Opinion

Highbridge Properties’ Guy Marsden looks at the Glasgow commercial property market and the increased levels of demand in the market, thanks to the growing pool of talent in the city. As a commercial property developer, my natural instinct whenever I go into a city is to look up – you rea

Kathie Pollard, policy officer at the Scottish Land Commission, explores how a new framework can help decision-makers assess the impact of vacant and derelict land (VDL) sites on their local communities. "This land can have a profound effect on the wellbeing of locals:” Darren McGarvey –

Halliday Fraser Munro design director Yunming Thomson discusses how community involvement in the early stages has transformed how we as architects approach the design of education projects.

With the Scottish Land Commission being asked to advise the Scottish Government on the establishment of regional land use partnerships, chief executive Hamish Trench looks at what the body will need to consider. The Scottish Land Commission is shaping a coherent programme of land reform spanning urb

BDP architect Lindsey Mitchell on the importance of designing education spaces which inspire and provide a year-round community asset. Like many who grew up in the 1980s, school for me was the building where I attended each weekday, was moved along corridors by prefects and herded by teachers into c

Construction law specialist Ross Taylor wonders if it’s now time for mandatory payment practices as the construction sector buckles under Brexit-driven worries. On 18 October 2019, the Office for National Statistics released the annual performance statistics for 2018, relative to the UK constr

Ahead of the Homes for Scotland annual conference, Nicola Barclay discusses the need for housing, the social and economic benefits of home building and the constraints facing the industry. For the first time since 2008 and the global recession, housing completions in Scotland have exceeded 20,000 pe

I was one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be from an early age. My five-year-old self created buildings with Lego from my imagination. So, when I grew up I did it for real and became an architect. When I was using my imagination as a child there were no barriers – such as the p

In a new report for Common Weal, former chief statistician Jim Cuthbert examines the newly developed 'Mutual Investment Model' that the Scottish Government has adopted for at least some future public infrastructure projects.

The new building regulations can ensure Scotland leads the way in delivering safe, compliant construction projects but they don’t come without their challenges, says Heather Holbrook. At the start of October, Scotland ushered in a new wave of building regulations, aimed at improving the safety

Public procurement policy and practice, when it comes to facilitating SME involvement, seems to be focused solely upon ensuring there are opportunities at a sub-contract level. But, asks Roddy Cormack, does this focus miss the sweet spot in terms of actual benefit to the SME economy? There are certa

Ben Zielinski, a senior associate in the commercial litigation team at Shoosmiths in Edinburgh, considers the significance of a recent judgment in the Court of Session that has given greater clarification of how much notice a landlord needs to give to terminate a commercial lease in Scotland. A rece

Harper Macleod’s Lewis Kemp looks at a recent case which has taken a new approach to dealing with the problematic application of prescription in construction cases. The traditional understanding of the law of prescription in Scotland, which extinguishes certain rights and obligations after the

Rounding off a fortnight of reporting following Scotland Excel’s ‘Accelerating Delivery of Affordable New Homes’ conference, category manager Jenny Bowles highlights the potential for generating social value in construction. In the Scottish Government’s recent Annual Procurem

Following recent regulatory investigations into fake certificates for construction workers, corporate and financial crime specialist Ramsay Hall looks at the risk of fraud for organisations in the sector and the practical steps that can be taken to mitigate risk. In August 2019, it was reported that