M1 MMC Sept '16 cc

Bringing stress to work can be fatal
British Safety Council launches a film the British Safety Council aim to highlight how stress endangers lives.
Matthew Holder, Head of Campaigns and Engagement at the British Safety Council, commented: “It is well documented that stress is a
significant cause of sickness absence, undermining both productivity and profitability. What is less discussed is how stress can endanger lives.”
There is a lot of statistical evidence demonstrating the consequences of stress at work:
• In 2014/15, 440,000 people in the UK reported work-related stress at a level they believed was making them ill. That's 40% of all
work-related illness (source: HSE).
• Stress is believed to be a major cause of accidents in the workplace, with evidence showing that 60-80% of accidents are related to
workplace stress.
• A survey of 2,500 doctors found that job stress was a major predictor of work-related accidents. Fatigue, in particular, is associated
with a threefold increased risk of sharps injuries in medical trainees compared with other healthcare workers.
87% of UK builders missing out on business
due to poor online presence
Yell, one of the biggest providers of digital marketing in the UK, has
discovered an overwhelming majority of builders (87%) it researched
have wrong or inconsistent information online, including basic details
such as a phone number or email.
Feedback shows 89% of customers say they will try another company if
the details listed online for a particular business are incorrect.
Yell conducted research into how the 50,630 builders in its UK database
appear online, also asking customers nationwide about their online
habits and expectations.
“If a company’s information online is wrong, it’s arguably worse than not
being online at all,” said Mark Clisby, Yell’s Marketing Director. “Not
only is the company effectively invisible to customers, it can also seem
careless or even untrustworthy. This often happens because companies
don’t always know all the listings sites where they appear, or when they
move they forget to update their information. It’s easily done, but can be
incredibly damaging for business.”
Industry risks running out of timber if we
don’t become more sustainable
A new report commissioned by WWF finds that UK businesses must
invest in sustainable forest management if they are to guarantee
access to timber that their businesses rely on in the near future.
Leading countries that supply timber to the UK are either at the
point of expiry or running at a deficit as forest resources are used
without adequate provision for sustainable timber supply.
As the international market for timber will change in its dynamics
in the next decades, without urgent action UK businesses who have
failed to adequately plan for continuity of their timber resource
could be left exposed with fewer commercial options.
The implications are far reaching with WWF’s Living Forests report
series concluding that global demand for timber is expected to
triple by 2050.
Julia Young, Global Forest and Trade Network Manager for WWF-
UK said “Businesses need to review how their timber is sourced if
they want to secure supply for the future, and keep timber prices
stable.”
Offsite construction can attract the next generation of construction professionals
Ministers have recently announced that they want the construction industry to focus efforts on attracting, developing and retaining home
grown talent into the industry and remove barriers currently preventing more young people from entering the sector.
This involves looking at how companies recruit and train, but also at how adopting modern technologies and methods could help to keep our
sector interesting, up-to-date and attractive to the next generation of budding construction professionals.
The prime benefit of modular building and offsite construction is that it provides specifiers with programme certainty and quality through
simplification of site operations and reduced weather dependencies due to the controlled factory-based assembly process. The ancillary
benefit of this is that buildings delivered through offsite construction offer enhanced specification standards and build-quality which reduces
occupancy costs related to energy use, defects and repairs.
If we are to harness the true potential of the recent uptake in modular, we need to focus heavily on training an existing workforce whilst also
attracting new talent into our midst.
Many schools are “dangerous, dilapidated, poorly built and wasteful”, says RIBA
RIBA have highlighted the urgent need for school refurbishment in a report into the state of school buildings, entitled ‘Better Spaces for Learning.’
The report revealed:
• 1 in 5 teachers have considered quitting because of the wretched condition of the school buildings they have to teach in
• The Government’s Education Funding Agency’s new school building programme is too rigid and is leading to waste and poor value for tax
payers
• Over 90% of teachers believe well-built and designed schools improve educational outcomes and pupil behaviour
• Over-engineered schools, with Government-specified equipment that only costly consultants know how to operate, is costing £150 million
per year which could have been avoided if schools were designed better
RIBA’s Better Spaces for Learning report makes the case for an urgent review of the Government’s Education Funding Agency’s current school
building programme. It emphasises the importance of well-designed school buildings on young people’s wellbeing, behaviour engagement and
crucially, attainment.
MMC
Sep/Oct 2016 M1 5