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E.ON is urging all UK energy providers to support its call for an industry-wide end to the process of automatically renewing fixed term contracts for small businesses. 

A consultation with customers found that 86 per cent of our small business customers would prefer to negotiate a new contract or move to a more flexible agreement rather than automatically being ‘rolled’ on to a new long-term fixed deal1 which is currently standard practice across the industry.

E.ON’s call – submitted to industry regulator Ofgem – follows major improvements in how the company works with its small and medium-sized business customers; including contract end dates on customer bills, a fair negotiation policy for customers who have missed their renewal window, a commitment to a maximum one-year period for backdated bills and helping to set up an independent code of practice for business energy sales.

These initiatives have been well received by customers with complaints well down and higher levels of engagement and negotiation.

Anthony Ainsworth, Sales and Marketing Director of E.ON UK, said: “The message from small businesses is clear; they want greater simplicity, straight-talking and fair play.

“We know from our own business customer panel and from independent research that the majority of small businesses just don’t like the automatic rollover process and find it too complex which is why we are urging the industry to work together to make things simple and more straightforward.

“If this is going to work the industry and the regulator have to work together and create a level playing field, offering clarity, consistency and simplicity for customers. For any one supplier to act alone risks layering greater complexity on to an already confusing situation.”

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Three firms including Crown House Technologies have been ordered to pay a total of £685,787.31 in fines and costs after a plumber died and six other workers were seriously injured by a barrage of flying gas cylinders.

Adam Johnston, 38, from Sutton, Surrey, was hit by one of 66 cylinders as they rocketed at speeds of up to 170 mph at an HSBC data centre construction site

The carnage was caused after one toppled over discharging high-pressure gas before colliding with others and setting-of a horrific chain reaction.

Johnston was walking with a colleague on the site at Mundells in Welwyn Garden City when he was struck by one of the argonite gas cylinders as they were propelled around the building.

He suffered multiple injuries and died at the scene.

Several other workers, including electricians working in the argonite store room, suffered injuries and long term effects resulting from the trauma of that day.

The carnage caused by the exploding cylinders

An HSE investigation into the incident, on 5 November 2008, found that Johnston died as a result of a series of unsafe practices relating to the installation of fire suppression equipment at the new-build storage facility.

Crown House Technologies Ltd of Dartford, Kent, was principal contractor for the project and engaged Kidde Fire Protection Services Ltd, of Slough, Berkshire, to supply and install fire suppression equipment at the new facility under construction.

This work was carried out by Kidde Products Ltd, also from Slough.

St Albans Crown Court heard that 80 cylinders, nearly two metres high and each weighing 142 kg, were stored without their safety-critical protection caps and left without being properly secured in racks.

Other trades involved in the construction project were also working next to these potentially unstable cylinders, unaware of the deadly risks involved.

One or more of these cylinders was de-stabilised and probably fell over, causing its unprotected valve to shear off near the cylinder neck.

This released an uncontrolled jet of liquified argonite gas under high pressure, the force of which caused the cylinder to move, colliding with others.

These, in turn, were also knocked over and sustained similar damage.

A chain reaction developed rapidly and for several minutes terrified workers desperately sought shelter as they endured a barrage of heavy cylinders rocketing around them.

This continued until 66 of the 80 cylinders had been discharged.

Some of the cylinders travelled at estimated speeds of up to 170mph and developed sufficient energy to penetrate walls and ceiling voids, travelling into more remote parts of the building.

Johnston, a father of two, who was employed by Crown House Technologies Ltd, was struck by one of the cylinders as it was propelled from the room.

Six other workers sustained injuries. The building itself was severely damaged.

Crown House Technologies Ltd pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to safety breaches and was fined £117,000 and ordered to pay costs of £119,393.65

Kidde Fire Protection Services Ltd pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing and was fined £165,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £59,696.72.

Kidde Products Ltd, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing and was fined £165,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £59,696.72.

The court was told that the three companies involved failed to recognise the significant risks involved in the project or to carry out an adequate risk assessment.

The principal contractor and the main contractors failed to co-ordinate the scheduled work activities or to co-operate meaningfully in light of the risks.

There had also been insufficient training and supervision.

After the case, HSE Principal Inspector Norman Macritchie, said: “There is little evidence that those involved were competent to undertake this work, or that safe systems of work were provided, or that there was suitable cooperation between the contractors involved.

