RIDBA is delighted to be holding is biennial Building Awards on Thursday 9 September 2021 at the Macdonald Manchester Hotel. After a year of event cancellations and postponements, this much anticipated event will be a great opportunity for the rural and industrial industry to come together!
The RIDBA Building Awards are the only awards that recognise the very best in rural and industrial buildings, and are the perfect opportunity for members to showcase their best projects. The deadline for entering the Awards is Wednesday 31 March, so please enter before the closing date.
Entering the awards is simple, and you can do so either by entering online or downloading our entry form. There are four different categories to enter:
Rural – Cattle, Equestrian, Captive (zoo) and Domestic
Industrial – Light, Medium or Large
Other – Retail, Manufacturing, Leisure, Education and MOD
Training Award – Schemes, Projects or Managers and Apprentices
Make sure to read the rules and criteria before entering, which can be found on our dedicated Awards web page. Enter now before its too late!
Despite efforts from across the industry over the last month, the Reverse Charge VAT has now been introduced, effective 1 March 2021. This is a new way of collecting VAT from businesses that provide construction services within the scope of the CIS (Construction Industry Scheme), in an attempt to ensure the Government is recovering the correct amount of VAT from the construction sector. This means that VAT will no longer be paid to businesses in the supply chain for providing construction services unless they are providing those services directly to an End User.
We would like to thank members who supported the #StopReverseVAT campaign, which reached over 2 million social media users during February and stands as a great example of the industry coming together.
Now that the legislation has been introduced, RIDBA recommends looking at the Practical Guide from Build UK to ensure you understand how Reverse VAT will affect your business. Members can also refer to this checklist to ensure you have taken the necessary actions, including updating your invoices with the required information.
HMRC has confirmed it will “apply a light touch” in dealing with any errors over the next six months, provided that companies can demonstrate they have tried to comply and acted in good faith.
My head hurts and my heart sinks. Nothing to do with sport or politics, but a
bulging email collection of data and images of new buildings where animal
health is in trouble. How do we manage
to get it so wrong sometimes, when we have so much information at our
fingertips? Or is that the major
problem? That our current situation is exacerbated by the difficulties in
filtering the useful information from the useless? Maybe we should pay more attention to past
experience. Today is always a good time to ask the question “what can we learn
from the past? “
The layout and construction of farm buildings is a balance
of resources and desired function, with elements of form introduced occasionally. Livestock buildings have a challenging set of
requirements because the contents are dynamic and require daily intervention of
labour. They are not storage facilities
but living accommodation for animals.
Design of facilities will accommodate the house, the bed, the feeding
and watering, the effluents, the sick and when done well, the labour. My current focus is to ask if we are still
doing all those things?
Fig. 1 East Lochside, Farm Steading, Aberdeenshire
Fig 1 shows a typical medium sized farm steading from the late-19th
century, from the earlier days of the centralisation of facilities which occur
in modern farms. Storage of feed is
above the livestock, with a midden for farmyard manure close by. All materials were moved between and within
buildings by manpower, with good design making the most of the topography, the
expected impacts of wind and rain, the need for water in specific locations,
and gravity to be useful where it can. There
are separate spaces for separate functions, and whilst considerable human
effort was required to put hay and grain in the various lofts at harvest time,
the six-month task of feeding livestock through the winter would by helped by
gravity, for free. Labour made a far
bigger contribution of resources for food production then than now, and good
design acknowledged the value of labour inputs.
The increase in herd and flock sizes in UK agriculture has
been accompanied by a substantial decrease in labour resources. Daily tasks previously carried out by manual
labour have been displaced by one or maybe two people on a farm, plus
machinery. Nobody will miss the physical
rigours of manual labour on farms, but in the process of evolving into our
current systems we have walked into an un-designed animal health and welfare
nightmare.
Fig. 2 Arrangement of buildings for a farm of 250 acres (SCMA, 1912)
Fig.2 shows the layout of accommodation for a mixed farm of
about 250 acres, with an array of discrete spaces around two yards, with some
storage on an upper floor (TSCMA, 1912).
