The docklands of the Wirral Peninsula faces a massive regeneration scheme over the next three decades after the £4.5 billion planning application was given the green light.

The Wirral Waters scheme will transform more than 500 acres of disused brownfield sites over the next 30 years in the Birkenhead region. The project aims to breathe fresh life into the area, creating environmental as well as economic benefits to Birkenhead, Wallasey as well as the Merseyside region as a whole.

The development is expected to create tens of thousands of jobs during the construction phase and has been hailed a massive boost to the economy of the area as well as the residents that the project will impact directly upon.

The cabinet member for regeneration and planning strategy, Andrew Hodson commented: “This is a great day for Wirral. We have been working closely with Peel for almost four years to bring jobs and regeneration to the borough”.

“The approval of this planning application will lead to the total transformation of what is currently derelict brownfield land within East Float at Birkenhead Docks and when finished will create over 27,000 jobs.

“This has taken place against a backdrop of the worst recession in living memory and it is a credit to both Peel and Wirral Council that we have kept the plans moving.”

He added: “Subject to getting the okay from the government, we hope work will start on site within the next two years and officers of the council will continue to work with Peel as we move into the development phase.”

At BuilderScrap we are delighted to hear the news of this local development, as a Wirral based company this announcement marks exciting times for the area and we look forward to seeing the project progress.

Source: EDIE (net) 23 August 2010

This month seen the scrapping of the Building Schools for the future scheme, the Education Secretary Michael grove said 719 school revamps which have already been signed up will now be terminated, with a further 123 to be viewed by a case-by-case basis.

The 706 schools in the existing BSF programme which have reached financial close will go ahead, but officials will see what money can be saved within each project.

Mr Gove said: “The Building Schools for the Future scheme has been responsible for about one third of all this department’s capital spending.

“But throughout its life it has been characterised by massive overspends tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.”

He called the scheme “dysfunctional” and “unnecessarily bureaucratic”, with nine “meta stages”.

He added: “It is perhaps no surprise that it can take almost three years to negotiate the bureaucratic process of BSF before a single builder is engaged or brick is laid.”

180 schools have been rebuilt or revamped since the programme and one school in particular has truly benefited from the scheme achieving 78.18% score from BREEAM making it the most sustainable school in the UK. Let’s hope the 231 schools about to begin work can live up to this potential and that the government’s cost cutting will not affect the children’s learning environment.

1,100 school who signed up for the scheme, investing their time, money and energy into drawing up plans for redevelopment have seen their hopes dashed by this move.

The plan was for all of England’s 3,500 schools were to be revamped by 2023, it was supposed to replace out dated buildings which have no place in modern education.

Ed Balls Shadow Education Secretary said “Today is a black day for our country’s schools”

He added that he and his Labour colleagues would fight to “save our new schools”.

Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, was very unhappy with the decision and said, “Poor learning environments have a negative impact on the education of children and young people.”

“School buildings were woefully run down prior to Labour coming to power in 1997 and while much has been done to improve them there is still a lot more to do.”

I know everyone with in the industry will have an opinion on this, whether you’re a supplier of building construction materials or a UK builder. I for one am opposed to the scrapping of the scheme, it sends a very direct message that saving money is more important than using environmentally friendly materials and that construction materials which may be hazardous to the environment are not a concern for this government. I may be a little bias, but I think eco building and reusing and recycling building materials to lower our carbon footprint is of the utmost importance.

Ray O’Rourke, the chairman of Laing O’Rourke, has decided to write to all the firm’s major customers before he attends an employment tribunal for the apparent unfair dismissal of a former senior member of staff.

Neels Kriek, formerly managing director of Integrated Solutions for Laing O’Rourke’s European business operations, is hoping to be successful in his claim for unfair dismissal and hopes that a compensation packet be rewarded to him. As well as wrongful dismissal he has accused Laing O’Rourke of cheating the NHS of money.

O’Rourke took the unusual step by writing to his clients to tell them about the allegations at the end of June: “The claimant claims his dismissal was a result of having allegedly made disclosures on unlawful practices relating to commercial activities in parts of our business, which he claims to have brought to the direct attention of the European board.

