Archive June 2011

Toughest Construction Job In The World?

One of our customers sent us an interesting link to maybe the toughest construction job going at the moment. Chinese workers have been tasked with building a 3ft-wide path made of wooden planks on the sheer cliff face of a mountain that is thousands of feet high. The Shifou Mountain in Hunan Province, where they are building the pathway, stands vertical at 90 degrees without any slopes or alcoves. We also saw this as a video news article - Construction cliff work 'not for the faint-hearted' -...
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Network Rail Winners Announced

Network Rail has announced the contractors chosen to handle the planned and reactive maintenance for building and civils works. This is a considerable amount of work spanning over three years, which is good news for the industry. Network Rail have named 11 contractors in total over the three regions. Firms will design improvements when applicable and carry out maintenance to a whole host of structures from bridges and viaducts to tunnels and embankments and cuttings. Much of the planned maintenance...
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Shell's "Neglect Of Basic Maintenance" Costs £1.2 Million

The SHP (Safety & Health Practitioner) reports that energy giant Shell UK is to pay £1.24 million in fines and costs following an explosion and fire at its Bacton gas terminal in Norfolk on 28 February 2008. The incident was investigated by both the HSE and the Environment Agency (EA). HSE inspector Steve Johnson said: "The fact no one was seriously hurt in this incident was solely down to good fortune". This was acknowledged by the company's internal report and it also stated that Shell...
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Race for Large Blackpool Scheme

The Construction Enquirer stated this month that Blackpool's development partner Muse has started the race to find a contractor to build new council offices as part of its Talbot Gateway scheme. Any contractors interested in this work have until 5 July to get hold of prequalification documents. These can be obtained from Mr Lord at Davis Langdon's Salford Quays office or by sending an email to blackpoolcounciloffices@davislangdon.com. For more on this story go to Race on for £15m Blackpool...
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Olympics Safety Success - A One-off?

The SHP (Safety & Health Practitioner) reports that Mike Williams, the Principal Inspector of Construction for London said, that given the recent cuts to the regulator's budget and the consequent impact on how it carries out its proactive work, the success of the 2012 project "was, perhaps, a one-off". Speaking at a health and safety forum held at the Olympics site in east London last week, Mr Williams described the level of health and safety achievement on the site as "fantastic". Overall,...
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Newsletter - June 2011

The June 2011 edition of the Ai Solutions Newsletter is now available: June Newsletter.
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