Blogs

Making apprenticeships work in construction

Sue Husband, Director, National Apprenticeship Service Apprenticeships are at the heart of the Government’s drive to equip people of all ages with the skills that employers need. They provide the opportunity, and the means, to help address the skills shortages reported by many industries. This is especially true in construction, …

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Last chance to enter. Seriously, last chance!!

You’ll be sorry but your tears will be too late Loads of you already have, which is mighty pleasing. What am I talking about? Entering the inaugural BMJ Industry Awards, of course. If you don’t do it today, then you’ll be too late and you run the risk of seeing …

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Kiss, kiss, no bang bang

I think of what the world could be A vision of the one I see A million dreams is all it’s gonna take A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make On October 4th last year, I posted a blog about the Las Vegas shooting, pleading for America to rethink …

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The nosy neighbour

Whilst out for a walk the other day I spotted a gorgeous looking house. So, like any law-abiding citizen, I had a good gawp through the fence and then went home and looked it up on Google Street View, Google Earth and net House prices.

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Testing times

Occasionally, when I’m on the Tube, I look around me and wonder how it was ever thought OK to smoke down there. The 1987 Kings Cross fire was started by a carelessly discarded match onto a wooden escalator (despite smoking having been banned on the Underground three years previously) and fuelled by a number of…

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Carillion: part 2

The Carillion collapse will rumble on and on. In many cases like this, the first action is for the company to go “into administration”, with an appointed administrator tasked with finding ways of selling those parts of the operation that can be salvaged and getting as much value back as possible.

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Running Man – lll

Firstly I’d like to thank all the donors for their kind support last month: Ian Church of Snows Timber, Steve Durdant-Hollamby of AWMS, John Newcomb of the BMF, Mike Rice of Factor3, Mark Hall of SRS Recruitment, Colin Hambling, Andy Poolman, Martin Earl, Dennis Smith, Fiona Pentney, Tim Dipple.

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Carillion – What the…?

How has it come to this? The UK’s second largest major construction firm has collapsed into liquidation with debts of £1.2bn. BILLION. How does a major firm with huge amounts of work and government contracts – really, important government contracts, mange to run it business so badly that it owes that much? Carillion’s debts are…

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