The separation of animals into smaller groups of similar ages will have
had significant positive impacts on biosecurity; the control of spread of
infections. Small group size facilitates
the observation of individual intakes of feed and water, and the physical signs
of health and symptoms of disease in those individuals. The field barns of mid-19th
century are very positive for isolation, but not so handy for labour (Fig 3.) Repeated
close contact with humans would mostly (but not always) create a familiarity
that would seldom create even sub-clinical stress levels in livestock. The daily task of shovelling and barrowing
manures from many small rooms and buildings is not something we would repeat,
but there were some important advantages of the old ways. Farmyard manures had a higher ‘value’ in the
livestock systems of 19th century agriculture than is sometimes apparent
today, with the result that manure
management can be treated as an afterthought in some modern designs. A lack of design detail in waste management
is seen in excessive labour cost moving muck with machines on a daily basis,
for ever, compared with using a broader view at the design stage. Large volumes of wastes in one location can
cause higher levels of negative impact, such as sedimentation in large slatted
tanks, air quality issues, and localised diffuse pollution. These are all examples of design failure and
they all impact negatively on animal health and welfare. Buildings need to be
designed to be cleanable, with available time as a major design factor.
Fig. 3 Field Barn. Edale, Derbyshire. Photo: Andrew Critchlow
The requirement for labour in the form of many persons
spending many hours in livestock buildings is no longer a design requirement. This is progress. But looking back to 150 year old designs we
should not ignore some of the inherent risks to animal health and welfare that
will have changed, and not for the better.
A traditional layout may have 36 cattle in one room, the byre, another
cart shed for calving cows and maybe a sick pen, and then three or four
separate air spaces for various different ages of youngstock. A basic 2020 knowledge of epidemiology will
inform us that this is a dramatically lower risk for spreading disease than the
large, multi-spanned, 5m eaves height, concrete and steel edifice that is
pictured in my inbox. The design issue
is that when livestock buildings are created with cost and not value as a
primary outcome, and the long-term risks are not understood, there will be
failures.
The science is very clear on livestock buildings that are
constantly stocked, and/or contain a mix of ages within the same airspace. The risk of chronic and acute diseases,
particularly enteric and respiratory diseases, is significantly higher than
buildings or spaces within buildings that can be managed on an all-in all-out
basis. And here comes the design punch:
how do we currently design buildings with regard to labour and muck? Most UK livestock farms use tractors designed
for field work to clean out buildings, with machinery that requires high eaves
heights, large areas of concrete, simple pen designs and flat floors, for a
task that may take 20 minutes per pen and happen 6 times per year. In Europe the use of small machinery for
livestock production is common practice, but UK agriculture considers it
‘expensive’. Large area pens will
require rapid turnaround times between batches, which too often equates to
inadequate time for effective hygiene procedures. If we keep putting large numbers of livestock
into unclean facilities, the R number can be expected to rise. A now familiar
story.
The design solutions for modern livestock systems should include
an appreciation of what is needed for sustainable production and to allow
labour to practice good stockmanship, including
the provision of good hygiene.
Providing six smaller pens compared with four bigger ones of the same
total area may cost more to build, but pens that can be cleaned properly will
always make more money than those that cannot.
The Standard Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture (1912) Vol. 3. p21 Edited by Professor Sir P Wright.
With a few exceptions, products will have to undergo two sets of conformity assessments if placed on both the UK and EU markets; however, CE marking will continue to be accepted in the UK until the end of 2021.
Last month, RIDBA attended and presented at an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Working at Height meeting with a focus on working at height in rural environments.
All expressed their desire for change in the industry with regards to training and ensuring only skilled contractors, like RIDBA members, carry out specialist works. The overall consensus was that attitudes to health and safety in the sector are likely to change with a new generation of workers coming through, who will be trained and educated to higher health and safety standards. Minutes from the meeting can be found here.
Due to COVID-19, this year’s RIDBA Industry Day was postponed. However, we are delighted to announce that the Industry Day has been rescheduled!
