In today’s news, we will look into the one of the longest rail bridges in the United Kingdom has been finished by HS2. During this time, the former Emap couple achieved income of more than one million pounds for the second year with a free construction B2B title. In addition, the “rotten culture” of the building sector is being confronted by the Grenfell Tower incident.
Longest Rail Bridge in UK Completed by HS2
Original Source: HS2 completes construction of UK’s longest rail bridge
The firm responsible for monitoring the controversial high-speed rail project claimed the end of construction marked “the culmination of more than ten years” of work.
The last deck component of the 3.4km Colne Valley Viaduct was lowered into place, completing construction of the country’s longest rail bridge as part of the UK’s HS2 high-speed rail project.
The bridge, one of the largest pieces of infrastructure created for HS2, will transport trains across the valley near the M25 motorway and has taken little over two years to complete, with construction beginning in May 2022.
Undertaking the final deck segment of the Colne Valley Viaduct’s installation today signifies the completion of over a decade of preparation, engineering and building, according to Billy Ahluwalia, senior project manager at HS2 Ltd.
“Congratulations to the hard-working crew for constructing the longest railway bridge in the UK and the longest bridge on HS2.”
The 3.3km Tay Bridge will be replaced as the UK’s longest by the new rail bridge, which will enter the rail systems installation phase as part of HS2’s preparations to launch full services in 2033.
During the construction of the Colne Valley Viaduct, a launcher of 160 meters in length was utilised to lower the specially engineered deck segments into position, which totalled 1,000 pieces spread across 56 piers.
After HS2’s ten-mile tunnel under the Chiltern Hills and the remainder of the main construction phase is complete, the region will be transformed back into chalk grassland and forest.
The HS2 project has been dogged by debate over cost, timeliness of delivery, and environmental impact since its inception in 2009, so any positive development regarding the bridge’s completion will be greatly appreciated.
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that a parliamentary committee subsequently declared the project to have been “very poor value for money” due to the fact that former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak terminated plans to extend the high-speed railway line from London and Birmingham to Manchester, thus scrapping half of the project.
Free Construction B2B Title Helped Former Emap Pair Earn £1m+ for Second Year
Original Source: Former Emap pair hit £1m+ revenue for second year with free construction B2B title
The Construction Enquirer says “providing a valuable service to a specialised sector can still pay off”.
14 years after its co-founders started it, a UK construction sector B2B newsbrand has topped £1m in revenue for the second year.
Aaron Morby and Grant Prior were editor and news editor at Emap-owned Construction News for nearly 20 years before leaving in 2007 when the publisher hired new staff.
After several years of freelancing, they started the Construction Enquirer in 2010 with some of their payoffs.
Only its website and newsletter are free to read.
Google Analytics shows the Enquirer gets 1.7 million monthly page views from 400,000 unique users, making it the most-read construction sector title, Prior told Press Gazette.
Similarweb also ranks the Enquirer first with 825,500 visitors (93% UK) in August. Construction News, Morby and Prior’s former company that Metropolis bought, was on 254,100 but has a paywall.
Since launch, the Enquirer’s daily email newsletter has had 43,000 subscribers and an average open rate of 50% (email open rates should be taken with a grain of salt due to Apple changes in recent years, but Prior did say anyone who doesn’t open the newsletter for three months is taken off the list).
“When Construction News was at its peak in the mid-1990s, I think it had a print circulation of 40,000, which was always considered the highest number of people you could reach in the industry,” he said. “We get that daily.”
Since 2011, when the Enquirer earned £18,000, Prior claimed it had grown “steadily” commercially. Its low cost base allowed it to generate a pre-tax profit when it crossed £1m in March 2023 and £1.1m last year.
Only Prior and Morby, who work from home, are editorial employees. Two freelance salespeople and a tech person help.
Prior: “We had a very simple idea: it was just to take the old B2B magazine model and put it online.”
He stated the key distinction was that they concentrated on news rather than features and comment.
“I never felt prissy about folks reading trade magazines for two hours a day—it’s nonsense. Google Analytics shows how long people spend on stories. They want accurate, fast information.”
Prior added: “We knew news was important in construction because it’s always been a news-driven industry, and when we saw traditional titles shift from news to features and events, most of them became events businesses, not media companies. We drove through that.
“I appreciate the premise, but if your core product, like the magazine, dilutes to such a little size people, there’s no kudos, therefore we opted to stay out of events. Our crew is too tiny and expensive.”
The newsletter contains the six or seven most important news stories of the day, according to Prior. We deliver those swiftly because we gambled years ago that people’s attention spans were shortening, and it worked out.”
Prior added that all their ad sales are done directly to industry clients, promising a “very focused” audience willing to click on things they think will improve their firm.
To distinguish editorial from paid content, the Enquirer offers online and newsletter ads and email blasts distinct from the morning newsletter. They also avoided pop-up and native adverts that “annoy the reader”.
“Everything we’ve always done has been based on just transferring old school print stuff online: news, advertising, keep them separate, write good stories,” he said.
“Our advertisers return because everything’s measurable, so we send them clickthrough and page impression metrics. All of them are high and enjoy it.”
Prior indicated that others may easily follow suit to build their own incumbent rivals in diverse industries due to lower start-up costs than when print was the primary medium.
Says: “There’s a lot of negative talk about the death of journalism, but knowing your market and providing a valuable service to a specialised sector can still pay off.”
