Category Archives: Construction industry

Grenfell cladding firm has spent £30m defending its role in disaster

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Arconic’s outlay on lawyers dwarfs amount spent on panels found to be main cause of fire spread

The Grenfell Tower cladding manufacturer has spent £30m on lawyers and advisers defending its role in the disaster in an outlay that dwarfs the amount spent on the panels a public inquiry has determined were the main cause of fire spread.

Arconic has been spending at a rate of up to £50,000 a day on lawyers and other advisers, according to corporate filings in the US seen by the Guardian. As well as the public inquiry, it is embroiled in a criminal investigation in the UK with detectives investigating possible corporate manslaughter and manslaughter cases, a civil suit in the US for wrongful death brought by survivors and a consumer protection inquiry in France, where the subsidiary that supplied the Grenfell panels is based.

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Notre Dame: time to call in the French builders with medieval skills

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Artisans creating a ‘13th-century’ castle in Burgundy might well be the ideal team to restore the cathedral

In a clearing in a forest in northern Burgundy, the stonemasons and carpenters of Guédelon are awaiting a call.

If anyone can rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral as it was – if that is what is required – they can.

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‘Concreteberg’ weighing 105 tonnes found in London sewer

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Authorities say 100-metre-long mass is the result of concrete being poured down drain

People pouring concrete into sewers has led to a “concreteberg” forming in central London that weighs 105 tonnes, as heavy as a blue whale.

The 100-metre-long mass is blocking three Victorian-era sewers in the heart of the capital. Thames Water’s operations manager, Alex Saunders, said it was the largest mass of concrete the company had seen, and could take two months to remove at a cost of at least several hundred thousand pounds.

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Ply in the sky: the new materials to take us beyond concrete | Fiona Harvey

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Concrete is everywhere, but it’s bad for the planet, generating large amounts of carbon dioxide. Creative alternatives are in the pipeline

They call them plyscrapers: the sudden emergence of tall buildings constructed almost entirely from timber. Vancouver, Vienna and Brumunddal in Norway have all claimed recently to have the tallest wooden building in the world, and now Tokyo has its own designs on the informal title.

Making buildings from wood may seem like a rather medieval idea. But there is a very modern issue that is driving cities and architects to turn to treated timber as a resource: climate change.

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Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth

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After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the global building industry will have poured more than 19,000 bathtubs of concrete. By the time you are halfway through this article, the volume would fill the Albert Hall and spill out into Hyde Park. In a day it would be almost the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. In a single year, there is enough to patio over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England.

After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US.

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Sydney Opal Tower report finds multiple design and construction faults

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Report says horizontal support beams were of inferior strength and not compliant with national standards

An independent report has found multiple design and construction faults led to damage at western Sydney’s Opal Tower.

The newly-built tower in Sydney Olympic Park was evacuated on Christmas Eve after cracks were found in the building, sparking fears it could collapse.

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