Jul25th
Friday, July 25th, 2008
In a week where the downturn in construction has forced Saint-Gobain to make 6,000 workers redundant, MPs have given the final approval to Crossrail, the GBP16 billion east-west rail route across London. Beginning in 2010, it will be the largest civil engineering project in Europe, with the first trains expected to start running in 2017. Crossrail is good news for jobs and economic growth and London Mayor, Boris Johnson, called it a ‘cracking good deal for the capital’. Though this comment sounded like something Wallace would have said to Gromit. (more…)
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Jul18th
Friday, July 18th, 2008
Construction industry worries continue to gather pace. Plimsoll Analysis reports about a further 15,000 job losses and MTW Research says the house builder market may lose more than 75% of its value over a period to 2009. However self build and renovation experts BuildStore think that the credit crunch is having less of an impact in their sector. We have a review by Peter Levchenko of Polish Subcontracting into the affects on UK building trades of recent changes in eastern European migration patterns. (more…)
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Jul11th
Friday, July 11th, 2008
In a week when house builders Bovis Homes and Redrow announced that up to 40% of their staff will have to go, there were sharp exchanges in Parliament as the Government acknowledged that there was ‘grave cause for concern’ about the housing market and the ramifications for the wider economy. The government are taking some action that maybe of help - such as providing GBP200 million to buy up unsold - but it all this seems late and woefully inadequate. (more…)
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Jul4th
Friday, July 4th, 2008
Chris Hobbs of CADline has written an interesting article about the industry take-up of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology. BIM’s integrated project delivery brings together architectural, structural and building services design and data in a single model environment. Chris maintains that though the total BIM vision may be still some way off, the structural engineering community is beginning to move ahead of the game. (more…)
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