Buildings

Which projects are likely to have the biggest impact on the industry in the year ahead?  Tribeca Work on London’s largest purpose-built life sciences campus will ramp up in 2025. The first phase of the King’s Cross Tribeca project, which features state-of-the-art laboratories and workshops, saw VolkerFitzpatrick complete the 10,450…

10. Balfour chasing ‘outstanding sums’ as luxury-flat developer collapses In January it emerged that Balfour Beatty was chasing “outstanding sums” relating to a £200m super prime residential scheme in Mayfair, after its former client entered administration. The contracting giant completed the project in May 2023, five years after its appointment,…

The collapse of the UK’s sixth-biggest contractor, the Grenfell Inquiry phase two report and the change in government all had a massive impact on the industry this year – and will continue to do so in 2025 How will the construction industry remember 2024? Perhaps it will go down as…

Áine McGuinness is a senior associate at legal services firm DWF AI is rapidly gaining traction across various industries, and the construction industry is no exception. One of the most promising applications is the use of AI-driven smart contracts, which can perform tasks that would traditionally require manual intervention. For…

Alex Jahanshahi-Edlin is an associate director of McBains and a member of the UK Green Building Council The government’s newly announced intention to create a strategic “spatial plan” for the UK’s energy transition is welcome, but it needs to include a sufficient expansion of the National Grid to support build…

Stuart Byles is director at fit-out and refurbishment contractor Pexhurst   The Building Safety Act (BSA) 2022 has now been in force for almost a year. However, the release of the JCT Design and Build Contract 2024 in April has highlighted a significant disconnect between standard-form construction contracts and the comprehensive…

Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate (and most violent) movie, 1972’s Frenzy - captures a lost London. Set largely in Covent Garden, it shows the area – these days a tourist trap – as it had stood for the previous 300 years - a bustling flower and fruit market. At the time of…

Kieran Bradley is director of architecture at consultancy Pick Everard As a society, much is made of our ability to repurpose where possible. Buildings are no different, and in recent years we’ve come a long way in making our construction choices more net-zero ambitious. Now, Labour is pledging to build…

This year, the Labour Party’s annual conference played host to 29 fringe events containing the word “housing” in the title. A further seven mentioned the word “infrastructure”. In crowded rooms across the conference zone on Liverpool’s dockside, delegates crammed in to hear the new army of excited “generation rent” MPs…

Last month, the global construction community gathered at The Barbican Centre in London for the 2024 Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) International Conference to address a key question – should we continue to build new buildings, or should we focus on renewing the ones we already have?…