Question Time with Paul Morrell 18th October

Paul Morrell, Government’s Chief Construction Advisor, is heading to the Edgbaston Cricket Ground on the 18th October to field your questions on the recently published Construction Strategy in a special Question Time event.  

Included in the batting line up on the panel are Julia Evans, Chief Exec NFB and Mark Wakeford, MD of Stepnell Construction. A representative from Birmingham City Council will complete the team and Dhiran Vagdia has kindly agreed to umpire proceedings. Dhiran is a former regional chair of RIBA of and FORCE best practice club.

If you are interested in attending then please get in touch with the WMCCE either by phone 0121 250 5700) or email at event@wmcce.org

Source: WMCCE

Government carbon emission targets require plenty of UK demolition

Demolition across UK cities could be about to rise dramatically according to comments made by Paul Morrell, the Government's chief construction advisor at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.

The reason is that the Government has a bit of a dilemma to solve. In order to achieve tough new carbon emission targets (an 80% reduction by 2050) many of the buildings from the 60s and 70s need to be modified to cut down on their energy use. However, some of those building can't improve enough and therefore demolition and rebuilding is the only course of action to take.

Morrell commented to The Times:

"In the Sixties, everything was built cheaper, faster and nastier. If you are going to try to fix buildings, then really you won’t have too many problems with anything built earlier than the Fifties or after the Eighties.

Although you can do some things to buildings from the Sixties and Seventies, like replacing the roofs, there are probably some places that need to come down entirely.

The buildings that pose the most difficulties are semi-industrialised, highly inefficient, badly insulated and so ugly that they are not worth refurbishing."

Source: Times Online with thanks to Demolition News