right, nineteen working…

Lone-working in the construction industry has typically been the preserve of site-based staff, particularly in the infrastructure sector. The pandemic has changed this, however. The government’s call that “everyone who can work from home must do so” has meant many office workers are now working at home on their own,…

Developer U+I has restructured its senior management team and placed all its projects under review after recording a half-year loss of more than £50m. In a major shake-up, the regeneration specialist has announced that chief executive Matthew Weiner has stepped down and been replaced by development officer Richard Upton. Chief…

We all bore witness to the terrible events at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 and we owe it to the 72 victims of that fire, bereaved families and the surviving former residents and their families to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again. While we await the final…

Winter is here. On 1 December 2020, the Home Office published more than 150 pieces of guidance relating to business immigration. The most important change for the construction industry is that, since 1 January 2021, all non-UK workers (apart from those from the Republic of Ireland and those who have…

INSURER the Mayflower Engineering Consortium is to insist clients only hire-in equipment that has first been registered with TER.Firms are starting to require hirers to register their fleets as they crack down on theft, but Mayflower is the first to demand registration of hired-in plant.Under the scheme, hirers and contractors…