The UK Construction Blog

Measured Building Surveys.net is Going from strength to strength with work carried out all over the UK and abroad this last twelve months. Surveys carried out in places like Ukraine, Guernsey and the Isle of man and we even surveyed a castle in the Midlands and a very unique Convent with a number of Chapels and Churches in the last few months.

If you need a measured building survey or even several measured building surveys or a measured building surveyor,  you have come to the right place. If time is of the essence, or clients time constraints are limited on site, we can accomodate you.

Whether your survey project is large or small, a single house plan of a few square metres up to thousands of square metres or several house plans. building plans or ‘As Built’ plans, anywhere in Europe then we can meet your requirements. We have vast experience of Measured Building Surveys, floor plans and elevational drawings, everything from private homes and domestic premises, apartment blocks, and flats, to churches, ecclesiastical buildings, embassies, supermarkets and shopping malls and have carried out measured survey programmes and topographical surveys encompassing hundreds of properties.  A schedule can be drawn up to suit you!

Why not give us a try, call or email us or just as for an online quotation.

A groundbreaking new guide to help construction professionals keep control of timescales on complex projects has been published by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and Wiley Blackwell.

The ‘Guide to Good Practice in the Management of Time in Complex Projects’ authored by an international team of experts and led by CIOB Past President Keith Pickavance provides guidance on managing time pro-actively.

Speaking about the publication Keith Pickavance said, “Time Management in construction projects is critical. Delayed completion affects IT, process plant, oil and gas, civil engineering, and in fact it affects all industries, in all countries, and the bigger the project, the more damage delayed completion causes to costs, and reputation.

“Complex projects in particular require an analytical approach if they are to succeed. Until now there has been no guidance produced on how to manage time pro-actively, and effectively on complex projects.”

Launched in an era of ‘more for less’ the 176-page guide and its methodology will make an important contribution to improving performance. The guide was preceded by CIOB research in 2007/08 which found that for complex buildings 33% are finished on or before the completion date and 67% are late. Of those late 13% were more than 3 months and 18% over 6 months. In two-thirds of delay, the contractor was held primarily responsible.

Following the research the CIOB embarked upon a five year strategy to provide standard education, training, and accreditation in time management. The first phase of the plan is to produce this guide, which sets down the process and standards to be achieved in preparing and managing the time model in complex projects.

This new handbook uses a logical step by step approach to show how an effective time model can be used to manage the risk of delay to completion on construction projects. It demonstrates procedures and examples from inception and risk appraisal, through design and construction, to testing and commissioning that show practitioners the logical procedures to use.

The CIOB will develop training opportunities around time management and a process to assess individuals’ competence and the value they add to project delivery. The accreditation programme will be administered by the Institute, through a mix a formal assessments, industry experience and interviews by a panel of peers.

Sitemaster Building v5.0 Launched with additional features.

Last week Mobile CAD Surveying announced the release of Sitemaster Building v5.0 with additional features. Sitemaster is their award winning mobile surveying solution software from the well known Graebert stable.

For those already familiar with Sitemaster Building, you will be aware that producing the CAD drawings ‘on site’ in ‘real time’  is the future of surveying and Measured Building Surveying,  in fact, isn’t it amazing to think that just five or six years ago virtually all surveyors took pencil and pad, tape measure or possibly a laser measuring device out into the field and spent several hours measuring up sites, buildings and all related detail before returning to the office to redraw the detail into their CAD package.

Now we have, NO more return visits to site due to blunt pencils and inaccurate paper documentation, NO guesswork, NO wrong data documentation NO sagging tape measures

Additional features include:-

* Support of the Windows 7 operating system

* Support of the Leica Disto D8 and D3A BT laser distance meters

* New Room Depth option….When creating door openings, you can not only measure the lengths of the wall right-hand and left-hand to the opening in the next room but also in one operation the depth of the room. Thus, the shape of a rectangular room can be generated immediately in the drawing. This will vastly speed up production of lower tolerance drawings…EPC for instance.

* New Building Services Library….The Symbols area of the program now additionally provides a Library for Building Services which allows you to insert blocks for electrical power supplies, water supplies, and equipment such as boilers or extractors, into your floor plans.

* New Dimensioned Symbols command… the Symbols area lets you now add a dimension line with a Symbol on it. You can quickly add to your site measurement plans, measured from one end point of a wall in the classic SiteMaster style. This feature is intended to be used especially to collect building services information (for example for kitchen planning), but basically can be used with any other symbol of the built-in or customized symbol library.

* Door and Windows can now be placed into any wall. These can be openings which cover the entire length of a wall (in fact replacing the wall), or openings which have zero distance at one end of a wall.

* The WIDTH attribute of door and window openings with retainer always gets the smallest (clear) distance of the opening.

Why not download a FREE trial version now and see for yourself the future of mobile surveying solutions.

Mobile CAD Surveying Ltd the main and preferred Graebert dealer in the UK, supplying mobile surveying solutions Worldwide.

