With fears growing that Russia might launch a cyber-attack on Western European targets and, in any case, the number of criminal cases of cyber attacks growing, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has partnered the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) to produce a guide for smaller construction companies on how to protect themselves from cyber attacks.

The guide is called Cyber Security for Construction Businesses. It can be downloaded from the NCSC website here, or you can download the PDF directly by clicking on the icon at the end of this report.

A lot of companies in construction, including stone companies, have had their computers frozen by cyber attacks. The attackers normally demand untraceable Bitcoins to unblock computers, although paying does not always get your computers back. Instead it simply leads to further demands for more Bitcoins. So back up your data, so you don’t have to pay.

Some high profile cyber attacks against the construction industry illustrate how businesses of all sizes are being targeted. Small businesses are often chosen because their computers can be less secure than those of larger companies.

As the industry continues to embrace and adopt more digital ways of working, it is more important than ever to understand how you might be vulnerable to cyber attacks and what you can do to protect yourself.

This guidance is aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses working in the construction industry and the wider supply chain (including the manufacture of building products, surveying, and the sale of buildings).

By implementing the steps described in Cyber Security for Construction Businesses you will be protected from the most common forms of cyber attack. And if you are attacked, you should be able to recover quickly.

If everyone follows the advice in Cyber Security for Construction Businesses the attacks from criminals could be ended because nobody will pay and criminals will no longer find the attacks lucrative.

The National Cyber Security Centre was created by the British spymasters of GCHQ. NCSC also has a Small Business Guide offering further affordable, practical advice on how to stay secure online. Larger organisations can find more guidance in the NCSC publication 10 Steps to Cyber Security.

Civil engineer Fitzgerald Contractors has become the latest company to transfer ownership to an employee ownership trust. 

Managing Director Nick Coley, who acquired the business in 2013 when its parent company, Thomas Vale, was bought by Bouygues UK, completed the transition of ownership to the employees on 21 February. The business is now 100% owned by the 120 employees.

Nick Coley remains MD and the existing Board of Directors retain their roles. They say employee ownership will provide greater opportunities for staff to influence business decisions through the formation of an employee council.

Nick says: “We consider that an employee ownership trust model is ideally suited to Fitzgerald’s philosophy. The thinking behind employee ownership has businesses exactly like ours in mind. This is a very exciting stage in the company’s history and safeguards Fitzgerald’s future for the benefit of all employees.”

The company, which had a turnover of £17.1miillion in the year to the end of March 2021 (down from £23.4million in 2020) says employee ownership will allow it to provide greater opportunities for succession from within the internal management team over the coming years, an ethos it says has already served it well.

An employee ownership trust is where the employees of a business own all or most of the shares in a company. It is growing in popularity as it offers benefits for businesses, their owners and employees as a way of succession planning.

Employee ownership can help companies to retain their independence, reward employees, and enable outgoing shareholders to receive a fair value for their contribution to the development of the company. It also spreads financial risk, as part of employees' income comes from dividends, so automatically adjusts with trading conditions. And because employees share in the profits of the company directly, they are motivated to want to increase those profits.

As well as being used for succession planning, it is also used by some new business as it helps to attract and retain talented people and create a positive culture.

While employee ownership has gained more attention of late, the concept is not new. John Spedan Lewis established the John Lewis Partnership as an employee-owned company in 1929.

Dozens of companies have turned to the model in recent years, including Paye Stonework & Restoration, Buckingham Group, Briggs & Forrester and Readie Construction.

The Worktop Fabricators Federation (WFF) has become an official sponsor of KBB, the kitchens, bathrooms and interiors exhibition that takes place at the NEC Birmingham 6-9 March. 

“Endorsing KBB is a natural step for the WFF,” says director Simon Souter. “We launched the Worktop Fabricators Federation at KBB only two years ago – just weeks before the first lockdown. Both the show and the WFF have come through two incredibly testing years and emerged sharper and stronger as a result. 

“Giving our endorsement to the KBB exhibition is an acknowledgement of the importance of a national event – and a reflection of the growing importance of made-to-measure stone interiors right across the sector.”

The decision sees WFF joining other established industry quality campaigners suck as the kitchen & bathroom association KBSA, the Bathroom Manufacturers Association, and the British Institute of Kitchen, Bedroom & Bathroom Installation (BIKBBI) as official Partners of the KBB exhibition.

It also gives the WFF an important platform to communicate the benefits of working with professional worktop fabricators to the kitchen studios and interior designers who make up the majority of KBB’s visitor base.

“Designing, templating, creating and fitting stone worktops is an exacting and professional business,” says Simon Souter. 

“As the market has grown and matured, so installers have increasingly become concerned at the sometimes costly consequences of dealing with untried suppliers. Customers want to know that all trades involved in their projects are capable, professional and reliable. And the worktop industry needs to provide the kitchen companies with the very best service.

