In October, the British Board of Agrément, in conjunction with Local Authority Building Control, launched 100% Hackitt, a joint venture to press the Government to introduce all 53 of Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations. Claire Curtis-Thomas, Chief Executive of the BBA, discusses why the initiative is important and how the industry can get behind it.

The BBA – or British Board of Agrément to give it its full name – has been an established part of the UK construction industry for more than 50 years, with the sole aim of providing specifiers, installers, users, regulators, manufacturers, insurers and the public with the reassurance they require that building products are safe, reliable, fit for purpose and correctly installed, explains Ramona Donnelly, Operations Manager – Engineering at the BBA.

As the construction industry is seeing an increasing shift towards landfill redevelopment, Stephen Oakden, Director at BE Design – the multi-disciplinary architecture and engineering practice – outlines the biggest obstacles faced by developers when constructing on such sites and how to meet environmental challenges with practical and safe solutions.

Sustainability remains top of the agenda in the construction industry, focusing on everything from carbon footprint of the supply chain and sustainable materials to works traffic management and paperless reporting systems. But there is one area in particular where construction companies can drive significant profit margins by being more sustainable; waste reduction.

In lieu of the Grenfell disaster and the collapse of Carillon, the construction industry is having a huge identity crisis. With the industry’s ever-widening skills shortage getting worse, modernisation of the industry is long overdue. As well as this, the industry has the added pressure to solve what is sadly the worst gender balance of any industry. As a collective, how can we challenge the typical, often negative stereotypes of an industry where less than 14% of workers are women? Jayne Hall, Vice-President of CABE, looks at this growing issue, to see how the gender imbalances can potentially be resolved.