Coming soon! Sitemaster Building v6 – the next Generation of SiteMaster Optimized for Building Information Modelling (BIM)  Combines Mobile Deployment, 3D Building Measurement and Object Modelling into a Single Solution

Using the ARES Core Engine for AutoCAD Compatibility. To express an interest or to be kept up to date with developments use their contact form.

Measured Building Surveys.net have recently added a Topographical Survey service to their existing range of Measured Surveys, ‘As Built’ and Floor Plan Surveys.

“Work has been brisk over the last few months for the team and this includes commissions from the UK and abroad.  In fact we were asked to carry out some measured surveys in Ukraine, Eastern Europe. This proved to be very successful and the client was very pleased with the results, so much so that we are quoting for more work over there in the near future” a spokesman told us.

SKELMERSDALE building firm Construction Partnership UK (CPUK) has won the contract to create a drive-through Starbucks coffee shop at the Trafford Centre, in Greater Manchester.

The £550,000 contract with property giant Peel is the latest in a series of commercial and retail projects being negotiated or won by CPUK in recent weeks.

The 2,013 sq ft drive-through is in a prime location on Barton Dock Road, opposite the Trafford Centre, the £1.4bn shopping and leisure destination which attracts more than 30m visitors each year.

The American drive- through coffee shop concept is new to the UK, and this will be one of Starbucks’s first in the country.

Construction will take 17 weeks and work has now started on site, near the Trafford Centre’s Barton Square.

Earlier this year, Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks announced plans to open 30 of its drive-through shops in locations across the UK, creating 600 jobs.

The move followed a successful trial of the concept in South Wales.

CPUK has a strong-record of delivery for Peel, including the creation of the multi-million-pound office project Pacific Way Digital Park at Eccles, in Salford.

The CPUK team built six two-storey office units in a £4m contract for the 35,000 sq ft development aimed at hi-tech firms attracted by nearby Media City.

Steve Burke, CPUK managing director, said: “We have a long and successful history of delivering quality projects with Peel.

“This is one of a number of projects in the commercial and retail sectors that we have been appointed on in recent weeks thanks to our reputation. What is particularly pleasing is that companies we have worked with previously continue to return for our service and our delivery.”

Insulation is inexpensive and key to an energy-efficient home, one specialist has claimed.

Gordon Miller, sustainability and communications director of Sustain, commented it costs around £200 to ensure an attic is insulated.

And grants are available to help people who receive income support pay for the work, he continued.

“Before you even think about trying to generate electricity or hot water, make sure that the home is properly insulated. That is one of the key things,” Mr Miller said.

Homeowners can expect to save about £200 each year in reduced bills on an insulated home, he remarked, so they will make back their initial outlay within around 12 months.

There are lots of advantages to living in an eco-friendly home, Mr Miller added.

For example, well-insulated properties retain heat better in winter and are cooler in summer.

Ebico recently urged those thinking of selling their house to improve their home’s energy efficiency due to upcoming European Union legislation.

From 2012 it will be compulsory for energy efficiency ratings to be published in all sale advertisements for properties in the UK.

When New York’s tallest building, which stands at 1,454ft tall, was bought by Malkin Holdings in 2006 it was in a state of disrepair. But the condition of the building gave its owners an opportunity.

“When we took control of it, the place needed to be fixed. It was broken,” Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, told the Guardian. The solution was an environmental renovation, he said.

“We’re doing this [making the Empire State greener] not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes business sense. If we don’t reduce our energy consumption, we will lose money and be less competitive against China, India, Brazil and the other expanding economies,” Mr Malkin said.

The makeover is expected to cut the building’s energy use by almost 40 per cent and cut bills by more than $4m. The project will cut the building’s carbon footprint by more than 100,000 metric tonnes over the next 15 years, the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road.

As well as new windows, four central chillers have been replaced and smart air circulation systems have also been put in as a low-energy means of heating the building in winter and cooling it in summer.

With companies offering to fit homes with solar panels for free, experts say you can save more by paying for them yourself

Householders tempted by a rash of new “solar for free” offers could double their financial savings by paying for the panels themselves, experts have warned.

The advice comes as installations of solar photovoltaic panels have exploded in the UK, with the number installed in four months in 2010 more than doubling on the whole of 2009 since a government financial incentive was launched in April.

Spurred by the new feed-in tariff scheme that pays small scale generators of green electricity, a glut of companies are offering to fit thousands of homes with solar panels for free. Under the “rent your roof” model, the companies earn the tariff worth approximately £835 a year and the homeowner benefits from an annual saving of around £110 off their electricity bill. Homesun, ISIS Solar and A Shade Greener are three of the firms planning to do a deal with more than 120,000 homeowners by 2015, with Homesun promising to fit 2,000 homes in the next 12 months.

But homeowners would almost certainly be better off paying for the solar panels themselves, even taking into account interest on a loan for the upfront cost of around £10,000 for a typical home. “Looking at the figures, it [paying for panels yourself] looks like a better deal on paper,” Liz Laine, energy expert at Consumer Focus, told the Guardian. She added that consumers should go into such deals “with their eyes open”. Simon Osborn, policy advisor at Which?, said: “If you have the means to pay for solar panels yourself, then you may well be better off arranging to have them installed yourself.” Consumer Focus has also published a checklist of 24 questions people should ask before signing up, including who has liability if something goes wrong with the panels.