“WFF aims to do everything it can to capture and develop the professionalism of our industry – giving both customers and investors confidence that in dealing with a WFF member they are getting the very best product and the best service.

“Working alongside KBB is a demonstration that professional, reliable and safety-minded stone fabricators are vital and intimate contributors to the wider goal of maintaining the high-value, high-quality reputation of the whole K&B and interiors sector.”

For the record: Mike Boydon is not a Director of WFF. In the January/February 2022 issue of Natural Stone Specialist magazine in the report about Bellagio Marble Ideas, it was stated that Director Mike Boydon is also a Director of the Worktop Fabricators Federation (WFF), which he is not.

By the end of May or early June, SiG (Stone Industry Group) should have a device for sale that measures levels of respirable crystalline silica in the air accurately in real time. 

The device is called Trolex Air XS, and is said to be more than twice as accurate as the X-Ray defraction units that are currently used to measure RCS levels as well as providing instant readings.

The unit was introduced to members of the Worktop Fabricators Federation at their meeting at machinery company Intermac’s premises in Northamptonshire last year, when volunteers were asked to carry out field trials.

The development of the unit by British company Trolex is now almost complete. It will be sold in the stone industry by SiG, in the UK and also in America and Europe.

It was introduced to the Americans this month (February) at StonExpo/Marmomac, part of the International Surfaces Event held in Las Vegas. It won the ‘Best of Technology 2022’ award at the exhibition.

Among those manning the exhibition stand in Las Vegas was Ash Butler, who has now joined SiG and will be selling the Trolex Air XS in the UK.

In America, concerns about silicosis and lung cancer resulting from exposure to RCS are even greater than they are in the UK, due in part to the level of claims that can be made by employees who end up with a disease.

In the USA the permitted workplace exposure level to RCS is half the current level in the UK, although the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Respiratory Health (APPG) said in its 2020 report Silica – the next asbestos? that the UK level should be reduced to the American level. The Group is currently reviewing that recommendation (read more about that here).

Cutting sandstone masonry in a British factory.

In the British sandstone industry the risk from RCS is taken seriously and people are routinely protected by substantial PPE, including positive pressure helmets. SiG is planning to introduce a positive pressure helmet to its range, having discovered one developed during the coronavirus pandemic to protect key workers from the Covid virus. It is particularly effective but lightweight for comfortable use over sustained periods.

At worktop fabricators in the UK, protection often involves no more than a mask over the mouth and nose that might or might not fit properly and be worn regularly by the operator, even though granite and engineered quartz typically produce high levels of RCS when worked. Even when worked wet, RCS will float in air-born water droplets that can be inhaled.

The sunlight exposes the level of water-born dust in this worktop fabricator's workshop in the USA.

HSE tests have shown air-born levels of RCS can exceed legal exposure limits outside as well as inside CNC machine enclosures. Using angle grinders, wet as well as dry, also produces RCS levels in the air well above legal limits.

“In the USA fabricators are putting warning stickers on slabs saying there’s an inherent risk of silicosis from handling and cutting this material,” says SiG Director Simon Bradbury.

He says in the UK the Health & Safety Executive is getting ever more vigilent about dust in general and RCS in particular because RCS is the biggest dust danger to construction workers after asbestos.

The Trolex Air XS is mobile, so can be used to test the RCS levels in different areas of a factory.

It has a price tag of just under £10,000, but Ash Butler says if companies look on it as an investment to protect themselves from injury claims by employees, as well as helping to protect employees from exposure to potentially lethal dust, it does not seem too high a price to pay.

SiG Director Simon Bradbury, SiG Inc President Jerry Van Der Bass and Ash Butler, who has recently joined SiG and will be selling the Trolex Air XS in the UK, receiving the 'Best of Technology Award' at the International Surfaces Event in Las Vegas earlier this month. Ash said the Air XS received the award because the judges could see where the industry is going in terms of the need for proactive dust monitoring. He says the UK is only a few years behind the US.

David Coster, Director of Advanced Stone & Masonry Supplies, which sells Stain Proof and Tenax products, talks to Max Cunningham, Production Manager at Rock Revelations in Northamptonshire.

David: Natural stone, sintered/porcelain or quartz?

Max: I would personally go for sintered material just because of its properties and because I have worked with it for so long. Customers also want to go for sintered materials. Its best property is coping with heat. Customers are used to old black granite and being able to shove a hot pan on it. It puts them off quartz so they go for ceramic. It’s the future of stone. I think people know if they are going to bring a ceramic job to us that we can complete it and they’re not going to have a problem with it. There are always some issues in fabrication, but nine times out of 10 I can get the job into the kitchen without a problem.

David: Straight off the CNC or hand finished?

