London and North West labour rates rise for third month
Skilled self-employed labour rates have risen for the third month running in London and the North West.
Average weekly earnings for self-employed tradespeople in London increased by 1.8% to £938 during September while in the North West, earnings increased by 3.3% to £887.
According to the industry’s biggest employment contract services firm, Hudson Contract, the two areas have become pinch points for this skills shortage, while across the rest of country as a whole, pay rates actually dipped in September.
Across all regions average wages dipped by 1.7 % to £913 last month, while year-on-year earnings increased by 4.7%.
The East Midlands remained the region where self-employed trades commanded the highest pay despite a small fall last month.
Ian Anfield, managing director, said: “We estimate that through Covid the industry has been short of as many as 140,000 tradespeople, or 10% down on where we could have been, which has helped drive up labour rates in the face of high demand.
“Skills shortages – once an acute regional problem – has been exacerbated across the country by the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS).”
Official statistics show construction workers claimed grants worth £966m in the last round of SEISS, which covered the period to September 15 2021.
In total, the sector has claimed grants worth nearly £11bn through the scheme which would amount to hundreds of millions of man hours.
Anfield added: “As SEISS ends, many will return to work but because huge infrastructure projects such as Hinkley Point and HS2 are in full swing, government departments have accelerated ‘shovel-ready’ projects and the ongoing housing and domestic work, demand will continue to outstrip supply.”
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Battle starts for £600m YORbuild minor works deal
The bid race has started for places on procurement body YORbuild’s minor works framework, expected to account for £600m of spending over the next four years.
The third generation framework will align with the Government Construction Playbook and the Value Toolkit due to be launched by the Construction Innovation Hub later this year.
It is being divided into five regional lots across Yorkshire, with each region spilt into three project type lots.
YORbuild 3 minor works lots
Regions: North West Yorkshire; North East Yorkshire; East; West; South
Work up to £1mProjects £1-£4mNew housing up to 25 units
Around a dozen firms will be appointed to each lot.
This time around during saelection greater emphasis will be placed on MMC/off-site solutions, carbon reduction/ net zero targets and a more enhanced sustainability offer.
It will run for four years with an option to extend for a further period of two years to allow the appointed contractors adequate time to recoup their significant initial investment.
Tenders are to be returned by 17 December for evaluation with the new line-up of firms expected to be announced in summer 2022.
To submit an interest click here.
Offsite Homes Alliance courts firms for £4bn MMC framework
An alliance of social landlords in the North aiming to deliver 10,000 offsite homes per year is starting market testing ahead on launching the tender for a £4bn framework.
The alliance which was formed this year now boasts 23 housing associations and regsitered providers among its membership., largely based in the North of England.
Great Places Housing Group, acting as the main procurement body, is now soft market testing suppliers ahead of inviting tenders next month.
This will involve evaluating the current OSHA designs and zero carbon roadmap with its prospective MMC supply chain.
OSHA has designed a short questionnaire that is available to download here.
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BAM Nuttall names new major projects MD
BAM Nuttall has promoted Richard Prime to become managing director of Major Projects.
Prime, who has been with the firm for 20 years, fills the role vacated by Ian Parish who stepped up to become interim MD last month.
The board rejig follows the departure of Adrian Savory, BAM Nuttall’s chief executive last month after just 14 in the top job after around 26 years with BAM Nuttall.
Prime , who was previously divisional director of major projects, will lead BAM Nuttall’s teams, working in collaboration, to design and build infrastructure projects like HS2 main works and the Silvertown Tunnel in London.
The management line-up at BAM Nuttall is: Ian Parish (MD), Martin Bellamy (MD, Regions), Alan Cox (MD, Transport), Richard Prime, (MD, Major Projects), Ian Phillpot (Finance Director), Richard Reddell (Commercial Director), Richard Lewis (People and Performance Director) and David McGowan (Business Excellence Director).
Foreign investors to pump £10bn into UK green infrastructure
The Prime Minister will today announce the UK has secured £9.7bn of new foreign investment in UK green infrastructure at the Global Investment Summit.
He hailed 18 planned investment deals in wind and hydrogen energy, sustainable homes and carbon capture that will support green growth and create up to 30,000 jobs.
Among the headline commitments, Spanish electric utility giant Iberdrola confirmed it will invest £6bn in the East Anglia Hub through Scottish Power, subject to securing planning consent.
This will be Iberdrola’s biggest offshore wind development anywhere in the world and would supply enough green energy to power 2.7 million British homes, while creating 7,000 jobs.
While global logistics firm Prologis intends to invest £1.5bn over the next three years to develop net zero carbon warehouses across London, the south east and Midlands.