“Employees of other companies were allowed to enter the argonite store while it was potentially unsafe to do so, and there is no evidence that anyone explained the risks to them, or acted effectively to control these risks.

“This incident was devastating for his family and yet it could have been avoided had there been effective planning, management, monitoring and coordination of the relevant activities.”

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Information about the CSCS Card

Health and safety may not be the most interesting subjects to research and think about, but it is one of the most important, particularly when it comes to working on a construction site.  There was a time when it was left solely to the discretion of the construction site owners to ensure that their employees where up to speed with safe working procedures.  Over the years though, this meant that the construction industry, although not the only one, was the industry that contributed to the most accidents, injuries and deaths in the workplace in the UK.  This is why a few decades ago; the UK government introduced a scheme that would reduce the number of workplace accidents, injuries and fatalities.  This scheme is what became known as CSCS.

CSCS, if you are not familiar with the initials, is the Construction Skill Certification Scheme.  It is not only a good qualification to have if you a skilled tradesman of some kind, but it is legally essential if you work on a construction site in the United Kingdom.  CSCS training is widely available throughout the country and gives all participants the knowledge and understanding about what constitutes good health and safety with regards to working practices on a construction site.  Whereas in the past, there was severe amounts of negligence on the part of employers and employees were oblivious to proper working conditions, there now is now excuse.

In fact, an employee knowingly working on a construction site without a registered CSCS card or an employer who knowingly hires workers without the appropriate CSCS cards, if caught – will face legal problems.  At the end of a CSCS course you are given a CSCS card, which is the most important piece of ID for construction workers as it not only proves you passed the appropriate CSCS course, but also serves as an introduction to a prospective employer to your range of skills and experience.

It is a relatively straight forward process obtaining a CSCS card.  The first thing you have to do is work out which is the right for your circumstances and profession.  There are actually several different CSCS cards, that are colour coded and each is suitable for a different type of employer, employee or even visitor to a construction site.  So whether you have a skilled trade or not, whether you are a manager or supervisor or whether you are just a general labourer will have an impact on the type of CSCS card you need to apply for and the deepness of your CSCS training course.  The one thing that is for sure, if you want to work directly on a construction site, or work in a profession where you will be visiting construction sites, you have to have a CSCS card and CSCS training.

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Landlords, banks and mortgage brokers are capitalising on the phenomenal resurgence of buy-to-let and now the taxman is cashing in too, with related revenues exceeding £2bn a year.

The buy-to-let tax-take is up 13pc year on year, according to the latest available data, with the number of property investors standing at a record 1.9m.

Accountants UHY Hacker Young, which produced the figures, warned that the popularity of buy-to-let has prompted HM Revenue & Customs to clamp down on the sector.

A special taskforce has been established to tackle property tax cheats, according to Hacker Young. It predicts HMRC will become “far more aggressive in pursuing undeclared rents and disposals”.

Latest data from a range of sources confirm buy-to-let is at the vanguard of the housing recovery, with existing landlords enlarging their portfolios and new investors joining the sector. They are helped by low mortgage rates, driven down in part by the Government’s Funding for Lending initiative.

Nationwide Building Society, the second largest landlord lender after Lloyds Banking Group, offers the lowest-ever landlord rate – a two-year fixed deal of just 2.49pc. The mutual says landlord lending is up 14pc over the past 12 months and “all indications show growth will continue”.

Specialist lender Paragon, which only lends to landlords, said its customers reported increased access to finance during the second quarter and a “sharp increase” in buying intention. The average yield enjoyed by a Paragon client jumped to 6.4pc in the three months to the end of June.

“Tenant demand remains very high with 93pc of landlords describing demand as growing or stable,” the lender reported.

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July , 2013 – Construction firms are at serious risk of losing business by leaving customers hanging on the telephone for more than 30 seconds at a time, new research has revealed.

A survey of 3,630 UK companies by audio branding specialist PH Media Group discovered the construction industry leaves customers on hold for an average of 32.21 seconds per call.

The implications for profitability are grave. Previous research has shown 50 per cent of callers will hang up within 20 seconds if forced to listen to silence while on hold.

“These results represent a significant challenge for construction firms and could pose a threat to profitability,” said PH Media Group Sales and Marketing Director Mark Williamson.

“Callers are simply unwilling to wait on the end of the line while subjected to silence, muzak or beeps so firms are putting themselves at serious risk of losing business.