Max: It’s a combination. I have just invested in the tools for the CNC so all the sink cut outs, pencil or bevel, are coming straight off the saw finished. It’s just the final edges that need to be done by hand.

Templating: Digital or physical?

We are completely digital now having got rid of Corex about three years ago. It’s better for the environment but also with a laser I can have someone on-site, laser it, and if there’s a problem I can get straight on to the AutoCad and on to the machine and straight away it’s being cut. It increases our geographical spread. I have sub-contractor templaters around the UK. They can be at someone’s house straight away. They might be on the South Coast, in Canterbury, and then yesterday I had two jobs in Scotland.

Customers. Love them or hate them?

It’s a love/hate relationship. You never get anything from them apart from their money. They are high end and demanding. They want this, then they want that. You have to try to lay it on the table so they know it’s not always going to be like that and they have to wait.

What will be your next investment?

We have just got planning permission to extend the factory, mainly so we can get a five-axes waterjet, because we do so much ceramic work now with so many cut outs so close together. You can’t do it on a CNC.

With the government saying the UK has to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050, what plans do you have?

We don’t have a plan yet. It’s a way off. But we will have to work something out.

And ethical sourcing?

We use the main brands. I hope they are dealing with it.

Have you noticed any problems as a result of Brexit/Covid?

Loads. The cost of containers and trying to get goods into the country. Even from Cosentino I don’t get slabs on time. I don’t know if that’s because drivers are stuck at the docks or they just can’t get the materials any more.

The future: worse, better, the same?

I would like to say it would be better – there are different materials; we are looking to expand; more machinery. I think during Covid some customers have understood things can be difficult and are more open to the idea that they might have to wait. Perhaps customers will be more understanding in future... But perhaps not.

I just want to ensure what comes out of the factory is as good as it always has been, if not better. I don’t want to start getting more workload, I want to concentrate on the quality; getting the people in the factory more fully trained to make it better.

Trends. What are customers looking for now and what do you anticipate is coming?

I don’t think white marble effect quartz will ever go, but the thing we are selling most of now is Dekton Kelya, which is dark with a light vein. That’s coming through all the time. We have at least three or four jobs in that a week.

But granite’s coming back. I don’t know if it’s fashion or trend, but I think it might be because everyone has white quartz and it’s something different.

I have a mixture of white and dark materials – I always do. People who have had white will then go to dark. There’s way more darker Dekton with busier veins coming on. I think that will work for ceramics, but when people go for quartz there are so many whites out there now.

For next year, the rumour is it’s green. I can see pink and green coming in again. At the moment it’s all grey, white or dark. There’s no actual colours. That can change.

Can construction in concrete benefit from copying the way stonemasons have worked for millennia? Dr Paul Shepherd at the University of Bath thinks so. 

He says swapping solid slab concrete floors for a ‘thin shell’ vaulted alternative could help the construction industry towards its net-zero targets by cutting concrete use by 75%.

Of course, if stone were used rather than concrete the carbon content could be reduced to practically zero.

Dr Shepherd’s new vaulted style of floor was developed by an interdisciplinary team of structural engineers, mathematicians and manufacturing experts from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge and Dundee.

They have now unveiled a full-scale demonstration of a thin-shell floor, which cuts the carbon footprint by 60% compared with an equivalent flat slab floor that could carry the same load.

The curved vault-shaped structure is covered by standard raised floor panels to create a level surface.

Created by the UK Research & Innovation*-funded ACORN (Automating Concrete Construction) research project, the vault-shaped floor design takes advantage of concrete’s strength under compression, just as vaulted stone (or brick, come to that) ceilings do.

Dr Shepherd, a Reader in Bath’s Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering and the Principal Investigator for ACORN, says: “Achieving the net-zero targets recently ratified at the COP26 conference will require significant change by the construction industry, which is responsible for about half of the UK’s total emissions.

“Since concrete is the world’s most widely consumed material after water, and its production contributes more than 7% of global CO₂ emissions, the easiest way for construction to begin its journey to net-zero is to use less concrete.

“That has been the driving force behind this project, which we hope could make a major difference to the impact of construction.”

Innovations in robotics, automated design and off-site fabrication are key. Currently most building floors use thick flat slabs of solid concrete, which rely on the bending strength of concrete to support loads. But concrete is not good at resisting the tension induced by bending, so these floors also need a lot of steel reinforcement.

The solution, as stonemasons have known for thousands of years, is to replace the tension with compression by vaulting.

The shape might prove impractical to make on modern, fast-track construction sites using traditional temporary formwork, so the ACORN team has also developed an automated adaptable mould and a robotic concrete spraying system that can be used off-site in a factory using purpose-written software to optimise the floor design for any given building.