Those accusations are: that we failed to declare the cost savings of central supplier rebates when we were required to under the terms of a Procure 21 framework agreement with the NHS; [and] that there were irregularities in the way the group managed main contractor discounts.

We were not, and never have been engaged in any unlawful practices relating to these issues. Further we can find no evidence that the claimant brought these allegations to our attention prior to discussions with him regarding his departure, which was a direct consequence of the disbanding of the business unit he headed.”

A source at Laing O’Rourke said the NHS had been made aware of the allegations and had given it “a clean bill of health”. A spokesman for Laing O’Rourke said it had “vigorously defended” the allegation.

Kriek had hoped that his claim could be heard under “whistleblowing regulations”, but the tribunal last week decided that the disclosures did not fall within whistleblowing laws.

If I was to tell you all that the past couple of weeks had been a successful time for BuilderScrap, I would be making the under statement of the year. The awards have been flowing towards us recently and we are happy to reap the benefits.

A couple of weeks back, BuilderScrap were Highly Commended in the Supply Partner category of the Construction News Awards.  We were described as inspirational and innovative, and it was agreed the industry needs to utilize services like this. Then a couple of my colleagues attended the Green Apple Award where they were presented with the prestigious Gold Award.

Just last week we had another cause for celebration.  On Thursday 8 July we were finalists at the Merseyside Innovation Awards and were awarded £1,000 which we were delighted to receive.

The prizes did not stop then, the next night more than 350 key figures from commerce and industry came together to celebrate the achievement of companies at the 2010 Wirral Investment Network Awards ceremony.  11 awards were presented to companies from all sectors and were very happy to be presented with the Environment Award, managing to see off the tough competition from B&M Waste and Technical Demolition Services.

It is a very successful time for BuilderScrap and we couldn’t have done it without our loyal users, so we’d like to thank you all for your support.

Building materials group CRH has announced it will not be in profit the first half of the year, and will only just break even with a massive 20% fall in earnings.

In the first half of 2009 they announced £83m profit, in trading this year which is up to 30 June the firm said pre-tax profit would be “close to breakeven”.

Also earnings in terms of EBITDA would fall around 20% on the £541m recorded for the same period a year earlier.

However, the rate of decline in sales slowed, with sales over the 12 months to the end of June down 10%, compared with a 14% drop in the year to the end of April.

They expect a huge second half this year though and say they are likely to be higher than the £957m last year due to cost cutting and currency movements.

CRH said the measures taken to cut costs and reduce excess capacity since 2007 delivered total cumulative annualised savings of £1.12bn by the end of 2009, with a further £365m projected for 2010/11.

The firm’s interim results for 2010 are due to be posted on 24 August 2010.

The group also announced it had spent £111m on 13 acquisitions in the first half of 2010, and is due to invest a further £16m in Yatal Cement as its share of funding for two projects in north-east China.

Myles Lee, CRH chief executive, said:” We are seeing a good flow of bolt-on opportunities across our businesses and we continue to monitor wider developments in our industry; however, we are maintaining a patient approach in progressing transactions in light of the challenging market backdrop.”

BuilderScrap feels that if the sales are down then people must be making sure they are using all of their supply rather than throwing their building material surplus away. We urge all UK builders to use eco building materials and not throw away construction building materials that are surplus.

Les Owens, Managing Director of BuilderScrap and a committee representative for the Merseyside Innovation Awards speak on BBC Merseyside.

BuilderScrap are a finalist for the prestigious award.

Click the link below to listen to the interview which was on BBC Merseyside this morning.

http://www.merseysideinnovationawards.co.uk/

Arsenal FC has announced they will be playing the next season in a home kit made out of recycled bottles.

They say they have got a ‘traditional’ design made with the latest cutting edge technology.

Every shirt which will be entirely made from recycled polyester, from up to eight plastic water bottles. It will be part of the Nike’s ‘Considered Design’ programme, which uses discarded plastic bottles that have been diverted from landfill in the manufacturing process.

The shirt is now 13% lighter than any previous kit and helps quickly evaporate moisture by drawing it through the fabric to the surface.

