Building Briefs – December 11th

Forfar Community Campus was officially declared open on Friday marking the formal conclusion of an ambitious and exciting multi-million pound project that brings the town’s Academy and its community together.

Angus Depute Provost Colin Brown was joined by one of the school’s younger pupils, first year Stephen Langdon, in revealing the ceremonial plaque before an audience that included invited dignitaries, guests and of course, pupils.

Partnership working between hub East Central Scotland, Robertson Construction, the Design Team and Angus Council that has ensured that Forfar Community Campus is accessible to all.

The culture, sports and leisure facilities were delivered by the charitable trust ANGUSalive.

The campus boasts an impressive range of facilities for the community, including - a 25m, six-lane swimming pool, a studio pool with a movable depth floor, a double main games hall, gymnasium, a 50-station fitness suite, dance studios, sauna and steam room, a squash court, grass seven-a-side pitches and two full size football pitches (one grass, one floodlit and synthetic), and a floodlit MUGA (multi-use games area) pitch, which includes three tennis courts.

There is a café operated by Madisons of Montrose, a crèche and various meeting rooms available for booking. And there is also a theatre that provides a performance venue for drama and concerts, as well as other events, including conferences, workshops and meetings.

MP visits fast selling Stirling development

Cruden Homes’ fast selling Royal Park View development within the impressive Raploch regeneration area in Stirling, had a visit from local MP Stephen Kerr recently.

Mr Kerr was met by Hazel Davies, Cruden Homes’ sales and marketing director, and Gordon Fullarton, Cruden Homes’ head of construction, who both accompanied him on a tour round the development allowing Mr Kerr to view the build progress as well as hearing details on the rapid sales success at Royal Park View since the development launch in mid August.

Mr Kerr was also impressed to learn of Cruden Homes’ commitment to involving the people of Raploch, both in terms of engaging with them during the early phases of development and also through working closely with the local community enterprise initiative to support entrants into the construction sector through skills and training placements on site. These worthy initiatives have lead to Cruden Homes securing many accolades in the fields of skills and training, community engagement and community partnership over the years.

Indeed, the MP was very keen to highlight skills/training for the building industry and the priority of housing within his Stirling constituency.

He said: “In the recent UK Budget, the Chancellor, rightly, made building more affordable homes and investing in training a skilled workforce, a priority. I was delighted to see for myself the work going on by Cruden Homes to encourage people in to the vitally important building trades and their continued development that is providing much needed housing in Stirling. Just as importantly I want to see similar measures bought forward in the upcoming Scottish Government budget that will match the UK government’s removal of tax duty from first time buyers.”

Cruden Homes’ sales and marketing director, Hazel Davies, added: “Cruden Homes has been involved in the regeneration of Raploch from the outset and we’re proud to have been instrumental in the creation of a vibrant and mixed new community in this fabulous location. There is an acute shortage of quality, sustainable mixed tenure housing on a national level and we are delighted that Stephen Kerr’s interest in Raploch will encourage political debate on this matter.”

Indeglas completes further set of interior glass solutions for Scottish War Blinded

Cumbernauld-based interior glass solutions provider Indeglas has supplied internal glass partitioning for the Scottish War Blinded charity’s new Hawkhead Centre in Paisley.

This is the second successful project Indeglas has undertaken for the charity, having worked on its Linburn Centre in West Lothian, seven years ago.

Indeglas, formerly known as Deko Scotland, is a specialist contractor and sole distributor in the UK and Ireland for the products of award-winning glass manufacturer, Deko of Denmark.

Established 17 years, Indeglas distributes and installs all over the UK, and is the only full-service, Category 1 subcontractor which can source, design, and install Deko’s leading-edge glass technologies.

As part of the design, all internal glass was designed and fitted as ‘clerestory’ panels; this enables natural light to enhance the interior at high level whilst avoiding any glare or confusing reflective surfaces at eye level, a vital consideration for those with visual impairments.

The £17 million project has created 150 new jobs, and 100 military veterans have already signed up to use the facility, along with residents of the nearby Royal Blind facility, Jenny’s Well.