Frugal and Hostile: Construction Industry’s ‘rotten culture’ Faces Grenfell Reckoning
Original Source: Penny-pinching and adversarial: construction industry’s ‘rotten culture’ faces Grenfell reckoning
Construction is facing a reckoning after the Grenfell Tower fire public inquiry’s scathing conclusions and the potential of criminal prosecutions against key actors.
The 2017 catastrophe that killed 72 people was caused by a “rotten culture in the construction industry” with repeated supply chain failures, according to engineer Dame Judith Hackitt, who conducted a building safety study following Grenfell.
The inquiry report, released on Wednesday, detailed multiple failures in the construction industry, council, regulators, and central government and “provides all of the evidence and more to reinforce the messages that I gave about the state of that culture in the industry back in 2017.”
She added: “This issue goes beyond cladding and insulation. An industry that fails to provide quality homes for people to live in.”
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the public inquiry into the disaster, found “systematic dishonesty” by Arconic, Kingspan, and Celotex, makers of cladding panels and insulation products, in his 1,700-page report. According to the investigation, Studio E, Rydon and Harley Facades, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s building control department contributed to the fire.
The findings revealed the construction industry’s structural issues, including its fragmentation, competition, and blame-shifting. On razor-thin margins, contractors and subcontractors depend on each other and suck out profits.
Subcontractors on construction sites have progressively increased since the 1980s, but specialist work has always been subcontracted to experts.
In her 2018 study, Building a Safer Future, Hackitt found a “system failure” and criticised the industry’s focus on speed and cost over safety. She also cited misunderstanding over stage positions and obligations.
At Applied Value, construction analyst Stephen Rawlinson said: “Always in the construction industry, everybody looks at the other guy and says, ‘It’s his fault, right?’ The Grenfell line seems to have issues throughout.
“A lot of it goes back to people wanting cheap buildings.” Construction enterprises have tiny operating margins (2% to 3% in contracting), which might affect conduct.
Due to financial cuts from industry training boards and schemes, Rawlinson said the industry had a surprising lack of skills and expertise since the 1980s. He also noted a wave of deregulation since the mid-1990s and remarked, “All this existed in the 1980s.” The inquiry report recommended building safety improvements.
Moore-Bick’s report criticised Cameron’s “bonfire of red tape” deregulation. The regulator British Board of Agrément, which certifies construction materials as safe, was called “incompetent”.
The 1921-founded Building Research Establishment examined items and provided safety certificates, but it was privatised in 1997 and the government reduced its fire safety recommendations. Rawlinson said testing was “now more of a self-regulating environment”.
Grenfell Tower’s cladding and insulation were combustible. The probe found that Arconic, Celotex, and Kingspan had “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market”. Companies objected.
The study slammed the architect, principal contractor, and cladding contractor. Studio E, a former architectural firm, “demonstrated a cavalier attitude to the regulations affecting fire safety” and failed to recognise the combustible cladding.
The Grenfell disaster was the deadliest tower block fire, following the 2009 Lakanal House fire, which killed six, and the 1991 Knowsley Heights fire in Liverpool.
In 2020, the government required housebuilders to pay into a building safety fund to rectify fire safety issues with external cladding in high-rise skyscrapers taller than 18 meters (59ft) in England.
Aerated concrete, a popular material that could collapse, caused a new catastrophe last year. The government ordered more than 100 English schools to close light concrete buildings built between the 1950s and 1990s.
In 2008, construction workers were blacklisted for being union activists who voiced health and safety concerns, one of numerous scandals in the industry.
Private finance initiative (PFI) scandals plagued the building industry. The early 1990s PFI plan was scrapped in 2018 after intense battles over its exorbitant costs and design and structural flaws.
Until procurement processes prioritise quality, Hackitt believes cutting corners will persist in many locations.
Building Safety Act 2022-driven reform was promising, she said: “We are starting to see some of the big players certainly take the lead.” She added, “Far too many [industry] people are still dragging their feet.
We must be able to raise the bar and standards by recognising those who do the right thing and naming and shaming those who don’t.”
With the Labour government eager to start a housing boom and efforts to make existing homes more energy-efficient and carbon-efficient, improving standards is crucial.
The trade body Construction Products Association said, “Whilst we recognise the very worst of the culture and practises reflected in the Grenfell tragedy, we see an industry that over the past seven years has been changing and has a desire to demonstrate that it can be trusted to deliver safe and high-quality buildings for those who live and work in them.”
The industry group created a building product information code to ensure proper marketing. It reported that an official British standard to improve building procurement, design, construction, and inspection was nearing completion.
Hackitt’s 2018 review created the building safety regulator and the Office for Product Safety and Standards. Now there are proposals for a global regulator to improve accountability.
Head of policy and market insight at the National Federation of Builders Rico Wojtulewicz said: ‘When you read the Grenfell report, it’s obvious that there is a mismatch between building control, designers, contractors and others; what we really need to do is ensure that everybody knows who is accountable for what, and that is something that really needs to be firmed up’
Summary of today’s construction news
Overall, we discussed the contentious high-speed rail project’s overseers asserted that the completion of construction was “the culmination of more than ten years” of labour. At the same time, “providing a valuable service to a specialised sector can still pay off” according to the Construction Enquirer. For the second year running, a business-to-business newsbrand in the UK construction sector has generated more over £1 million in sales. The company was founded 14 years ago. In addition, the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster reached harsh conclusions, and important players in the industry may face criminal charges. As a result, the construction industry is preparing for a reckoning. According to Dame Judith Hackitt, an engineer who oversaw a building safety investigation in the aftermath of the Grenfell disaster, a “rotten culture in the construction industry” with recurring supply chain failures was to blame for the 2017 disaster, which killed 72 people.
