Author Archives: Harmsworth

Workers employed by Bear Scotland to maintain trunk roads including the A9 have secured a union recognition agreement and a pay increase of up to 7.25 per cent, following a dispute over pay. Trade union Unite confirmed yesterday (27 October) that its members based in Inverness had voted for industrial…

Tier one contractor Skanska UK has promoted Dan Williams to executive vice-president of its Building Services arm as part of a broader reshuffle of its executive management team. Williams, who joined Skanska in 2001 as a student engineer, will now take charge of the firm’s mechanical and electrical engineering business,…

Renew Holdings has agreed a new £140m revolving credit facility that extends its access to bank funding until October 2029. The four-year facility replaces a £120m agreement and has been secured with National Westminster Bank, HSBC UK and Barclays. In a stock market update on 27 October, Renew said the…

Spending on new data centres in the UK is projected to rise to more than £10bn per year by 2029, over four times the current annual total of £1.75bn, according to new analysis by construction data firm Barbour ABI. The 2029 forecast would put the data centres market on a…

The government has formally announced changes to the environmental permitting regime in England, in a move it said would help accelerate the delivery of housing and energy infrastructure. The reforms, unveiled on 27 October by environment minister Emma Hardy, will allow certain “low-risk” construction activities to proceed without environmental permits,…

The East West Railway Company has launched early market engagement on a £700m framework for programme support works ahead of the main construction phase of the Oxford–Cambridge railway. A virtual briefing for the Programme Support Works Framework will be held on 6 November, followed by a questionnaire for suppliers to…

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), the state-owned body responsible for managing the UK’s radioactive waste, has launched early market engagement on a £360m programme to cap and extend the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) in Cumbria. NWS operates the repository on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a non-departmental public…

Hackney Council has launched a tender for a design-and-build contractor to deliver more than 300 homes on infill sites across the De Beauvoir Estate in east London. The regeneration will be delivered through a pre-construction services agreement (PCSA), using a JCT 2024 PCSA contract as amended. The selected contractor will…

Bovis has confirmed it will relocate its UK headquarters to 1 Eversholt Street in Euston, along with Lendlease, the developer which sold it earlier this year. The firms have leased just over 1,000 square metres of space each across four floors at the building, which sits adjacent to the 60-acre…

Walsall Council has outlined plans for a major industrial redevelopment of a 9-hectare brownfield site in Darlaston to deliver forward logistics, light manufacturing and warehousing space. The scheme would transform the former gasholder site on Darlaston Road into four industrial units, using land acquired from National Grid and adjoining plots…