Updates and information from the construction and civil engineering market
Garden space
Taggart Homes has commenced works on the first phase of 100 high spec outdoor work pods suitable for home working and a range of small businesses including beauty salons and gyms. The pods will come in a variety of sizes and designs, at a starting price of £10,000 + VAT.
Selling agent Pygott and Crone has been appointed as the UK agent to launch the garden rooms.
“As living and working habits continue to shift for many given the present circumstances, there is a growing movement to home working and as people look to optimise their living environment, and they are looking to upgrade properties,” said Michael Taggart, CEO of Taggart Homes. “The outdoor work pod is a versatile asset and can work as a home office, or a space for small business owners – adding value and versatility to homes.
“We are excited to introduce these pods to the public and will be offering our existing Taggart homeowners the chance to snap one up for their property. This is just the first phase and we plan on creating more in the future as we believe they will continue to be a desirable and valuable addition to any home.”
Time for celebration
Leading North East practice Space Architects is celebrating 20 years of designing schools, with the submission of plans for its 85th building, a multi-million pound school in Hyde, Greater Manchester.
The firm’s first secondary education project in the public sector was Blyth Community College, which opened in Northumberland in 2002. Since then, it has delivered eight schools for Gateshead Council, ten for Dumfries and Galloway Council in Scotland and five schools on the Isle of Wight, as well as facilities in Sunderland, Knowsley and Hull, amongst others.
Planning permission was submitted for the new multi-million-pound Belle Vue Academy – a secondary school accommodating 1200 students and up to 70 staff and sponsored by Co-op – in January. The school provides over 57 teaching and community spaces including an auditorium, dining areas and sports hall, in line with the Department for Education’s baseline designs.
The 85 schools across the UK designed by Space Architects include primaries, secondaries, special and free school schemes, totalling £800 million in design and build over the past two decades.
Transforming a vision
Systems, engineering and technology consultancy, Frazer-Nash, is helping the East West Railway Company develop an enterprise architecture for the new East West Rail link that will connect communities between Oxford to Cambridge.
The new rail route will provide opportunities for people across the area by making it easier and cheaper to get around, avoiding the need for longer journeys via London. It involves repurposing old railways and constructing new routes to connect communities across the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, including Bedford, Milton Keynes and Bicester.
Frazer-Nash Principal Consultant, Adrian Thorne, commented: “Architecting a railway is, of course, incredibly complex! The East West Railway Company needs a way to link their technical design to their overarching strategic vision. By developing an enterprise architecture for the company we’ll be pulling together all these elements into a cohesive structure, helping the East West Railway Company identify their capabilities and how these will enable the outcomes they need to realise their innovative goals.
“By combining our enterprise architecture expertise with model-based systems engineering techniques, we’ll deliver a visual representation of the East West Railway Enterprise, helping to increase understanding of the interrelationships and integration between their outcomes, capabilities and systems.
“We’re really looking forward to working with the East West Railway Company again, and helping them in their aim to make the railway a better experience for all their stakeholders.”
Gaining momentum
Despite the challenges of coronavirus, the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) strengthened its position in 2020. By the end of the year the non-profit organisation had seen a record number of new members, and the DGNB Academy had made a successful transition to online training. The number of qualified sustainable building experts now exceeds 5000. In addition, the DGNB continued its success in the field of building certification, passing an important milestone on its path to internationalisation with the official launch of the DGNB System in Spain.
“2020 was particularly challenging for us at the DGNB. Our network thrives on personal exchange and interaction, and previously almost all events organised by the DGNB Academy were staged in the classroom,” states Dr Christine Lemaitre, CEO of the DGNB.
The DGNB succeeded in overhauling its business model in this area in 2020 by moving all training courses and staff education programmes into digital formats. “This wasn’t just about adapting our classroom-based courses and simply offering them like-for-like online, we also realigned teaching methods to the particular demands of digital learning,” states Christine.
“Looking back now, I have to say we managed a lot of things really well. We can also confirm that sustainability continued to gain in importance across the industry over the past year.”
Multiple major framework wins
Stepnell has recently secured its spot on two new construction frameworks – the Public Sector Construction Works Framework, managed by NHS Shared Business Services, and Procure Partnerships Framework. The frameworks, which both offer Stepnell the opportunity to win work across the UK, will help to boost its ever-growing portfolio of public sector projects.
“This really is an exciting time for Stepnell,” said Richard Wakeford, director at Stepnell. “It’s been a difficult year for the industry as a whole, so to end 2020 in such a strong position is not something we take for granted. By joining these frameworks and expanding our portfolio of public sector work, we’re not only positioning ourselves as a leading contractor in the construction sector, but we’re also helping the UK to get back on its feet by pushing forward with important regeneration and development projects – many of which will be expanding on facilities for the NHS, which has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19.”
Rotterdam harbour expansion
The Authority of Europe’s biggest container port has commissioned HOCHTIEF – together with Ballast Nedam and Van Oord – to extend the quay facilities of ‘Princess Amalia Harbour’ by around 2.4 kilometres. The project, with a total volume of almost EUR 170 million, also includes dredging work and a pile-foundation craneway roughly 1.8 kilometres long for container cranes. The HOCHTIEF share in the total contract volume amounts to roughly EUR 70 million. The construction work is scheduled to begin in March and should be completed by mid 2024.
With the further expansion of the harbour basin ‘Princess Amalia Harbour’, which was built in 2015, Europe’s biggest container port is responding to the growing goods traffic. This will increase the harbour’s annual handling capacity by four million standard containers. The world’s biggest container ships can be loaded and unloaded at the new quay facilities.
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