News in Brief – October 2005

Corus is to lead a consortium of construction industry clients from 10 countries in a four-year research programme on innovative construction methods for housing. ManuBuild aims to learn from the best in manufacturing processes to demonstrate how house-building could be much more efficient. The consortium has won a record €10M from the EU, which will be supplemented by €40M from the consortium.

The UK’s biggest building project, Heathrow Terminal 5, celebrated the completion of the main terminal building structure with a topping-out ceremony last month. The £4.2bn project will contain 80,000t of structural steel, over three times as much as Wembley Stadium, and is due for completion in March 2008

The Highways Agency has become the latest organisation to indicate that it will insist that paiinting contractors working on its structures use ICATS qualified staff. The Industrial Coatings Applicator Training and Certification Scheme was launched earlier this year by the Institute of Corrosion to allow coating contractors and applicators to be trained to a universal standard recognised by clients.

Corus Distribution will not charge for CE-marked test certificates, contrary to earlier re-ports. It will be compulsory for steel in most European markets to carry the CE mark, which indicates it meets all relevant EU standards, from next year.

One in seven specialist firms have to wait an average of 60 days or even longer to be paid, according to a survey of 250 member firms by the National Specialist Contractors Council.