News in Brief: March 2018

Severfield has announced that Chief Executive Ian Lawson is leaving the firm after standing down due to illness last year. Alan Dunsmore becomes Chief Executive Officer and Adam Semple Finance Director, both on a permanent basis, having held those roles on an interim basis since last March, while Ian Cochrane remains Chief Operating Officer.

BHC has been appointed by Laing O’Rourke as the structural steelwork contractor for its extensive redevelopment of the Edinburgh St James Centre. The company will be responsible for the supply, fabrication and erection of approximately 15,000t of structural steelwork over a period of two years.

Kloeckner Metals UK/Westok has upgraded its cellular beam design software package. Cellbeam version 10.3.1 is said to include enhanced calculation of the critical in-plane buckling load Ncr, a refined composite design to NEN-EN 1993/1994 as well as improved graphics and user interface.

The Royal College of Art’s (RCA) Battersea campus has been given the go-ahead for its Herzog & de Meuron designed £108M extension. The 15,800m² building for postgraduate students and ‘entrepreneurs’ at the RCA’s Battersea South campus will replace the institution’s sculpture building and moving-image studio at the corner of Howie Street and Elcho Street.

Developer St Modwen has announced that it will be increasing its commercial construction programme over the coming months as its focuses on work outside of London. The firm has published its annual results for the year ending November 2017, the highlight of which is a trading profit of £64M, up from £56M for the previous year.

Developer Landsec has secured a resolution to grant a revised planning permission for its proposed 52,300m² steel-framed development at 21 Moorfields, in the City of London. Last year, Landsec and Deutsche Bank exchanged a pre-let agreement for the bank’s new London headquarters on a 25-year lease, conditional on achieving revised planning consent.