Relief for Wimbledon as City Hall overturns local council’s rejection of £200m expansion plans
Allies & Morrison’s plans to treble the size of grand slam tournament’s grounds finally approved after year-long planning saga
The Greater London Authority has approved Allies & Morrison’s £200m plans to treble the size of the Wimbledon tennis championships’ grounds in the latest twist in a year-long planning saga.
Deputy London mayor Jules Pipe overturned Wandsworth council’s rejection of the landmark scheme earlier this week following an impassioned and sometimes heated four-hour hearing.
Be ‘more real’ in bids, government property boss tells firms
Construction companies should be more honest about the likely timescale and cost of a project when they bid for it, according to a top government official.
Saurabh Bhandari, director for property delivery and transformation at the Office of Government Property, said “quite often” when his organisation looks at bids “they are unbelievable”, which “creates a lot of uncertainty [and] a lack of confidence in what the industry is doing”.
Speaking at the Construction Week conference in Birmingham, he said: “My ask of the industry would be, we need to be more real… whether you’re a consultant, whether you’re a contractor, whether you’re an appraiser, we need to get a lot more real about what is really possible.
“I know sometimes the procurement strategies haven’t allowed you to always say it out loud – to say what really needs to happen here – but that ultimately drives a lower confidence business case that takes years off a project.”
Bhandari added that dubious bids also lead to projects “which never come to fruition, simply because the basis upon which some of these cases are made are flakey at best”.
The Office of Government Property is part of the Cabinet Office and looks after all of the non-infrastructure parts of the government’s estate, comprising 160 million square metres.
Elsewhere in his discussion with Emily King, director of LDNY Consulting, Bhandari suggested the government will increasingly integrate different types of development, as well as potentially look for commercial opportunities within new buildings, to reduce costs.
“If you just look at the government estate right now, we have a lot of facilities that we build individually. So you might be building a school at the same time you’re building a community centre.
“The NHS is looking at delivering a lot more neighbourhood healthcare… but currently the industry, as well as the client, is thinking about those things as separate entities, rather than consolidated entities.
“We really need to start thinking about these things differently[…] till the time we actually create [more] value, we will not be able to close the funding gap, and much of what we are really going to have to do is to consolidate our assets.”
HS2 Euston ‘looking increasingly positive’, says mayor
The likelihood of HS2 finishing at Euston is looking “increasingly positive”, London mayor Sadiq Khan has said.
Khan gave an upbeat reading on his hopes for the endangered station project as he set out his plans to attract transport investment last night (2 October) at the London Transport Museum’s annual dinner.
The Labour mayor praised the new government’s responsiveness to his building plans, including consenting new homes at Cockfosters and Oxford Street pedestrianisation.
He added: “While I don’t want to tempt fate, it’s looking increasingly positive that HS2 will come to Euston.”
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced last October that the proposed HS2 terminus at Euston station would no longer be publicly funded, casting major doubt on whether the station would be built at all.
In February, the Public Accounts Committee said it was “highly sceptical” the government could attract private investment in the project, while Mace chair Mark Reynolds said his firm’s private finance proposal had “gone into a black hole”.
However, it is rumoured that chancellor Rachel Reeves is will green light the Euston terminus in this month’s Budget, Construction News’ sister publication New Civil Engineer reported this week.
Khan’s positive note on HS2 accompanied bold plans for transport infrastructure for his third four-year stint as mayor. He said he would use his position as mayor to lobby for more transport investment in London, including for proposed DLR extension to Thamesmead, the West London Orbital and Bakerloo line extension.
Taken together, the projects would spur the construction of tens of thousands of homes, he added.
Danny Sullivan Group buys M&E recruitment firm
Infrastructure labour supplier Danny Sullivan Group has acquired M&E recruitment specialist Diamond Construction & Engineering Recruitment.
Essex based Diamond has been in business since 1983 and specialises in the provision of blue and white collar temporary and permanent personnel to the M&E sector nationwide.
Tim O Sullivan, MD of Danny Sullivan Group, said: “Diamond shares a common history and core values with Danny Sullivan Group and has built a fantastic expertise and reputation in M&E recruitment.
Sisk in talks to finish ISG’s £200m Teesside vaccine plant
The contractor’s life sciences business is understood to be in advanced talks with client Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies about finishing the job, known as Project Borealis.
It would be the first major ISG project to resume works in the wake of the contractor’s fall into administration nearly two weeks ago.
It offers hope to other subcontractors around the country waiting in the wings to see if their projects can get a quick restart before project teams break-up and move on.
Work halted on the advanced phase 1 on Thursday 19th just as news broke that ISG was heading into administration.
All subcontractors packed up that afternoon, including Irish M&E contractor Jones Engineering, which is owned by Cathexis, also the owner of ISG before it was placed into administration with EY.
Since then Sisk and Fujifilm are understood to have been in talks about completing the project.
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