“Good call handling is often overlooked as a key sales and marketing tool but the telephone still acts as an important touchpoint and first impressions count. If each caller enjoys a positive experience, customer service standards will go through the roof.”

Of all callers placed on hold, 34 per cent were subjected to silence. A further 26 per cent were made to listen to music, while 26 per cent heard beeps.

The amount of time construction firms placed callers on hold was marginally lower than the UK average of 33.48 seconds but hold time isn’t the only consideration for businesses wanting to make a good first impression on callers.

As part of the study, PH Media Group also audited each company, giving them a score out of 100 based on overall call handling practice. Construction companies averaged just 30.

Elements including the time taken to answer a call, the number of tiers a caller experiences before reaching the necessary department, use of consistent voice and music, professional and personalised voicemail and out-of-hours messaging were weighted to reflect their importance.

“Good customer service is paramount for any business so it is important to evaluate all aspects of call handling to ensure calls are dealt with appropriately,” added Mark.

“Inevitably, not every call will be answered within a matter of seconds, so when callers do need to be placed on hold for any length of time, informative and entertaining audio messages can help to maintain their attention and decrease perceived waiting time.

“Brand congruent voice and music are also vital in order to present customers with a consistent image of the company, reinforcing brand values and establishing a reassuring, coherent presence.”

Signmakers came out worst from the research, leaving their callers on the line for 72.64 seconds in an average call, while garden centres performed best, logging an average time of just 17.44 seconds.

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As David Cameron marked the formal start of construction at Battersea Power Station on Thursday, he could be forgiven for feeling some satisfaction.

Unique in its size and iconic status, the celebration of the site’s redevelopment into a residential and shopping hub offering 3,400-plus new homes capped a day of welcome news for a Prime Minister trying to kickstart Britain’s housing and housebuilding markets.

The housing market is, finally, showing “measurable improvement” for the first time since the downturn. That was the message from Taylor Wimpey, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders. The update came as rival Galliford Try promised “record” profits for the year, while another, Redrow, said its results would be at the top end of City estimates after its revenues rose by more than a quarter.

Turning from the new-build sector to the wider market, mortgage lender Halifax reported that house prices had risen for a fifth consecutive month, to end up 3.7pc on the year. Even looking at the less volatile quarterly growth rate, the annual price climb was 2.1pc – passing the 2pc mark for the first time since January 2010.

What this all underlined was the improvement in the housing market since the financial crisis brought activity to a halt, sending property and land prices plummeting and putting the housebuilding sector in the deep freeze. Since then, the market has recovered somewhat from the impact of the credit crunch, with mortgage lending resuming – albeit at depressed levels – and the new-build industry repairing its margins.

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The TrustMark builder and trader vetting scheme is to be relaunched in the coming months with new tougher standards to increase consumer protection, the government announced this week as part of the Construction Industrial Strategy.

The relaunch falls under the strategy’s “image of the industry” theme, which commits industry and government to “a coordinated approach to health and safety and improving performance in the domestic repair and maintenance market.”

Liz Male, chairman of TrustMark and a member of the newly-formed Construction Leadership Council, welcomed the endorsement and the strategy’s engagement with the domestic sector.

“It’s the first time the domestic RMI sector has featured in a government strategy, but it’s a very economically active sector, worth £27bn a year so it’s important economically. The government knew it had to include us in the strategy for that reason.

The domestic sector is the part where the public touches construction, and it affects whether they’re prepared to encourage a son or daughter into the industry.”

The 30-plus scheme operators that make up the TrustMark brand operate to “core standards” backed by the government and first put together in 2005. New tougher standards are currently being agreed, which Male said would include new requirements on vetting and monitoring; trading records; records of directors; site inspections; and requirements to promote TrustMark.

There will also be new requirements on dispute resolution, in line with a new EU directive, and measures to align the scheme with the new Consumer Rights Bill.

“The majority of the changes are things the better scheme operators have been doing for a while, and now the other scheme operators will have to come up to scratch,” Male said.

Once the new core standards are agreed, the scheme will be “relaunched”. “There will be a big marketing push to let people know that the standards have changed.”

TrustMark currently has around 14,500 registered businesses, with some being registered under more than trade giving a total of 23,000 trades represented nationally.