Under the “free solar” model, a homeowner would save in the region of £2,750 on energy bills over 25 years, the length of the tariff offer. By paying for their own panels with a loan at 7.7% interest repaid over 10 years and earning income from the feed-in tariff, they could save around £6,506 over the same period.

But the rise of such business models is exactly what the tariff was designed to do, say government and solar industry figures – drive innovation and solar take-up. Since the tariff started on 1 April, 12.12 megawatt peak (MWp) of solar panels have been installed at 4,822 homes, up from 3.8MWp in 2007, 4.42 MWp in 2008 and 5 MWp in 2009. Solar panel makers are responding to the demand, with Sharp announcing it will double annual production at its UK plant to 500 MW in December. The Wrexham plant, which currently employs 750 people, has seen the UK’s share of its output rise from 1% to 10%.

“A large number of companies are setting up to do PV [solar photovoltaic panels],” said Ray Noble, solar specialist at the Renewable Energy Association (REA). “Things are moving from a cottage industry to building scale industry, and creating a high number of jobs too.”

One UK solar energy company, SolarCentury, has seen its direct employees and network of installers rise from 200 staff in January to 350 now and predicts it will employ more than 500 by 2011.

The tariffs for solar and other renewable “microgeneration” are a key part of the UK’s plan to cut carbon emissions and hit an EU target of generating a fifth of energy from renewable sources by 2020. The government forecasts installations driven by the tariff will account for 1.6% of the UK’s electricity consumption in 10 years’ time.

However, the bill for the government and the taxpayer is unlimited. The government predicts the cost will be around £8 on every energy bill by 2020, though there is no cap and the scheme could potentially be a victim of its own success. Spain last week announced it was slashing its feed-in tariffs for solar PV panels by up to 45%, which some experts believe was a result of the tariff being set too high initially.

The rate of the UK tariff, currently set at 43.1p per KWh for solar PV on existing properties, is fixed until 31 March 2012, when it will be reviewed before decreasing each year. There is disagreement between industry figures over whether the current solar gold rush could force an earlier review. “I think the rate of uptake will be so fast the government will have to do an emergency review (of the rates) or possibly suspend them,” Alistair Roberts, project manager at energy co-op Renew, recently told the ENDS Report. “I don’t think there’s a risk of an emergency review in the next two years, as government needs as much help as possible to hit carbon targets,” said Noble at the REA.

Solar is currently the most expensive form of renewable electricity per unit of energy produced, though some in the UK solar industry believe rising energy prices and falling production costs will help it match fossil fuel prices by 2013.

Moisture Meters- The Key Facts

The measurement and detection of moisture and the meters used is a complex and important topic that is frequently misunderstood.

This article will outline the differences between the concepts of  ‘moisture measurement’ and ‘moisture detection’ as well as explain the most appropriate type of meter to use in different situations.

Moisture Measurement In Timber

The most common material in which moisture content can be ‘measured’ by using a moisture meter is timber. The typical tool used for this purpose is the widely available pin type meter (also known as an electrical resistance/conductance and destructive meter).

These instruments work by reading across the two pins and detecting the change in resistance when they come into contact with the timber.Pin meters will give a pretty good indication of the moisture content of timber. They are made and calibrated to do this on particular species of timber for example, Douglas Fir. These instruments work because the conductivity of timber (also known as the density), is reasonably constant throughout different timber types and is proportional to the moisture content. As there are timbers which have different densities to that which the instrument has been calibrated to, most meters are supplied with a set of tables which give the adjustments which need to be made dependant upon the type of timber being tested.

Limitations Of Pin Meters For Building Surveys

As described above, the common pin meter has been designed for use on timber and not any other materials. This fact is often not appreciated by many users who rely on pin meters to ‘measure’ moisture content in other materials such as masonry, plaster or wallpaper. This is not actually possible as there are major variations in, for example masonry and therefore no consistency between any two samples from different sites. The same holds for most common building materials.

All a pin type meter can indicate, at best, is whether moisture may be present but they can not measure the actual level of moisture in the material. The danger of using a pin meter is that the instrument only reads across the very small area between the pins. This is not such a problem with timber due to the homogenous nature of it. However, when looking for moisture in an internal wall, it would be necessary to make many pin holes all over the wall in order to get a thorough indication of whether there is a presence of moisture. This is time consuming and leaves behind unsightly holes. When faced with tiled areas (such as kitchens & bathrooms) the pin meter can not be pushed through tiles and as a result no readings can be taken or at best only a surface reading is obtained. The presence of certain substances on the surface of the material being tested, such as condensation and salts, will also affect the readings.

Thank-you to Mobile CAD Surveying for allowing us to copy this from their site.

For more information of a similar nature to this above, pelase visit the Mobile CAD Surveying Knowledge Base