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2.3

The average number of sick days taken per person each year due to boozing, according to a survey of 8,400 workers by employment agency Reed. People also spend an average of 2.5 days annually struggling through work with hangovers.

The biggest drinkers seem to be in the North-East and South England, with 17% of employees admitting to pulling booze-related sickies. Those who live around London appear to make a greater effort to crawl into work; only 11% of them said they took ‘morning-after’ days off.

Reed estimates 10 million working days are lost due to people staying at home after a night on the tiles. If you include people who make it in to work slightly worse for wear, the number rises to 29 million.

30

The rise in price in pounds per tonne of steel, which will take effect from 5 October, following on from a £30 per tonne rise at the beginning of August. And Corus has warned a further £50 per tonne hike can be expected in January. Steel section prices have increased by over £200 in the last 12 months.

There are suggestions that clients are pushing to get jobs going before the price rises, as steelwork contractors all report overflowing order books.

The steel and concrete lobbies are locked in battle over the price rises. The steel industry is claiming that rebar price rises make steel a far more economical option than reinforced concrete. And the concrete lobby says its steel counterparts use out-of-date prices for cost comparisons. The Concrete Centre has vowed to counter these figures with statistics of its own.

70

The number of deaths on construction sites in the last year, the same figure as for 2002/03. The most common cause of death was falls from height. The rate of deaths however has declined from 3.8 per 100,000 workers in 2002/03 to 3.5% in 2003/04.

A report from the Work and Pensions Select Committee into the HSE published at the end of July said that it did not believe the HSE stood any realistic chance of meeting its 2004 targets. It recommended the government provide £48m extra funding over the next seven years in order to double the number of inspectors.

Industry figures have called on the government to cough up. Construction Confederation chief executive Stephen Radcliffe said that the HSE needed the resources to police small sites and cowboy builders. At the moment HSE concentrates its efforts on large inner-city sites.

250k

in pounds, The reported damages which Montpellier and subcontractors suffered, mainly due to acts of vandalism by the Animal Liberation Front, which was attempting to prevent subsidiary Walter Lilly from building an £18m research centre for Oxford University.

The intimidation tactics succeeded when Walter Lilly had to withdraw from the site at the end of July. The final straw came when senior directors received letters which threatened to send fabricated details of sex offences to their neighbours.

Walter Lilly supplier RMC, which withdrew from the job at the same time, has suffered attacks at two of its quarries, causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage.

Oxford University has said that it intends to continue with the project, which is due for completion in December 2005. But who would work on a job like that?

30m

Amount in pounds that Cleveland Bridge is claiming from Multiplex in relation to the Wembley stadium job. Cleveland issued a High Court writ against the Australian contractor in August for breach of contract by Multiplex in failing to value works and make payments under a Supplemental Agreement made in June 2004. Multiplex announced it was replacing its steelwork contractor on site with Dutch firm Hollandia at the end of June. Cleveland was to continue to manufacture steel, but has now ceased work on the project all together. Hollandia did take on the 200 steel erectors but made them redundant because of the workers’ demands.

There was more bad publicity for Wembley when a brake failed on a crane, dropping a 25-tonne steel beam. All lifting work was suspended while fitters inspected the site’s 11 cranes.