The internal glass installations at the Hawkhead Centre, which had a contract value of £44,000, contains acoustic-rated interior glass solutions throughout. The centre was built by CCG.

More than 500,000 acres of land in Scotland now under community ownership

Communities in Scotland own more than 500,000 acres of land, according to new statistics released by the Scottish Government.

The first estimate of community owned land in Scotland, the publication presents the area of land in community ownership, the number of land parcels/assets in community ownership and the number of community groups that own land parcels/assets.

It has estimated that 562,230 acres (227,526ha) of land in Scotland is now in community ownership, 2.9% of the total land area of the country. There were 492 land parcels/assets in community ownership owned by 403 community groups.

The publication will track progress towards the Scottish Government target to have one million acres of land in Scotland in community ownership by the end of 2020.

In the first six months of 2017, six additional land parcels/assets came into community ownership, bringing an additional 94.23 acres being in community ownership.

An additional 437,770 acres has to come into community ownership to achieve the target of having one million acres of land in community ownership by the end of 2020.

Community groups who own land parcels/assets are widespread across Scotland. Although the area of land in community ownership, is concentrated in two Local Authorities: Highland and Na h‑Eileanan Siar. Na h-Eileanan Siar contains 385,340 acres of land in community ownership and Highland contains 141,912 acres. This equates to 93.7% (527,252 acres) of the total land in community ownership in Scotland.

Inver House Distillers drives sustainability with £3m investment

Balmenach, one of Speyside’s oldest whisky distilleries and the home of Caorunn Scottish Gin, is set to become one of Scotland’s greenest distilleries with the announcement that work has started on a £3 million biogas project to significantly reduce the site’s carbon footprint.

Inver House Distillers has commissioned a new anaerobic digestion system, which breaks down the co-products of whisky production using micro-organisms to produce clean, methane-rich biogas to power the site.

The new technology will integrate with Balmenach’s existing wood-pellet biomass boiler, and once complete, the combined system will generate enough renewable steam and electricity to meet 100% of the distillery’s energy requirements with a surplus of electrical energy supplied to the grid.

When operational in summer 2018, approximately 130m3 of whisky co-products (pot ale and spent lees) will be processed to produce 2,000m3 of biogas each day, feeding a combined heat and power engine which will supply 200kW of power and 230kW of heat.

Synergie Environ, the Glasgow-based low carbon energy engineering company, is project managing the installation at Balmenach through all feasibility, planning, permitting, procurement and construction phases.

November another great month for renewables

November winds again helped produce clean electricity for Scotland’s homes and businesses for the majority of the month, environmental groups said today.

WWF Scotland confirmed that wind power provided over three quarters of Scotland’s entire electricity demand during the month, and supplied enough electricity to power every single home in the country 25 days out of 30.

Analysis by WWF of wind power data provided by WeatherEnergy found that wind turbines in Scotland provided 1,651,050 MWh of electricity to the National Grid, 77% of Scotland’s entire electricity demand for the month.

Wind generated enough power to potentially provide 4,529,629 homes with electricity, the equivalent of nearly twice the number of Scottish households (187%).

Wind generated output was sufficient to have potentially supplied 100% of total Scottish electricity demand on 7 November days.

CIOB invites world to choose its favourite photograph of the built environment

The built environment’s biggest international photography competition, run by the Chartered Institute of Building, opens for voting today with 12 finalists in the running for the £3,500 cash prize.

Photography fans around the world are being asked to vote for their favourite picture out of 12 dramatically contrasting images.

The cornucopia of images includes a historic theatre in France, a photograph of a mosque in Malaysia inspired by the Christopher Nolan film Inception and references to some of modern architecture’s greats like Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.

All 12 finalists’ pictures can now be viewed and voted for on CIOB’s Art of Building website www.artofbuilding.org and will be featured across a range of international media channels, reaching an estimated global audience of 60 million.

Launched in 2010 by the CIOB, Art of Building allows amateur and professional photographers to compete against each other on a level playing field, using equipment ranging from high specification cameras to smart phones.

This year’s competition attracted thousands of entries, with more than 70% coming from outside of the UK.

Public voting is now open and closes on 8 January 2018.

The Art of Building 2017 winner will be announced on 30 January 2018.