Building Weekly Digest: 21 October

It's been one of those weeks when the pace of events makes it hard to catch your breath. The continued political turmoil at Downing Street inevitably has an impact on construction businesses, meanwhile there have been a questions around leadership succession at one of the industry's best known names: Laing O'Rourke. We have also featured comment pieces from a host of industry leaders, launched the latest iteration of Net Zero Live and supported our sister title Building Design. to host its landmark Architect of the Year Awards at The Brewery on Chiswell Street .

A week of turmoil in politics

The biggest news of the week was of course the resignation of Liz Truss - who becomes the shortest serving UK prime minister having held the office for just 45 days before announcing her departure. And the industry reaction to the news was swift. The predominant message? We need stability. Meanwhile, after days of political turmoil and an almost complete reversal of the mini budget, there is still much nervousness about where the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt's cuts will fall. In this piece,?Daniel Gayne?runs through the possibilities - and you can sense some of the industry frustration as the?Construction Products Association's?Noble Francis?says all this uncertainty at a time of economic slowdown amounts to 'poor government and bad policy making'. It was inevitable that business confidence would take a massive hit, and it has.

What's going on at Laing O'Rourke?

“Balfour Beatty plc?might be bigger,?Sir Robert McAlpine?more aristocratic and?Morgan Sindall Group plc?way more profitable than any of them. But no construction firm continues to fascinate the industry like?Laing O'Rourke?does.” This was the assessment from deputy editor David Rogers?in his analysis piece looking at Laing O’Rourke’ succession problems and why septuagenarian Ray O’Rourke is now staying at the helm for longer. The change to succession plans at the contractor were announced on Wednesday morning when the firm confirmed Seamus French, who only began work at the business at the start of 2022, and was supposed to take over from O’Rourke as chief executive last month, will now be gone by Christmas. Laing O'Rourke also released its latest annual results which show a ￡76m hit at its Australia business?dragged group profit down to less than ￡3m on turnover of ￡3bn.

What is the industry talking about this week?

This week we heard from industry leaders on a range of topics. First of all dRMM 's Professor Sadie Morgan OBE took a look at what good leadership looks like today, a topic that has only become more pertinant as the week has unfolded. Next up, Justine Elliott , national sales director at Lovell Partnerships Ltd , discussed menopause's impact on women’s careers and what is needed across all industries to better support them at this time. Finally, ISG ’s Craig Battye FCIOB shared his views on why we should get excited about alliancing.

Net Zero Live November 2022 programme revealed

We've also revealed the agenda for the latest instalment of Net Zero Live which will be taking place on 22 and 23 November. We currently have four sessions that are open for you to attend as part of the virtual conference - and they are all free to participate in!

They are:

• Closing the performance gap
• COP27 lessons learned: What did it tell us about decarbonising our existing estates?
• Specifying for Part L
• Net Zero in the built environment: From ambition to action

Big thanks to our partners Aggregate Industries UK , 阿特金斯 and ROCKWOOL UK

Awards season kicks off!

This week our sister title Building Design held its annual Architect of the Year Awards, with 14 practices receiving the 16 highly-regarded awards, with Denizen Works claiming the coveted Gold Award - this is the award for the ‘best of the best’ selected from the winners of the other categories. You can check out highlights from the night and all the winners here. Meanwhile, construction's night of nights is taking place in just over a week! The Building Awards are being held at JW Marriott Grosvenor House London on 1 November and now's your chance to secure the last remaining spaces!

Thanks for reading and we'll see you next week!