Graham Watts, chief executive of the Construction Industry Council, welcomed the decision from BIS to back TrustMark, but pointed out that it only covered a small proportion of the traders offering building and related services to the public, and that the Construction Industry Strategy was not therefore fully embracing the issue.

He said: “At the Government Construction Summit [where the strategy was launched] there were references to the long tail of white van SMEs, and a large proportion of that market isn’t part of the professional industry – they’re not properly qualified, they don’t train apprentices. I don’t know how the Construction Leadership Council can make an impact on that sector.

“It’s good to have confidence expressed in TrustMark, but to be truly effective it would have to register tens of thousands more building companies – there are a great mass of businesses out there that are part of the image problem but not covered by the official structure of this council.”

Watts suggested that ONS figures indicate there are up to 400,000 businesses in the construction sector in total.

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Research by Siemens has revealed that nearly 5.7 million households classed as multi-dwelling units (MDUs) are at risk of not receiving the benefit of the energy and cost efficiencies offered by the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) smart meter implementation programme. MDUs, which make up 21.5% of all households such as high-rises, house a significant proportion of consumers living in fuel poverty. Effectively and securely linking electricity and gas meters with in-home displays within MDUs is particularly complex compared with single-dwelling houses. Most commonly, meters are not located in the flat or apartment but are often found in communal areas.

This requires provision for shared infrastructure within MDUs to house smart meter technology as the standard approach of separate Home Area Networks (HAN) equipment will not be appropriate. Kevin Tutton, Siemens director of metering communications and services, said: “The government has made significant progress towards stabilising the roll-out of smart meters by delaying implementation. This has provided much needed extra time to ensure an effective and secure solution for MDUs is addressed. “Now is the window of opportunity to overcome the ‘high-rise challenge’ and ensure DECC’s business case and suppliers’ license obligations can both be met. It would be a failure of all involved in the programme to miss this chance to take action to provide all consumers with equal access to the energy and cost efficiencies offered by smart meters.” The current smart meter market design requires each energy supplier with customers in an MDU to install their own separate HAN equipment. This adds a significant amount of cost and complexity into the meter installation process, with the need for mass duplication of communication assets and multiple engineering visits.

These arrangements represent poor value for money and unnecessary consumer and landlord disruption. They also create maintenance accountability problems, particularly after consumers have changed supplier. Working with key development partners, Siemens has developed a turnkey solution for high-rise properties with flats, using a broadband over powerline (BPL) backbone. BPL is the preferred technology as it provides high performance and bandwidth connectivity to meters in difficult positions while using the existing infrastructure already available. The Wide Area Network gateway is then positioned where the best cellular signal reception can be received.

The Foundation Market MDU service solution is entering its final testing stages and is scheduled to go live in Q1 2014. Siemens is ready to start working with energy retailers now on trial requirements. With the Data Communications Company launch going back to 2015, there is now time for the industry to trial the end-to-end smart metering experience for consumers living in MDUs, establish how best to engage with communities and work with landlords and managing agents

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A new, Global Construction 2025, from Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics shows that developing countries will drive construction growth over the long-term. This is true of different regions of the world, while key countries such as Qatar and Nigeria will be among the fastest growing.

Speaking at the launch of the report Bruno Lafont, Chairman & CEO, Lafarge, which is one of Global Construction 2025’s sponsors said, “Construction will account for 13.5% of global output by 2025, according to the report. To talk about construction is to talk about growth.”

He added, “Over 66% of global construction activity will be undertaking in emerging markets by 2025.”

Mr Lafont said key drivers such as urbanisation and high demand for infrastructure and housing in the early stages of countries’ development would see global construction growth out-strip GDP growth for the foreseeable future. “Urbanisation, driven by economic expansion is one of the biggest challenges we see. Every day an area as big as Paris – 110 km2 – is urbanised,” he said.

Although emerging markets are expected to lead the way, the report’s authors cautioned that growth would be more measured than in the past.

Jeremy Leonard of Global Construction Perspectives & Oxford Economics said of the broad economic picture, “Emerging markets will continue to grow significantly more rapidly than the developed world, but that growth will be at a slightly less robust pace than in the past. We’ve seen a change in some of the drivers in some of the emerging markets.”

He highlighted the move in China towards a more consumer-driven economy and the slow pace of reform in Brazil and India as examples of this.

“People who expect China to grow by 10%, as it has done for the last decade, are going to be disappointed. Growth is going to be nearer 7%,” he said.

