Review of the year: Disputes, BIM and nuclear

DISPUTED RESULTS

Blacklisting row

The story may have begun four years ago, but the blacklisting scandal - which broke when the Information Commissioners Office seized a database from a body called the Consulting Association in 2009 - just grew and grew in 2012. In July it emerged that 80 construction workers had launched a high court claim against contractor Sir Robert McAlpine over the firm’s involvement in blacklisting.

A separate action against Carillon followed. Then the ICO announced that it would contact all 3,200 workers on the Consulting Association blacklist, potentially massively swelling the number of claimants and possibly pulling more construction firms into legal wrangles. By the end of the year the scandal threatened to engulf the public sector too, with claims from the former Consulting Association chief executive that the company’s services were used on a host of public sector projects, including the Olympics.

Workers revolt

This year the construction sector’s biggest industrial relations dispute for over a decade came to an end. The dispute centred on controversial wage proposals for 6,000 electricians, known as the Building Engineering Services National Agreement (BESNA). The firms behind BESNA - Balfour Beatty Engineering Services, NG Bailey, Crown House, Shepherd Engineering Services, Gratte Brothers, SPIE Matthew Hall and T Clarke - argued the changes would modernise a badly out-dated specialist sector. BESNA’s opponents - led by union Unite - argued BESNA was a front for wage cuts. The dispute led to five consecutive months of protests, including a 1,000-strong London rally, a sit-in of a contractor’s headquarters and violent clashes with police. The dispute finally came to an end in February when all seven firms agreed to drop the BESNA proposals and re-enter negotiations with Unite. These negotiations are still on-going.

FINAL FAREWELLS

Seminal architect Oscar Niemeyer died earlier this month aged 104. The Brazilian architect was a highly influential figure in both his home country and the rest of the world. Considered by many to have been one of the key figures in the development of modern architectural styles he is perhaps most well known for his role in designing Brasilia, Brazil’s capital city built in the fifties and sixties.

Mel Starrs, a prominent champion of sustainability in the built environment, died age 38 in July this year. An associate director at architect PRP, Starrs was a well-known advocate of sustainability in the built environment, and wrote a regular blog for Building magazine. In a statement, her partner Mark Fretwell said: “She was my beautiful, funny and utterly brilliant partner-in-crime for more than 11 years, and words will never be able to express how much I am going to miss her.”

At this time of year it is also worth remembering that despite so much hard work on health and safety issues in recent years, the construction industry remains the UK’s most dangerous industry in which to work. In total 49 workers died on UK construction sites in 2011/12, while August saw the tragic death of Amanda Telfer, who was struck by a window falling from a construction site in London’s Hanover Square.

NEW KIT ON THE WAY

It has been an unstable year for the nuclear sector. Continued uncertainty over the level of government support for nuclear power has cast a shadow over development, which has a gestation period best measured in half lives anyway. But as the end of the year draws near the publication of the Energy Bill may be a beacon of light.

The surprise sale of Horizon Nuclear Power, the Npower and E.ON-owned project, was another cause for concern, but was resolved with Hitachi stepping in with minimal loss of time.

There have been chinks of light too, though. Bouygues and Laing O’Rourke were appointed to the £2bn Hinkley Point C civils job in June. Balfour Beatty subsidiary Dean & Dyball Civil Engineering also picked up the £30m contract to build the project’s temporary jetty, a small consolation for losing out to Laing O’Rourke on the big job. And Morgan Sindall’s new Cumbria office justified its opening by winning a £1.1bn job at Sellafield. But Sellafield’s contractors also received a lashing from the National Audit Office, which said they did not provide value for money on major projects.

Next year looks more promising. Provided EDF gives the go-ahead on Hinkley in the first quarter, which seems likely, expect a rapid escalation of activity.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

This was the year that Building Information Modelling (BIM) transferred from a slide in Paul Morrell’s much-used Powerpoint presentation to an industry-wide phenomenon. It’s a topic of conversation in many a boardroom - how best to prepare your firm for working on BIM projects? Everywhere you looked in 2012 firms - including Balfour Beatty and Bam - were striking multimillion-pound deals with software providers to get ahead in the BIM arms race.

BIM is a process for designing a building or structure collaboratively by using one coherent system of computer models. Its early proponents will tell you it has been around for over a decade, but what has prompted the recent surge of adoption is the government’s plan to mandate BIM on all government projects by 2016. This year Interserve began work on the first government BIM trial project, the extension of Cookham Wood prison, which the Ministry of Justice says has already reaped £800,000 of savings. Several further government trials will follow next year.

In the meantime, the private sector is surging ahead with BIM adoption - in fact, Building research in April found that private sector clients were almost twice as likely to have experience of BIM than those in the public sector.

Not everyone is fully signed up. Various surveys this year have found that most surveyors and SMEs are yet to adopt the technology.

Furthermore, cracks are beginning to emerge on live BIM projects, where specialists in particular warn of rising software costs and poor practice by tier one contractors. Next year we’ll see if the BIM rhetoric can match the reality.