Archive for category: General News

Lynsey Allen, group procurement assistant manager for Inland Homes, explains what it is like to have a career in housebuilding, and why more needs to be done to encourage more women to consider this industry as an exciting career opportunity.

Lynsey joined Inland Homes in 2018 and works from their head office in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Having gained a Diploma in Business and Economics at West Herts College and securing qualifications that would allow her to go to university, Lynsey decided that a student lifestyle wasn’t for her. With the support of her family, Lynsey stepped into an apprentice position which allowed her to study whilst earning a salary, and gain valuable work experience that has enabled her to move up the career ladder at Inland Homes.

26-year-old Lynsey explains: “When I was at school, the fact that the construction industry wasn’t something that was openly discussed as a career path made me want to look into it. I completed my diploma and after discussing my options with my family, going to university just wasn’t going to be for me. My parents had instilled in me a strong work ethic, my Mum worked as an architect when I was young and my Dad has worked in housebuilding his whole life. He has been a big inspiration to me and my decision to work in the construction industry. I often go home to visit my parents, it’s so lovely to be able to sit and talk to my Dad about my role, it makes us both realise how much I have learnt and it has created a mutual understanding about our jobs.”

Lynsey adds: “I do feel there is a lot more that needs to be done at an education level to get more women into the industry. It has certainly improved over recent years, but schools should be giving young girls the opportunity to learn more about housebuilding and the career opportunities available to them. There is a natural assumption that it’s all hard hats and muddy boots – in reality there are so many roles to choose, from customer care and office work to quantity surveying, labour and obviously procurement, and there are many rewards for those who work hard.”

Explaining more about her role at Inland, Lynsey comments: “A typical day in the procurement department involves many tasks. I speak to our established suppliers on a regular basis regarding the products they supply across all our development sites. I oversee any stock issues and explore potential new products for our homes. I liaise very closely with all the internal teams – the sales team to ensure we pick the right products, the technical team to make sure that the property designs work with the products we select for the build, and from a commercial point of view, I need to take into consideration that the price point is right for us as a company, ensuring we are purchasing products that are not only competitive but are right for the development and local market.

“I am also closely involved when it comes to writing the development specifications listed within a development brochure, this is something I personally find particularly rewarding. As a housing developer we are providing people with a new home, often one of the most expensive purchases they will ever make so to be involved with selecting the products and features that go into our homes is really important. I also work closely with the pre-construction team at a very early stage of the build regarding costings for materials and supplies for the final project budget.”

Now in a management position with Inland Homes, Lynsey supports her own apprentice: “Being able to assist my own apprentice has been a highlight of my career to date. I love to manage people and pass on the knowledge and skills I have learnt from my own mentors. It is extremely satisfying and I firmly believe that with the right mind set and willpower, people can go far and excel in whatever career path they choose.”

“One of my main achievements was purchasing my own house last year, which I wouldn’t have been able to do had I chosen to go to university first. Being able to earn an income whilst studying gave me the opportunity to save enough money for a deposit for my first home. It wasn’t easy and I did have to make sacrifices, but if you are willing to persevere, and have a passion to fulfil your goals, you can do it and Inland is a company that fully supports that initiative.”

Commenting on what the future holds, Lynsey continues: “No day is the same, and I’m lucky to have such a varied role, and that is what initially attracted me. I have a job that I love, a set routine and a career that I believe I will excel in for life. Over the next few years I would like to progress and move on to being a procurement manager. At Inland Homes there is certainly room for this sector to grow, and who knows, I could potentially even get to a director level which would be amazing!”

Source: Showhouse

For decades, as anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding atmospheric carbon concentrations have risen at an alarming rate, scientists have investigated the capacity of forests, soils, and oceans to act as carbon sinks, vast ecological systems that might absorb, store, and offset the enormous release of carbon dioxide associated with the combustion of fossil fuels. Some scientists have raised concerns about the future durability of such natural carbon sinks given that climate change itself has caused such significant disturbance to those ecosystems.

The creation of human-made carbon sinks has only recently emerged as a potential supplement to natural carbon uptake and storage domains. Although there have been technological proposals and experiments in the field of carbon capture—giant machines designed to draw CO₂ from the atmosphere—costs for both the hardware and the durable disposal of the solidified carbon that results from these processes remain prohibitively high relative to the current market value of carbon offsets.

The growth and urbanization of global populations anticipated over the next several decades will create an enormous demand for buildings and infrastructure. As cities expand in size and density, the manufacturing of materials required for constructing mid and high-rise urban buildings will create a significant spike in greenhouse gas emissions, a discharge that takes place at the beginning of each building life cycle. This production stage carbon debt could take precious decades to offset through operational energy efficiencies alone.

Steel and reinforced concrete, the conventional structural materials of the mid- and high-rise cityscape have high production stage emissions and little or no capacity to store carbon.Their inherent advantages of strength and stiffness come at a significant environmental cost. New and emerging material technologies and building assemblies in engineered timber combine significant structural performance with carbon storage capacity and have been adopted by various national building codes. These adaptations have enabled so-called “mass timber” to challenge the dominance of mineral based structural materials in the construction of larger and taller urban buildings.

