Posts from ‘January, 2009’

“All you journalists ever seem to write about is bad news these days. You’d think the industry was dying and after a while it can get pretty boring.”
 
This is what the chief executive of a contractor told me the other day. And it hit a nerve and I think it reflects a more general of [...]

After Balfour Beatty’s fantastic centenary celebrations on Monday, the latest post-Christmas party was organised by Atkins last night in central London.
 
Chief executive Keith Clarke said a few words on ‘reasons to be cheerful’ (more next week on a particular reason why Atkins has cause for celebration…) after all the gloom of the back end of last year. [...]

I saw this on a local paper website - a debt collector (you’d think he had plenty of work on) has found the time to record a blow by blow photographic account of the building of the Hindhead tunnel on the A3.
You can see more at http://www.a3tunnel.blogspot.com/ or read the original story at http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/Video-Hindhead-tunnel-is-a.4849585.jp

As Nick Whitten reports on cnplus today, concerns are growing about the withdrawal of credit insurance to construction companies (http://www.cnplus.co.uk/News/2009/01/construction_firms_in_credit_talks_with_insurers.html)
It’s worth noting that it comes on the same day that the government floated plans to encourage bank lending by insuring the risk associated with the loan - originally a Conservative party plan.
As we reported both Christmas, industry [...]

It’s not clear what vwas really new about the prime minister’s weekend promise to create 100,000 jobs though investing in an Obama-style public works bonanza.
Was his commitment to more schools, hospitals and infrastructure an advance on previous announcements by Chancellor Alistair Darling?
The Construction Products Association is certainly sceptical - chief executive Michael Ankers said the [...]

One of the first things CN will be doing this year is launching our new-look Construction News Quality Awards.
 
We have been running the awards, under a slightly different name, for 10 years now and last year’s was very successful. But - especially in a year like this - we want the awards to be much [...]