Malaysian conglomerate Petra Group will invest £30m in establishing its Petra Modular business for production of sustainable modular homes, creating 225 jobs. It will also invest £30m in establishing Petra Group’s ‘Green Rubber’ business in the UK, which will see the development of a production facility creating 110 jobs.
Other deals announced at Global Investment Summit
US-owned waste specialist Viridor plans to invest up to £1bn in latest decarbonisation technology at its five UK sites to become the first net zero waste company by 2030.Turkish-owned Eren Paper is investing £500m to acquire a mill in Shotton, North Wales, and convert it to produce cardboard manufactured from paper waste. The mill will be powered by biomass fuel.Budweiser Brewing Group and green hydrogen energy services Protium have teamed up to invest more than £100m in a new hydrogen generation system to fuel the brewery’s production and also its key logistics assets, including heavy goods vehicles and forklift trucks.Jacobs will create over 150 jobs as it grows its high-tech Birchwood laboratory in Warrington, where Jacobs carries out research and development to support critical UK national infrastructure.Huaneng will invest in the 50MW Battery Storage project in StoneHill. This greenfield project is a major new milestone for energy storage in the UK and will employ local partners in construction and operationsHiPoint AG will invest £50m to create five new facilities for the recovery and processing of horse stall waste into reusable bedding, fertilizer & bio-fuels, creating 90 jobs across the UK.Ultimate Battery Company will invest £28m setting up a UK production plant for lightweight, eco-friendly batteries, creating 300 jobs.Global Marine will invest £10m in building hybrid engine crew transfer vessels and surface effect ships to service offshore wind infrastructure, creating 10 jobs in the East of England.HyPoint will invest £6.6m establishing a HQ in the South East for the development of their next generation hydrogen fuel cell system, creating 10 jobs.Treedom will establish a UK office in London for their online platform for planting trees, creating 10 jobs.Tes Amm is creating 15 new jobs in Scotland, doubling its electronic waste recycling solutions for lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles, consumer electronics and IT & mobile technologies.Sumitomo Corporation are launching Presidio Ventures Europe, a venture arm of Sumitomo, focused on energy and mobility.Peer-to-peer lending firm Zopa has raised £220m, led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, to grow their responsible and sustainable banking and lending services in the UK.Getir plan to invest £100m to rapidly expand its sustainable and superfast grocery delivery service across the UK, creating 7,000 permanent jobs in 2022. The business utilises a 100% electric fleet of delivery vehicles.
Morgan Sindall takes social housing upkeep into ‘tech age’
Morgan Sindall has developed a remote internal building performance home monitoring system that could revolutionise social housing repairs and upkeep.
The goldeni (pronounced golden eye) system developed by data scientists working for Morgan Sindall Property Services hooks up with commercially available ‘Internet of things’ sensors to provide real-time data about the health of a building and internal environment of individual tenants’ homes.
It can identify water leaks in real-time, and spots when a boiler needs to be serviced so that preventative action can be taken before a problem escalates.
The Goldeni software-based cloud platform collects temperature, air pressure, light levels, humidity and carbon dioxide data, as well as monitoring heating systems and electricity and gas consumption.
Morgan Sindall estimates that by helping landlords and tenants identify potential maintenance issues before they occur and remediate leaks before they escalate, goldeni could help the country’s social housing landlords potentially save over £550m per year.
Morgan Sindall’s software compiles the data to provides social housing landlords and tenants with clear, practical actions for more effective home operation.
For example, from collected ventilation data, goldeni can recommend opening more windows to ensure homes are less susceptible to mould.
By tracking which homes are using central heating too often or too little, goldeni can also help users identify properties that are in fuel poverty or requiring additional insulation.
John Morgan, Chief Executive of the Morgan Sindall Group said: “The launch of goldeni, our first technological innovation for the sector, represents an important milestone not just for Morgan Sindall but also for social housing as a whole.
“By giving clues to potential issues within homes even before they occur, it can help those living in social housing have healthier, safer, more energy efficient homes, as well as saving social housing providers costs.”
“While we’re initially focusing on social housing, its ability to provide an instant overview of a building’s health in real-time means that goldeni would just be as useful for commercial and private residential property owners as well, and that’s something we’ll be looking to roll out in the future.”
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Bellway targets £1.25bn profit over next two years
Bellway is expecting to generate around £1.25bn in cumulative underlying pre-tax profit over the next two financial years.
The returns will spell a bonanza for shareholders with one third of the cash distributed in dividends.
The target came as Britain’s fourth largest house builder posted a strong set of results for the year to July 31 2020.
Pre-tax profits rose to £479m from from £236.7m last time on turnover up to £3.1bn from £2.2bn.
