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MI6 floor plans lost by building contractor Floor plans of MI6's central London headquarters were lost by building contractors during a refurbishment. The documents, most of which were recovered inside the building, held sensitive information on the layout, including entry and exit points. Balfour Beatty, the company working on the refurbishment at the headquarters in Vauxhall, is reportedly no longer working on the project. The Foreign Office said it did not comment on intelligence matters. The documents, which went missing a few weeks ago, were produced and owned by Balfour Beatty and designed to be used for the refurbishment. The...

Peak Funding May Have Hit Construction Tech Startups Last year, funding in construction tech startups broke records. And that year may stand alone. Funding in US-based construction tech startups totals just $192.5 million across 40 deals halfway through 2019. Of course, there are caveats: reported data often undercounts seed and early stage rounds. Furthermore, it takes just a couple of big rounds (like Katerra’s $865 million Series D last year) to skew those numbers pretty significantly. Still, $192.5 million across 40 deals is still significantly lower than the $1.274 billion raised by US-based construction startups in the first half of...

Construction for Massive Development Starting Soon in Burlington   The construction of a massive building in Burlington is starting very soon. According to the city’s website, Burlington has approved a 22-storey mixed-use building that will be located at 490-492 Brock Ave. and 1298 Ontario St.  The development, which was proposed by The Molinaro Group, will consist of, according to the project coordinator, Kristen Baugaard, 22-storeys (including a one-storey rooftop amenity area), 160 residential units, 186 square metres of ground-floor retail commercial space, and four levels of underground parking. Vehicle access will be from Ontario Street. So, when will construction for this development commence? As noted on...

Brexit: Construction industry group says ‘no evidence’ Border tech solutions will work According to MPANI the construction materials sector in the North, would suffer immediate disruption to cross-Border trade in a no-deal Brexit scenario. A group, led by Conservative MPs, who want to replace the backstop which prevents the introduction of a hard border post-Brexit, have produced “no evidence” that technological advances can deliver “seamless borders”, according to a leading Northern Ireland industry body. The Mineral Products Association Northern Ireland (MPANI) has warned that a no-deal Brexit would be “catastrophic”. The industry body, which represents firms that directly employ more...

Average construction start value down 70% from peak Vancouver Island has highest average construction start value, Metro has highest total B.C.'s average construction start value for projects over $50 million fell 30.7% to $197 million in 2018 from $284.9 million in 2014, according to data on Business in Vancouver’s list of the biggest B.C. construction starts in 2018 (page 15). However, the five-year analysis understates the volatility of the province’s high-value construction starts. In 2015, average construction start values spiked to $668 million, more than doubling the average value in 2014. The province has been unable to match the 2015...