A new report shows that local authorities across England and Wales have, in their bank accounts, an estimated £2.8 billion of unused contributions from home builders.

This is money that builders contribute through what’s known as ‘Section 106’ contributions to local authorities as part of the planning agreement, the purpose of which is to fund local services and infrastructure upgrades. Find out more about how these important funds are going unspent in this week’s blog.

Whilst modern techniques, tools and innovations have brought some changes to the way on-site construction workers perform their duties, they still generally have to carry out physically demanding tasks in sometimes harsh conditions.

Day after day, year after year, you might think that surely such labour takes its toll, so how is it the case that, even as the workforce ages, a great many construction workers remain physically able to handle the strain? The answer it appears is because they have ‘physical wisdom’. Find out what this means in this week’s blog.

While robotics have been commonplace in manufacturing for many years, the complexity and unpredictability of factors than can occur on construction sites has made their widescale use in this environment more problematic. Now, an emerging robotic system being developed and tested by a team at Purdue University in the U.S. may be about to change that. Read more in this week’s blog from Sheriff Construction.

Materials from construction and demolition are contributing up to 40 per cent of the world’s waste – the result of which is often mountains of rubble left in landfill sites. We all know this is unacceptable but perhaps there’s a simple solution – recycled concrete. A five-year study of this type of concrete shows it performs just as well and, in several cases, actually outperforms the traditional material.