England and Arsenal winger Theo Walcott summed the new kit up: “The colours are very traditional, it feels nice and it’s made from recycled plastic bottles so what more can you ask for?

“It fits and feels nice, and that’s the most important thing, I think it’s important that you feel comfortable in it.”

A report from the Centre for Alternative Technology concludes that a massive expansion in offshore wind, a switch to electric vehicles and steps to halve household energy demand would make the country “zero-carbon” by the end of the next decade and without the need to rely on nuclear power.

The study said energy demand in buildings could be halved if changes such as; improved insulation, eliminating draughts and improving the efficiency of heating technology came in to effect.

It will need “whole house” refurbishment to upgrade energy efficiency and for new homes to be built from natural materials such as wood and straw to lock in carbon in an effort to cut overall emissions.

The report also said there should be a switch to electric vehicles, which would generate 50% less carbon dioxide than petrol or diesel cars.

As the grid is “decarbonised”, electrical vehicles will be even more environmentally friendly, however this will raise a huge demand for electricity, so, “smart charging” will be introduced in which they are charged up overnight when power demand is low – which will limit the extra pressure on the grid.

Domestic flights would be replaced with bus or rail travel, with fewer journeys taken overall.

After looking through some of the previous blogs I decided to write one that relates to how we can reduce the pollution in our cities and ultimately the global production of greenhouse gases. I came across several different methods in which a car can use hydrogen as a full or partial fuel and they all have there pro’s and cons.

The first is the more obvious and seemingly more popular one. The fuel cell has been around for a long time the principal was published in 1838 by Christian Friedrich Schönbein and was quickly taken up by Sir William Robert Grove, who in February 1839 invented the first fuel cell using very similar materials to the one’s we use today.

Cars today that use fuel cells have some catching up to do before they become a good replacement for the modern combustion engine. The efficiency of fuel cells has already been proven, between 2002 and 2007 several buses and taxi’s using fuel cells as a power source were driven around London. It is expected that by making the switch we could cut our greenhouse emissions by half.

Another option is using hydrogen as a direct fuel in other words replacing petrol and diesel with cars that burn hydrogen instead, you lose some of the efficiency from using a fuel cell but you get much more power (280hp) as apposed to the equivalent fuel cell (80hp). Right now it is unknown which one will win over but in the mean time it looks like the petrol and diesel engines will hang around till approximately 2030.

Another option which I recently found is instead of introducing fully hydrogen cars immediately, hydrogen can be generated on the go using only distilled water and electrolyte. While researching I came across a petrol/diesel and hydrogen hybrid system which can be attached to almost any car which still burns petrol/diesel but at a reduced rate. It does this by instead of burning air and fossil fuel it burns air, petrol/diesel, pure oxygen and hydrogen.

The system attaches directly to your air intake and tricks the car into thinking less air is going into the engine so the car then puts in less fuel. Hydrogen and oxygen produced from the hybrid system are fed into the engine through the air intake and the car benefits from burning a cleaner fuel along with a moderate power gain from burning a more volatile fuel and you the consumer don’t need to go to the petrol station as often. In some case studies, some cars are found to have gained an extra 20MPG just from using this system and some rumours say cars that are already efficient will gain a lot more.

The American Department of Energy has announced funding for a variety of energy-efficient building technologies and training courses to create skilled environmental jobs and workers.

There will be a $76m fund that will be divided between 45 companies developing technologies to upgrade the environmental credentials of America’s buildings, there will also be 13 training courses to ensure people will be qualified to build and install them in commercial properties.

“These projects will help the United States lead the world in advancing energy-efficient technologies,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

“Energy-efficient commercial buildings will help our country cut its carbon emissions and energy costs while the training programs will upgrade the skills of the current workforce and attract the next generation to careers in the emerging clean-energy economy.”

39% of the USA’s total greenhouse gas emissions, 50% of its sulphur dioxide and 18% of its NOx emissions are released by domestic and commercial buildings.

There is a wide variety of technologies being funded; from analytic tools to building components, more insulation and better ventilation will all help lower the environmental impact.