Lapse time video of construction of tall wood building in British Columbia  

A small international and interdisciplinary team of architects, forest and industrial ecologists, social scientists and climate change researchers gathered to consider the possibility of exploiting an anticipated global building boom as a means to mitigate rather than exacerbate climate change. Could the use of bio-based, carbon-storing materials such as timber, bamboo, and other forms of plant cellulose to construct dense urban building landscapes serve as a technique to offset most of the production stage emissions produced by the extraction and manufacture of building components? Could the very material that gives form and structure to those new cityscapes, which we will have to build for 2.3 billion people by 2050, also act as a storage bank for photosynthesized carbon? How much wood would the world need to harvest to meet that demand and what would be the impact to the health of forest ecosystems around the world?

As a consensus among the authors grew, they focused on concerns about the feasibility of sustainable forest harvest at the global scale and weighed a variety of potential mechanisms for the transfer of woody plant material into urban building structures; no options were ignored. (One scientist suggested that building log houses with very low manufacturing CO₂ emissions might serve to produce the fewest impacts and the greatest material efficiencies, a proposition quickly vetoed by the architects who argued that log-building would fail to meet both the performance requirements and the construction practicalities of contemporary mid-rise urban building, not to mention that it was unlikely to have cultural appeal for today’s city dwellers.) Debates ebbed and flowed. After months of robust conversation and the exchange of dozens of drafts, the team arrived at the design of a study that would assess—succinctly but as comprehensively as possible within the limits of a single technical paper—the relative potential of major structural materials to either accelerate or mitigate climate change, an approach described in a newly published Nature Sustainability “Perspective”.

The broad-based substitution of engineered timber for steel and concrete in mid-rise urban building offers the opportunity to transform cityscapes from their current status as net sources of greenhouse gas emissions into large scale, human-made carbon sinks. The sheer volume of urban buildings projected for the remainder of the first half of the 21^st century suggests that such a scenario could become a powerful tool to mitigate climate change. Construction of timber buildings for more than two billion new urban dwellers from 2020 to 2050 could store 0.01 – 0.68 GtC per year depending on the scenario and the average floor area per capita. Over a period of thirty years, wood-based construction can accumulate 0.25-20 GtC and reduce cumulative emissions of carbon from 4 (7-20) GtC to 2 (0.3-10) GtC.

Such a transition to bio-based building materials, implemented through the adoption of engineered structural timber products and assemblies by the urban building sector, will succeed as a climate mitigation strategy only under two conditions. First, designated “working” forests must be managed and harvested sustainably using techniques appropriate to each forest at the stand level in order to avoid scenarios of forest degradation and soil depletion. Second, the wood from existing and future buildings (the latter specifically designed for ease of disassembly) must be recovered and reused as a raw material resource for consumer product manufacture or the next generation of buildings. In this way, the city and the forest, historically antagonistic landscapes, may begin to work in synergy to help stabilize a climate in crisis.

Galina Churkina, Scientist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Source: Nature Research

Union leaders have warned that a deal to sell a West Norfolk-based construction training operation could see some of its work shifted out of the borough altogether.

Unite officials have demanded urgent talks with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and West Suffolk College after they announced a deal for the National Construction College (NCC) at Bircham Newton on Friday.

But the CITB has rejected the claim, while council chiefs say they welcome the sale and want to work with the new operator.

The future of the Bircham Newton site has been in doubt ever since the CITB announced plans to move its headquarters to Peterborough in November 2017.

In December, it was revealed that a task group set up to consider future use of the site had not met for 10 months and was not due to do so until around now.

The CITB says it is entering a period of “due diligence” with West Suffolk College over the NCC sale,

They claim the move will ensure that training provision remains in West Norfolk

But Mark Robinson, Unite’s regional co-ordinating officer, said it was unclear whether the deal would protect existing courses or if some of the work currently done at Bircham Newton would be moved to West Suffolk College’s base in Bury St Edmunds.

He said: “This is far from the end of this long running saga and a lot more detail is required before Unite is able to say whether the planned deal is good news for our members.

“It also needs to be established if West Suffolk College will purchase the site or rent it, and, if the latter, for how long such an arrangement will last.

“Our members need to be given a proper timetable of how quickly a sale and transfer will proceed.

“Their lives have been put on hold for two and half years while this sorry saga has rolled along and they deserve closure and certainty about their future.

“Unite will now be seeking urgent meetings with both the CITB and West Suffolk College to get the answers our members deserve.”

West Suffolk College said it was unable to comment on the union’s statement.

But Braden Connolly, CITB director of products and services, said it was envisaged that the college would be tenants of the West Norfolk site.

He said: “Our commitment has always been to preserve the quality and quantity of training provided for the construction industry.

“With West Suffolk College we have found a partner who shares this ambition and hopes to increase the provision at Bircham Newton.

“CITB is treating the ownership of the land as a secondary issue to securing the future of training and employment.”

Vicar, the Rev Peter Cook, who led a local campaign for the CITB’s headquarters to remain at Bircham Newton said he hoped the NCC deal would keep work at Bircham Newton, but echoed the union’s concern about staff being “kept in the dark.”

He said: “There shouldn’t be any reason why they can’t maintain the site. Without it , we’ll lose an awful lot of employment in the area.”

But West Norfolk Council leader Brian Long welcomed the sale announcement.

He said: “We are delighted that CITB are proceeding with more detailed discussions with an approved bidder for taking over the NCC (East) Bircham Newton.

“We hope this will retain an important training facility in West Norfolk along with jobs and potentially ancilliary support workers, which will be very important to the local area.”

“The task group will continue to receive updates while CITB go through their due diligence, and if all goes ahead, we are looking forward to working with the new providers.”

Source: Lynn News