While emerging markets are expected to see robust growth, the report’s authors were down-beat on the prospects for some key developed markets. “We can’t expect much more than 2% growth over the next decade or so,” said Mr Leonard. “We tend to talk about Europe as a lost decade of growth. Even when we get out of the current cyclical downturn, we only see about 1.8% growth in 2015 – 2020” he added.

And despite the current growth in the Japanese economy, which Mr Leonard put down to the ‘Abenomics’ stimulus measures that he said may break the country’s deflationary spiral, the long term prospects are less bright. “Japan is a country with a declining population and it is facing competition from its neighbours in the region,” he said.

Overall, global construction output is expected to grow at +4.3% a year over the next 12 years, compared to +3.5% for GDP growth. Western European construction is expected to under-perform, with an annual average of just +1.0%, the same rate as the developed countries of Asia-Pacific. Latin America is also expected to be below trend with +3.5% annual construction growth.

North American markets are expected to be more or less on the global trend at +4.2% annual growth, while Eastern Europe (+4.6%) and the Middle East and North Africa (+4.9%) are expected to be ahead of the curve. The most robust growth is expected to be in sub-Saharan Africa (+5.0%) and emerging Asia-pacific (+6.9%).

Of 46 key countries surveyed, Qatar is expected to enjoy the fastest growing construction market at an average annual rate of +10%

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The next generation of Pole Star’s NAO Campus Indoor Positioning solution combines a Cloud services platform with automatic crowdsourcing technologies. A disruptive innovation that automates the implementation and the maintenance of Indoor Location Services, lowers costs and drastically accelerates the worldwide expansion of the Indoor location service area.

Paris, July 1st, 2013 – Pole Star, the pioneer and world leader in indoor location technology, unveiled today ‘automatic crowdsourcing’, the next generation of its indoor location solution NAO Campus, capable to crowdsource and reference RF access point data to quickly and remotely deploy and maintain indoor location services.

With automatic crowdsourcing, the NAO Campus indoor location service can now be implemented in an entirely new venue without any staff in the field, by simply collecting users’ smartphone data in order to create the Positioning Database. Which removes entirely the site fingerprinting measurement process. This service is self-maintained through users’ own devices, in a low cost and dynamic way. It also provides the most reliable quality of service by self-referencing data information from diverse users at different moments and automatically corrects the positioning database with regular updates. No help is required from the user, except for agreeing to upload the data. An anonymous data collection process that entirely protects the user’s privacy. This innovative technology can be integrated in existing global applications or directly in a device, allowing the NAO Campus service to scale. It’s now available as a beta version and is being demonstrated to various strategic partners. Its commercial availability is scheduled before the end of 2013 for all Pole Star partners.

This technology is the result of 5 years of intensive innovation from the Pole Star’s team, and is based on the NAO Cloud platform currently in beta test. Pole Star’s patent pending automatic crowdsourcing is the world’s first to overcome the last barriers of indoor location services. It represents a huge milestone in the market for mobile solution providers or device manufacturers wanting to integrate indoor location functionalities in their services, at a large scale.

« Our automatic blind crowdsourcing technology represents a disruptive innovation in the indoor location market. We enable our service to scale remotely, in a very short period and for an unlimited number of venues worldwide. We offer an indoor location solution that answers the mobile location-based services market main challenge: make Indoor Location service as simple as GPS to use, available and accessible everywhere. We are actually in negotiations with large customers and partners to implement NAO Campus worldwide on a multi-site basis, » said Christian Carle, the CEO of Pole Star.

Blind Crowdsourcing is an additional feature integrated in Pole Star’s NAO Cloud. An indoor location one-stop shop platform which includes the NAO Campus field proven tool suite and the NAO Campus hybrid location engine, which combines all available source of data to determine the most accurate indoor location: using smartphone motion sensors, Wi-Fi, GPS and BLE 4.0 signals. It enables Pole Star’s partners to integrate indoor location in their mobile services in complete autonomy, in just few days and offers the best service for 100% of environments, at the lowest cost.

In addition to the NAO Cloud platform, Pole Star will offer an alternative Business Model based on a subscription approach (ILaaS: Indoor Location as a Service), depending on the number of sites covered. A solution that answers the need of multi-site coverage for marketing agencies, telecom operators, integrators and the entire location-based services eco-system.

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