Since the floor is made off-site, it needs to be transported to site and then assembled. This means splitting a large floor into transportable pieces. That required a system to connect them on site, which the team has also developed, bringing further advantages in reducing the time needed on-site for assembling the sections.

The ACORN team has learnt another trick from stone – re-using material at the end of a building’s life. The joints have been designed so that the floor can be dismantled and re-used elsewhere, helping towards a circular economy for the construction industry.

The practicality of this integrated system has just been demonstrated to ACORN’s industry partners in a full-scale 4.5m x 4.5m thin-shell structure in the NRFIS Laboratory of Cambridge University’s Civil Engineering Department.

Despite being the first of its kind, each piece of the floor erected at Cambridge took only half an hour to make, and the whole floor took just a week to assemble. Future commercial versions could be manufactured in dedicated industrial facilities even more quickly and site erection times could be reduced as familiarity with the system grew.

Dr Shepherd says: “After three years of research it’s amazing to see the fruits of all our hard work dominating the laboratory and drawing interested looks from all who pass by. It’s not every day you can jump on top of your research! I just hope that one day soon this type of low-carbon, automatically manufactured building becomes so widespread that people walk by without noticing.”

Adam Locke, Programme Leader of Europe Hub Technology & Innovation at Laing O'Rourke, one of the ACORN partners, adds: “The ACORN Demonstrator is a very useful stepping-stone in the progressive pathway to decarbonizing our solutions, and complements very well our own work in this area.”

*ACORN received funding from UK Research and Innovation under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Transforming Construction programme.

A video posted on Twitter records Storm Eunice on 18 February blowing the top off the stone spire of St Thomas' Church in Wells, Somerset. 

The picture here shows where it landed, next to a path going through the churchyard.

The video and picture were sent to BBC Bristol and posted on Twitter by Ian Fergusson (@fergieweather).

The video was credited to Matthew Hodson and the photo to Janet Hodson.

Sky News also showed the video and quoted the vicar of the church, the Reverend Claire Towns, as saying: "We were all terribly shocked. The building has been up since the late 1800s and the spire here can be seen from quite a long way away. It's quite a symbol around our community, so we're just really shocked that this happened. But equally we're feeling very thankful that nobody was hurt or even worse killed."

You can watch the video at:

Two test centre administrators who admitted falsifying CITB health, safety & environment tests, required to obtain CSCS cards and work on construction sites, were each sent to prison for 28 months when they appeared before Chester Crown Court on Friday (18 February).

The two men, one from Manchester and one from Macclesfield, were test centre administrators at the accredited DWM Plant Ltd in Knutsford, Cheshire.

During an investigation into fraud, CITB uncovered a large-scale criminal operation involving mostly foreign nationals being assisted on their CITB HS&E test.

Some candidates were travelling long distances and completing their tests in just four or five minutes by means of a remote mouse.

The case was reported to Cheshire police, who carried out a criminal investigation into the conduct of two men, Callum Ingram and Stephen McWhirk.

Ingram, aged 28 and from Manchester, and McWhirk, aged 62 and living in Macclesfield, were charged with offences that took place between May and September 2019.

The trial was originally scheduled for June this year. However, the pair pleaded guilty in December last year and the case was moved forward to last week.

Sentencing the two men, Recorder Taylor said the fraud had exposed potentially large numbers of people in the industry and members of the public to the risk of serious harm by providing a means for unqualified people to work on building sites when they had no idea of health & safety requirements.

Some of those people who fraudulently passed the test were found to be unable even to understand instructions in English.

The court heard the pair had profited by somewhere in the region of £37,700.

DC Sarah Newton, from Cheshire Police, says: “Throughout the investigation we liaised with CITB, allowing a joint investigation due to the unique and specific nature of the fraud.

“Fraudulently obtained CSCS cards mean that the holder has not demonstrated the professional competence and awareness of health & safety legislation that is required for them to work safely in the construction industry. This creates obvious risks, not only to themselves but also to other workers and members of the public, while also undermining confidence. We will continue to work with partners wherever criminality puts people at risk.”

CITB’s Fraud Manager, Ian Sidney, led the initial investigation. He said after sentence had been passed: “We welcome the result today. It sends out a message that we will not tolerate individuals compromising construction site safety by facilitating some people cutting corners to obtain their site cards without the required knowledge, skills or experience to pass the tests.

“CITB also acknowledges and is grateful for the support provided by Cheshire Police in securing the arrest and subsequent conviction of the two defendants.”

The DWM Plant test centre was closed and 1,305 tests revoked in Jan 2020. Those whose tests were revoked were offered a voucher to retest for free and allowed three-months in which to retake the test.

Partner card schemes were informed of the revocations and, where appropriate, competence cards have also been retracted.

Anyone that has any information regarding fraudulent testing activity can report it confidentially to CITB at report.it@citb.co.uk.