Comment

Editor’s message and May/June 2019 magazine download

With much going on in construction north of the border, the latest issue of the Infrastructure Intelligence print magazine has a distinctly Scottish flavour, says Andy Walker in his latest editor's comment.

There’s a distinctly Scottish flavour to this issue of Infrastructure Intelligence and not before time as there is much going on north of the border that should have a beneficial impact on the construction sector. We take a look at the new Infrastructure Commission for Scotland (p10-11) and look at the nation’s five-year plan just unveiled by the Scottish Futures Trust (p16-17).

As ever, industry issues get an airing with the ongoing costs of Carillion and Interserve profiled (p6-7) and also the rising costs as a result of infrastructure delays (p24-25). As an industry we really need to get better at delivery and Ramboll shows how that can happen with their innovative housing work (p9).

Speaking of housing, we have an interesting piece from David Cowans, chief executive of Places for people on why classing housing as infrastructure can boost delivery (p14-15). Housing is a massive social and political issue and we need more thinking like this to solve the crisis the nation faces.

Elsewhere, we look at London’s new ultra-low emission zone and what it means for the capital (p22-23) and ask whether recent events in Northern Ireland might mean that the construction log jam there is about to be broken (p18).

With our latest roundtable report (p20-21), an interview with the chief executive of the Railway Industry Association (p30-31) and much more, hopefully there’s something to interest all our readers in this latest issue.

Andy Walker is the editor of Infrastructure Intelligence.

Click here to download the May/June edition of Infrastructure Intelligence.

If you would like to contact Andy Walker about this, or any other story, please email awalker@infrastructure-intelligence.com.