RIDBA Industry Day 2021 will be held on Thursday 22 April in Abbey Hotel, Malvern, which is an ideal venue to adhere to social distancing requirements. We have a great day lined up, with key industry speakers and topics that matter to your business. Plus, for those that were looking forward to a visit to the fantastic Morgan Motors factory, we are excited to still be able to offer this tour as part of the event. To book, please complete our booking form and return to [email protected]. Find out more here.
There has recently been some updated guidance published on gov.uk regarding CE marking. As members will be aware, changes will include the introduction of the UK Conformity Assessed (UKCA) marking and a system of third-party conformity assessment by UK-recognised approved bodies, in place of current EU system of notified bodies.
To allow businesses time to adjust, CE marked goods in scope of this guidance that meet EU requirements (where these match UK requirements) can continue to be placed on the GB market until 1 January 2022 where EU and UK requirements remain the same. This includes goods which have been assessed by an EU recognised notified body.
These transitional measures will only apply until the 1 January 2022. From this point, the UKCA mark will be required to be displayed on products, where the CE mark is currently used, to show compliance to the UK domestic regime. To ease the burden on businesses, until the 1 January 2023, for most UKCA marked goods, you have the option to affix the UKCA marking on a label affixed to the product or on an accompanying document. The economic operators (whether manufacturer, importer, or distributor) should take reasonable steps to ensure the UKCA marking remains in place. From 1 January 2023, the UKCA marking must, in most cases, be affixed directly to the product. You should start building this into your design process ready for this date.
Businesses are being encouraged now to prepare for the changes to the Construction Products Regulation, and the Government has published detailed guidance, although this does not cover Northern Ireland and further information will be provided for products to be placed on the market there.
NSSS – National Structural Steelwork Specification
The BSCA has recently published the 7th edition of the NSSS. This latest edition has been extensively updated and represents the biggest change since its introduction in 1989. One of the main changes is the inclusion of a new section on intumescent paint systems.
The National Structural Steelwork Specification for Building Construction (NSSS) is primarily a construction (or execution) specification but also acknowledges the common contractual situations where the steelwork contractor designs the connections (and in some cases the members as well) – it includes checklists of information that the contractor needs to carry out design.
The principal topics covered in the NSSS are as follows:
Information required by the Steelwork Contractor
Materials
Information provided by the Steelwork Contractor
Workmanship
Welding
Bolting
Fabrication accuracy
Erection
Erection accuracy
Protective treatment
Quality management.
Following the tragic Grenfell Tower fire and the call from Dame Judith Hackitt for industry not to wait for legislation, the BCSA said it and the wider constructional steelwork community decided to take ownership of the specification, application and inspection of intumescent paint systems.
Section 10 of the NSSS now includes comprehensive information on intumescent paint systems and to improve quality, it encourages the paint systems to be applied in the workshop rather than on-site. Other significant changes include a mandatory requirement for all steelwork contractors to put in place a third-party certified welding quality management system to BS EN ISO 3834.
The main body of the NSSS is limited to Execution Class 2, but this version also contains an Annex of the requirements for Execution Class 3 for static structures and an Annex giving general guidance on Execution Class 3 for buildings subject to fatigue, such as crane supporting structures.
To allow steelwork contractors time to put in place the necessary third-party systems to comply with the Specification it has been decided that the NSSS will not come in to force until 1st January 2021.
Hard copies of the 7th edition of the NSSS, which now includes BCSA member listings, can be obtained from the BCSA Bookshop from Monday 14th September and are priced at £20 for BCSA members and £25 for non-members.
The escalation of the COVID-19 outbreak is having a serious impact on businesses, many of them SME’s. Government is having to work quickly to ensure that businesses across the country are supported, and employees are kept safe. To keep the industry up-to-date, Build UK has created a dedicated page on the coronavirus with all the latest guidance and information on construction-specific issues. You can also contact Build UK with any specific concerns or queries at [email protected].
RIDBA’s CE Marking campaign continues to move forward as new flyers have been developed, which members can now download and send with their quotations to clients. RIDBA has also produced a series of adverts that will be sent to industry press to further promote the campaign and address the issues surrounding non-compliance in the industry.
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