Site tour led by PAH Building & Construction inspires students to consider a career in construction
Hampshire based construction firm, PAH Building & Construction, recently welcomed construction students from Andover College Campus, part of the Sparsholt College Group, to a site visit at their Amesbury site in Boscombe Down. As part of PAH’s commitment to promoting the construction industry to the next generation of builders, the visit saw the students understand what an exciting and varied career construction provides and learn the skills needed to succeed.
Statistics demonstrate that there are 250,000 extra construction workers needed to meet demand by 2028. To help bridge this gap, PAH Building & Construction Ltd invited 9 local college construction students down to its Boscombe Down site to gain valuable hands-on experience in the industry.
With their hard hats, safety boots and high vis vests in check, the students were guided around the development, and discussed the array of opportunities in construction and the skills needed to succeed.
Graham Ayrton, Business Development Manager at Sparsholt College Group, comments: “A big thank you to the PAH Building & Construction team for hosting our T-Level Onsite Construction students at their Amesbury project site.”
“At Andover College campus, our construction course teaches students about the wider picture when it comes to learning about our industry. This is exactly what was achieved on the day at the Amesbury project site.”
“Our students came back with a much clearer picture on how their futures could look. To have access to such a diverse mix of construction insights with a site so close by is invaluable and stepping outside of the classroom for a practical job like construction is key.”
Mark Cuttriss, Director at PAH Building & Construction Ltd adds: “Construction is the foundation of everything in the building industry and that is why it is so important for us to do our bit in educating the next generation. It was certainly encouraging to see how enthusiastic the students were on the day and to have a great group of men and women asking questions on how they can further their prospects in construction. It was a pleasure to show the students around the site and hopefully, in the future, we will see some familiar faces working at PAH.”
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Hampshire construction firm announces partnership with Lighthouse charity
Hampshire based PAH Building & Construction has announced a partnership with the Lighthouse Charity, the only charity that provides emotional, physical and financial wellbeing support to construction workers and their families across the UK and Ireland.
PAH Building & Construction is supporting the Lighthouse Charity’s free and confidential support services, including a 24/7 helpline, live web chat service, text support facility, and self-support app which provides a huge range of wellbeing resources.
The charity also offers a Wellbeing Academy with diverse learning opportunities, including free self-paced eLearning, and Mental Health First Aider training. Through its #MakeItVisible initiative, the charity visits construction sites across the country to engage with workers and provide onsite wellbeing support.
The partnership with Lighthouse Charity is part of PAH Building & Construction’s ongoing commitment to supporting positive mental health in the industry and in creating an inclusive environment across its projects.
PAH Building & Construction was founded in 2010 by Trevor Wilkins and Mark Cuttriss. The business delivers a range of extensive residential retrofit projects, bespoke new build projects and complex insurance remediation works across the UK.
Trevor Wilkins, Director of PAH Building & Construction said: “The Lighthouse Charity does incredible work to remove the stigma around mental health that too often prevents people from sharing how they feel.
We are proud to launch our official partnership to ensure that all our employees have access to free wellbeing support and to help raise awareness of the resources available for anyone that needs them. We are looking forward to working together to drive this initiative forward across all of our projects.”
Sarah Bolton, Chief Executive Officer of Lighthouse Charity, added: “A crucial element of our strategy is to provide a wide range of free and widely available pro-active resources to support the construction industry. We can only deliver these vital services with the support of our partners, so thank you to PAH Building & Construction for helping us to make a real difference.”
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Retrofitting is essential to constructing a greener future
By Trevor Wilkins, Managing Director at PAH Building & Construction
Environmental and sustainability issues have been part of the construction conversation for years now. Yet despite mounting urgency to address the significant impact of the built environment, the challenge of effectively retrofitting older buildings means that demolishing the old to make space for new continues to be the industry standard.
Marks & Spencer’s recent court victory to demolish and rebuild its flagship 1929 art deco London store dealt a blow not only to Michael Gove, who originally blocked the controversial plans, but also to campaigners concerned about the carbon footprint of the proposed scheme.
According to Green Alliance, at least 15 million homes in the UK need to be retrofitted by 2030 to meet the UK’s carbon targets. Clearly futureproofing our housing stock for a growing population hinges as much on bringing older buildings up to scratch as it does on building new homes.
Rethinking retrofit
Currently, over half of the UK’s 28 million existing homes pre-date 1965, with 85% of homes still relying on gas boilers for heating and approximately 50% featuring uninsulated walls.
Delivering an effective countrywide retrofit initiative would not only benefit the environment but homeowners too, as it would nearly triple the UK’s current rate of energy efficiency, reducing household bills while lessening the carbon footprint of the power grid.
The solution lies in an industry-wide adoption of ‘deep’ retrofitting as the norm, through analysing and enhancing existing systems in older buildings to improve energy efficiency and reduce operational carbon, potentially reducing emissions by up to 80%.
Tackling these types of refurbishment projects involves the examination of various elements in the home, including insulation, ventilation, and renewable energy sources. Heat pumps, for example, are an effective alternative to gas boilers for a range of buildings and the Government has recently increased its support for this renewable energy source by providing grants of up to £7,500 through its Boiler Upgrade Scheme.
Addressing challenges
Despite the financial and logistical challenges of improving existing stock due to the varying age and design of a large portion of our homes, deploying innovative design and construction methods is making the process simpler.
Commonplace issues in older properties, such as damp, draughts and heat loss, can be effectively addressed with improved insulation methods. Solutions such as sealing masonry with a parge coat, and strategically insulating hot water pipes can address these issues head on and help to make homes more comfortable.
To mitigate overheating, reflective and green planted surfaces can reduce or slow the transfer of heat radiation, and a building can be fitted with skylights to function as an ‘exhaust’ for a build-up of heat. Shading in the form of balconies and heat pumps that reverse refrigerant flow, can also tackle overheating issues.
Photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, are probably the best-known renewable energy source and fitting them onto older homes is becoming increasingly commonplace. There are other possibilities too. Larger, community-scale Combined Heat & Power (CHP) has been around since the 1970s but the technology for Micro-CHP units for individual properties, while currently an expensive luxury, is easy to install and could become more popular if it was at a cost suitable for the mainstream market. Ultimately, we need for the costs to come down to roll this out more widely in households.
Modern kitchens and bathrooms fitted with effective water saving systems such as flow restricting taps and dual flushes further improve the overall efficiency of homes. Meanwhile, the installation of new floors and fittings with naturally hardwearing and insulating materials not only futureproofs homes, but makes them more desirable, creating spaces that people want to live, work, and relax in.
Retrofitting will also help to upskill and futureproof the industry. PwC estimates that a widespread adoption of retrofitting could support some 580,000 new roles in the UK, including over 94,000 in trade skills, particularly heating engineers, glazers, plumbers and insulation specialists, enabling the UK to become a world leader in green skills.
The scale of the problem is clear. Incentives for schemes that deliver the considerable benefits of retrofitting to upgrade the UK’s substandard housing stock are essential if we are to reach ambitious net-zero targets. The revolution is already overdue, and proactivity from the industry and Government is now required to embrace the best of the old to make something entirely new and fit for purpose for generations to come.