Housing completions were also up to 10,138 from 7,522 with a target of hitting 12,200 homes by 2023. Bellway has a land bank of 86,571 plots.
Bellway also set aside a further net £51.8m as part of its “commitment to help owners of legacy apartment schemes undertake fire safety improvements” bringing the total amount provided since 2017 in relation to post-Grenfell cladding issues to £164.7m.
Group chief executive Jason Honeyman added: “On a site level, we continue to undertake centralised layout and ground-work reviews, to ensure that quality is preserved, while driving further cost efficiencies in the construction process.
“We have also developed a matrix to help determine the optimum and most cost effective solution for retaining walls, depending on aesthetic requirements and we continue to encourage the sharing of best practice and new ideas through cross-functional and divisional working groups.
“Notwithstanding our strong commercial disciplines, overall cost inflation during the year has been in the mid-single digits, although this, in general, has been offset by rises in house prices.
“We continue to see price inflation on commodities such as steel, timber, MDF and polymers, but there are signs that some of the more pronounced price increases over recent months are beginning to subside.
“There remain ongoing constraints in the supply chain and intermittent labour shortages across the sector as, despite the vaccine success, colleagues, subcontractors and suppliers are subject to self-isolation requirements to curtail the spread of Covid-19.
“In addition, the national shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers and recent disruption to fuel supplies has had some impact on the availability of materials. In general, these constraints are manageable by adopting good procurement disciplines and forward planning.
“They will, however, mean that construction output in the first half of financial year 2022 is likely to remain similar to that achieved in the first half of financial year 2021.
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8 Mid-October Economic Nuggets
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This isn’t a hard point to make. A great deal of emphasis in the coming years will be placed on decarbonization. A full-court shift to electrification is viewed by many as a primary means to achieve desired and commendable levels of carbon reduction. What is not being presented or discussed thoroughly, though, is how costly this will be. Nor will the shift to greater usage of renewable electric power be the only factor pushing up day-to-day living and business expenses. There are a host of others including investments in cyber security; commitments to employee compliance courses; deeper workplace cleaning efforts; and accelerating adoption of high tech.
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Vast earthworks job out to bid for £150m rail testing facility
The race has started to find an earthworks contractor to prepare the way to build a £150m major rail testing facility at a former opencast mine site in South Wales.
The Global Centre for Rail Excellence will be the world’s first integrated testing facility for both rail infrastructure and rolling stock.
The ambitious project will see the redevelopment of the 500-hectare Nant Helen opencast site on the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons.
Advanced preparation work will require 3 million m³ of earth to be shifted before work on the permanent rail infrastructure can start.
The successful contractor will also provide temporary drainage during the construction phase as well as permanent drainage for the completed scheme.
The Global Centre for Rail Excellence will feature two looped test tracks, one being an electrified high speed rolling stock track (6.9km long) and the other being a low-speed infrastructure test track (4.5km).
There will also be a dual platform test environment, operations and control offices, staff accommodation, shunter cabins and facilities for research and development, education and training.
Following planning for the project this summer, the earthworks package will begin on site in spring 2022.
Click here for further information.
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Former nmcn telecoms director joins HE Simm
Engineering and services specialist HE Simm Group has appointed Peter Lambert as Group Commercial Director.
Lambert’s previous role was a short-term post at nmcn as Commercial Director of its Telecoms Division.
He brings 33 years’ of industry experience in the built environment sector having worked for companies including Spie Matthew Hall, Lendlease and Laing O’Rourke.
Lambert spent eight years working within the commercial team at NG Bailey, leaving as Regional Commercial Director to take up the post at nmcn in April before the firm went into administration earlier this month.
He joined Lee Marks who left NG Bailey at the same time to take over as the new chief executive of nmcn.
In his new role at HE Simm Group Lambert will lead and run the company’s commercial function in line with its overall strategic plan. As part of the Group Executive Leadership Team, he will report directly to CEO Gareth Simm.
Simm said: “We are very excited about Pete joining the team. He brings with him a wealth of experience, gained through working at some of the UK’s leading contracting firms.
“I am really looking forward to seeing what Pete can bring to our business, especially as we look ahead to a clear growth strategy over the coming years.
“Pete is one of two major appointments we’re making this month. Both individuals will add a lot of value to the Group, I have no doubt about that.”
Lambert added: “I am delighted to be joining HE Simm. The company has certainly become one to watch in the M&E field over the last few years. It has a great reputation and a lot of potential for further growth into new sectors and new regions in the UK.
“I am looking forward to sharing my experience with the team and to supporting them commercially with their ambitious strategic plans, as well as getting back into the M&E industry, which is where my passion lies.”
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