From today’s Building daily news :
Rise in PFI and Olympic works will see tender prices grow 2.5 times faster than inflation says report
The price of construction work is expected to surge ahead of inflation over the next five years.
Tender prices are forecast to rise 34% compared to an expected inflation rate of 13%, according to a report published by BCIS.
Earlier this week the Government launched the draft Government and Industry Sustainable Construction Strategy for conusltation.Reducing on-site waste, using sustainable materials, and increasing skills in the workforce are just some of the 35 or so targets set out for our industry, in a strategy that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on education, design, procurement, construction and facilities management.
The draft strategy’s key areas include:
Stephen Timms, Minister for construction said:
“The threat of global warming is of enormous concern to the community, and it demands change from Government, industry and the public alike.
“Currently the built environment accounts for around 47% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK (Construction accounts for 1.5%). Not only must the construction industry rise to the challenge of reducing those emissions, it must also consider how it will adapt its products to deal with the impacts of unavoidable climate change.”
Use your chance to comment – download the consultation document
As reported on today’s Contract Journal website, WRAP has published plans for a new standard to measure waste neutrality. Further details and a pdf brochure can be downloaded from the WRAP web site Net Waste Method page.
In simple terms, WRAP considers ‘waste neutral’ to be where the value of construction materials wasted is matched by the value of additional reused and recycled content employed on a project. Adoption of this approach promotes consideration of all aspects of materials efficiency: reducing waste, recycling waste that does arise and using materials with recycled content. This is to be achieved with a reduction in overall environmental impact. By focusing on the commercial as well as the environmental costs of waste, it should deliver real benefits for the construction sector.
In particular, it highlights where companies can reduce costs and increase profits through greater efficiency. It also supports the demonstration of Corporate Social Responsibility.
Don Ward, chief executive at Constructing Excellence reported in Contract Journal said:
“We hope that contractors will look carefully at the real opportunity that the Net Waste Method can unlock in terms of improved profitability and reducing the impact on the environment.”
Comment: But are we still missing the point here – real effort need to be applied upstream in the construction process, in the design, specification, procurement and planning stages to eliminate waste in the first place. With recent reports from Defra that 1/3 of all solid materials going to a site are not used on the project, and the UK Green Building Council that construction accounts for 20% of all waste, we really need to focus on the first stage of the waste planning – elimination, then the other stages of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Dispose are not as much an issue, and reduction in costs along with increased profits will be easier to achieve. Take a look at the pre-construction sections of the WRAP construction web pages
The WRAP website contains a wealth of information and should be on all construction / facilities management managers bookmark or favourite lists. (there is a section on Asset Management – within the construction section !)
It is possible to sign up for a construction wrap newsletter, but unfortunately I cannot see any RSS feed on the site, even for the news items
News from BSF Lanacshire: Miles Barter writes:
Five businesses in Lancashire and northwest England have won another £11 million of contracts in the first wave of the Lancashire Buildings Schools for the Future programme, bringing the total of new work awarded in the region to over £20 million.
The new contracts, for installation of mechanical and electrical fittings, have been awarded by Catalyst Lend Lease, Lancashire County Council’s long-term partner in the 10-year, £250 million BSF scheme. Two of the successful contractors, T. Jolly Services Ltd and James Mercer Group Ltd, come from Preston. The other contractors are Walsh Integrated Building Services, from Nelson, Bowker Ltd from Morecambe, and Farebrother Ltd, from Denton, near Manchester.
The contractors will be working on the Burnley Campus, Pendle Vale College and Shuttleworth College projects, which are scheduled to open in September 2008. One of the biggest contracts, for £2.5 million, has gone to T. Jolly Services Ltd of Preston, to supply and install all of the heating, ventilation domestic water and plumbing systems at Pendle Vale.
This includes many energy-saving technologies, including a Biomass boiler, fuelled by wood chips, ground source heat pumps, solar panels for domestic water heating, combined heat and power pumps to heat the swimming pool, rain water harvesting and a natural ventilator system for classrooms. All of these technologies will combine to make this new college one of the most energy efficient educational buildings in Britain.
George Jackson, managing director of T. Jolly said: “This is an important project for our company and we are proud to be a part of the construction team that will be delivering a high quality, energy efficient building that will benefit the local community and the environment for years to come.”
“Our policy is always to give construction and fit-out work to local contractors whenever possible,” said James Lasseter, Catalyst Lend Lease’s general manager for the Lancashire BSF programme. “It’s part of our pledge to help the county’s business community to benefit from this big investment in education.”
