INDUSTRY NEWS Inbrief
Uponor has successfully achieved CIBSE accreditation for its ‘Hygienic Water Supply Systems’ CPD presentation, designed to highlight the importance of hygienic water supply systems and discuss the steps that should be taken to overcome the risk of Legionella.
www.uponor.com
Johnson Controls is holding an industry competition to mark the UK introduction of York PureOil chiller lubricant. The lubricant will be launched at the forthcoming HVAC and Refrigeration Exhibition, at Excel in London in January.
www.johnsoncontrols.com
Matthew Janney, a sales representative for Gaia Underfloor Heating, has conquered Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Mr Janney is raising money for Movember UK, raising awareness of men’s health issues including prostate and testicular cancer.
www.gaia.co.uk
BESA CONFERENCE: POLLUTION, POLITICS AND PRODUCTIVITY
London has ambitious plan to become greenest Global city says Deputy Mayor
would miss the wider opportunity to improve a construction process that delivers “broken buildings and broken people”. Author of last year’s seminal ‘Modernise or Die’ report for
BESA Awards for excellence presentation dinner
he first Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) national conference and awards event took on a wide range of political, technical and business issues at a top London hotel last week. The event focussed in on the industry’s most topical subjects, including the need to “reboot a broken process” in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster; a heartfelt plea from the Deputy Mayor of London for industry support on indoor air quality; and the promotion of a “productivity led change agenda” by industry guru Mark Farmer. The evening also saw the presentation of more than 20
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BESA Awards for excellence including the National Apprentice of the Year accolade going to Lewis Buchanan of Hargreaves Ductwork. Deputy Mayor of London Shirley Rodrigues delivered the opening keynote address at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel. She announced that indoor air quality would be a priority consideration in new planning laws for the city and a crucial part of her Environment Strategy. She urged BESA members to respond to the current
BSRIA's North office was officially opened on October 20 with a launch ceremony and ribbon cutting event attended by local VIPs and dignitaries in Preston, Lancashire.
www.bsria.co.uk
Bitzer UK has announced its latest training programme, with courses on key compressor technology topics scheduled for the rest of this year and into 2018. /
www.bitzer.de/gb/en/
Build2Perform Live, the reinvented showcase for the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), will be taking place on 21 and 22 November at London’s Olympia
www.build2perform.co.uk
EnviroVent has launched a Condensation and Mould Awareness workshop to help housing associations and local authorities become equipped to deal with these issues.
www.envirovent.com
6 November 2017
consultation process on changes to the London Plan and to share their expertise with policy makers. IAQ was also discussed during a session hosted by the Association’s IAQ Group that followed her talk. Issues around serious threats to human health from airborne particulates and how buildings are being turned into ‘safe havens’ were then outlined by a range of expert speakers. Learning the lessons of Grenfell was the subject of an open discussion led by BESA’s head of sustainability, David Frise. He said the specific causes of the fire were still not clear, but that everyone “recognised the culture and the systemic failings that made it possible”. He cautioned that the enquiry and independent review should not focus exclusively on fire safety as regulators
the construction industry said, during his keynote session, that the industry was facing an unprecedented combination of market drivers that threatened its “traditional resilience” – a growing capacity gap; rising consumer discontent; and Brexit, which would hit inward investment. He said the industry was standing on a “burning platform” and urged it to support his vision of a digital-led future where innovation dictated future skills development. Mr Farmer added: “Construction has risen to challenges
before, but we are now facing a set of problems.” The role of Trailblazer apprenticeships, which provide
far more flexibility than previous vocational training frameworks, were also widely welcomed as another opportunity to embrace new techniques and tackle falling productivity while also improving the sector’s image. Apprentices were also the focal point of the Association’s awards dinner, which took place in the evening at the same venue. The winners of regional awards held earlier in the year
were nominated for national prizes with top apprentices named in five industry sectors, and Lewis Buchanan taking the overall award.
Fifteen individuals were also honoured for giving up their time to help develop Trailblazer apprenticeships on behalf of the industry, while the first ever BESA Award for Excellence was won by Fife Council for its work on creating a forum for local authorities in Scotland supported by the Association. The BESA Contractor of the Year award was given jointly to Boulting Environmental Services and End Systems for their work together on AstraZeneca’s state of the art Sterile Products Plant in Macclesfield. The Alfred Manly Management Award went to Faye Pinder of Bouygues and the Ann Noblett memorial award went to Custis Castledine from Briggs & Forrester. For more from the conference, go to pg 14/15.
CALL FOR ACTION ON CASH RETENTIONS F
ollowing the Government's announcement of a retentions consultation, the ECA and BESA
have advised that any cash held as retentions by construction clients and major contractors “must be held in trust at the nearest opportunity”. Both the ECA and BESA continue to
call on the Government to phase out cash retentions by the early 2020s. This proposed ‘Australian-style’
system would mean cash being held cyclically, in a similar manner to deposits in the private housing rental market. The two engineering services trade bodies want to see cash retentions completely phased out, in order to protect suppliers from poor retention practices. At present, large businesses retain the cash in their own bank accounts, for use in a manner of their choosing.
The comments follow the release of an independent review of the current state-of-play on retentions by consultancy Pye Tait, and the announcement of a government consultation on the issue. The Government has recognised that “some payment practices prevalent in construction are a barrier to investment, productivity improvements and growth”.
www.heatingandventilating.net
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