News

The Building Research Establishment has agreed a new project with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to overhaul the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP).

Polymer supplier REHAU’s new Designing Healthy Healthcare guide explores the challenges and opportunities for contractors and specifiers involved in building healthcare environments, including hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and care homes.

Gillian Charlesworth, CEO of the Building Research Establishment, has criticised the government’s energy security plans.

To begin to protect the UK’s iconic Parliament buildings, an extensive survey has been completed to understand what needs to be done

Improvements to fire safety guidance in England were announced in June, and form part of a wider update to tighten building regulations and provide clearer fire safety rules for the design or construction of residential developments.

The new Plastic Packaging Tax will fall heavily on the building sector unless product manufacturers and suppliers team up, says Nick Oates, Managing Director at National Buying Group (NBG)

The Finishes and Interiors Sector (FIS) has launched a Specifiers’ Guide to Partitioning to help specification writers fully understand the criteria for partitioning, including moveable walls and pods.

David McNeice, partner and UK Head of Construction and Infrastructure at DWF, has said developers should contribute more to the Building Safety Levy.

With the construction industry becoming cautious of fixed-price contracts, contractor Dan Grimshaw, founder of Beam Development, urges using cost-plus contracts.

Hayley Steel, a partner at law firm Clarke Willmott LLP, asks if retrofitting homes is the silver bullet for net zero

How do you retrofit an existing listed roofline across multiple buildings and levels that has more in common with a jigsaw than a building?

In the race against time to decarbonise, plans are afoot for district heat networks to bring a solution, but how does this fit with the existing building stock, asks Andrew Pearson

Is the UK heading towards a timber shortage crisis, asks Stuart Goodall, Chief Executive of Confor

From 9-19 June 2022, the University of Westminster’s Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (bit.ly/PRoBE) is hosting a delegation of women construction workers from North America.

Housebuilders are worried the focus on solar panels could increase development costs. The National Federation of Builders (NFB) has criticised the government’s energy strategy for increasing the use of solar panels rather than wind turbines – one of the cheapest forms of renewable energy – and described the decision as shying away from changing planning laws to facilitate onshore wind turbines.

The Society for the Environment (SocEnv) has launched its brand-new website – socenv.org.uk – alongside a new visual identity. These changes bring an improved user experience, greater accessibility and enhanced engagement for the environmental professional community.

James Cash takes a closer look at a project in northeast London that has become a textbook example for retrofitting cold and leaky older buildings

What can be done to update 1960s housing stock? Plenty, says Matthew Mayes, Architect Director at BDP

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is checking respiratory health on construction sites as part of a month-long campaign to reduce occupational lung disease.