Marcus Johnstone, Lancashire County Council’s cabinet member for children and young people said: “This highly skilled electrical and mechanical work is at the heart of the county’s economy. I am delighted that our investment in a better education for the children of Burnley and Pendle is supporting employment across the county.”
The full building programme for the first wave of the BSF scheme involves seven colleges for 11 to 16-year-olds, a sixth form centre, four special schools, a primary school, a nursery school, a faith centre and a public library. All are scheduled for completion by 2010.
From Building News:
English Partnerships will ask six housing developers to submit zero carbon designs for a former hospital site near Bristol
The first site in English Partnerships’ competition to build zero carbon homes has gone out to tender.
All 150 homes on the site are expected to meet the top level of the Code for Sustainable Homes. The exact definition of a level 6 home is yet to be confirmed but EP said that zero carbon means that the amount of energy taken from the grid is less than or equal to the amount put back through renewable technologies.
English Partnerships Jayne Lomas said building zero carbon homes remained a real challenge. She said: “This effectively brings the zero carbon homes of the future a significant step closer to reality – a hugely important development in the fight against climate change”.
Do we have the knowledge, resources and technologies here. locally, in the north west to do this? Or would we see others from outside the NW bid and win any such projects
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Business opportunities still exist even if you have not been selected for working within frameworks, but you may need to change your strategies to secure business.
Attend this Lancashire Best Practice Club event for expert advice and support.
June14th
Register on line here: http://tinyurl.com/356t6h
Download flyer Life After Frameworks
Once again we have had to shift events to avoid clashes and to enable better timing with other events and programmes in the North West
The Bidding to Win event will be moved to later in the year. Those who have expressed and interest in attending will be offered (part funded through CKE) in house training or coaching options. More Details
Life After Frameworks – June 14th More Details
Innovation – Hosted by UCLAN – 5th July More Details
We are also now able to offer two further one day (part funded by CKE ) events:
July 12th – What is Sustainability? – An introduction to sustainability, to help you improve your understanding of sustainability management, apply sustainable management approaches to your operations and activities and to prepare for emerging sustainability issues. More Details
July 18th – Modern Construction Project Management – Managing todays construction projects with open book accounting, supply chains, framework supplier, lean management and other topical initiative now expected by clients. More Details
and
September 20th AGM and Question Time Event
For further details on these and others – keep a watch on the Events Page
HSE have now published their study that looked at health and safety issues in public sector construction procurement.
The broad aim of the research was to provide an evidence-based assessment of how well the public sector in England, Scotland and Wales meets its health and safety obligations in the procurement of construction.
The conclusions, drawn from the evidence of the research, suggest at the broadest level that while some public sector clients performed reasonably well in terms of meeting their health and safety obligations during the procurement of construction, there is certainly more that could be done.
In terms of recommendations going forward, the evidence suggests that more needs to be done to embed current health and safety guidance among public sector clients. There is a sense, from the results, that ‘best practice’ is not as widely embedded as it perhaps could be.
What I find of interest is the studies comment on inetgrated working:
The majority of contractors believe that an integrated project team was used to deliver the project in question. This is a surprising finding given that the majority of the projects in question were procured using traditional procurement methods, and suggests that knowledge regarding integration of project teams may need refreshing for both the client and the contractor.
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Constructing Excellence plan to start an on-line KPI initiative next month that will give organisations an annual endorsement mark to show they are using industry KPIs. It will be known as KPI Mark
Reported in Contract Journal:
CE stressed that although the scoring system was not a form of accreditation, it said clients could use the scheme as a method of pre-qualification.
“It is an ambition that clients will ask firms for their mark,” said CE consultant Martin Print. “Longer term, I can see this happening as clients are now requiring firms to demonstrate their performance.”
CE director Peter Cunningham agreed and said local authorities were already in discussions with CE about adopting its KPI
Constructing Excellence KPI’s have been in existence for many years now – following the issue of the Egan Report Rethinking Construction, giving ample opportunity for organisations to monitor and benchmark performance against industry over time.
More details on the KPI’s can be found on the KPI Zone at Constructing Excellence.
In addition local support for using KPI’s is available through fairsnape and others within the Lancashire Best Practice Club – see steering group profiles
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Just catching up on some of the material from the Think07 event.
Tesco publicity material was contained on a USB stick, which contained an informative video explaining there approach to sustainable stores. For an understanding of where the retail clients in the industry are heading take a look at their website thinkonceagain. Their green flagship store is Tesco, Wick, where they claim to have halved the carbon footprint.
Fairsnape 