Month in numbers

56

The height in metres of the UK’s tallest sculpture, B of the Bang, officially unveiled on 12 January.

New East Manchester commissioned the £1.42m steel structure from designer Thomas Heatherwick to commemorate the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Its name comes from Linford Christie’s comments that he left the starting blocks on the “B of the Bang”.

There was a scare just one week before unveiling when the tip of one of the spikes dropped off. Welding had been carried out off site, and the 53 other potentially affected tips were swiftly rewelded as a precaution. William Hare was the main contractor on the sculpture, which boasts 180 spikes connecting at a point 22m above the ground.

200

The number of planned or proposed road schemes in the UK, a figure which has prompted the formation of a new road protest group, Road Block. It claims that the government has gone back on promises to reduce road building.

The Friends of the Earth-backed group claimed its first victory last month when two women halted contractor Fitzpatrick’s preliminary work on the Stoke Hammond to Linslade bypass by chaining themselves to an excavator. Local people have also been protesting at the site of the road. Locals maintain that the proposed dual carriageway between Milton Keynes and Aylesbury is designed to provide access for new housing developments and an extension to Luton airport rather than to improve road safety in their community.

Berkshire was the location of some of the fiercest anti-road actions against the Newbury bypass. Friends of the Earth said that veteran campaigners from Newbury were present at this latest protest.

1000

The volume of concrete in cubic metres which could be at risk from concrete cancer after Lafarge employees fiddled alkali test results... for two years.

Concrete with high alkali levels can develop concrete cancer, or Alkali Silica Reaction (ASR). The alkali in the cement reacts with silica in some aggregates, creating cracks in the concrete. This allows water to penetrate and rust the reinforcing bars.

Concrete plants in south west England received over 1m tonnes of cement from Lafarge’s Westbury cement plant, where workers deliberately forged test results to indicate the cement had lower alkali levels. However Lafarge says that only 1,000 cu m of concrete are at risk because at least half of Westbury’s cement is combined with slag or ash which counters ASR and the reaction only occurs with certain aggregates.

75m

The amount in pounds that the DTI is making as a termination payment to the Laser consortium, which was responsible for PFI project the National Physics Laboratory, in Teddington, West London.

The £300m project, signed in 1997, was due to be finished three years ago. So far 360 of the 380 laboratories have been completed. The scheme has suffered from technical problems due to the special air-conditioning required in the labs, some of which had to be rebuilt when they didn’t meet the specification. Laing, which with Serco made up the Laser consortium, announced that it had lost £70m on the project in 2001, just before Ray 0’Rourke bought Laing for £1. The National Physics Laboratory was not included in that deal.

DTI plans to let out the remaining £13m worth of work under competitive tender.

1.98bn

In pounds, the amount of work won in 2004 by top-placed Bovis Lend Lease, according to Building. Laing O’Rourke was second with £1.35bn and Sir Robert McAlpine third.

But what’s this? A league table in Construction News in the same week puts Laing O’Rourke in the top spot with £1.9bn and Bovis Lend Lease second with £1.53m. And both sets of data came from the same source, Emap Glenigan.

A spokesman from the firm explained discrepancies arose because each magazine uses different criteria. So, for example, Building doesn’t include civils jobs.

Building’s top clients for the year are Department of Health, MoD, English Partnerships, Home Office and Tesco. The top QSs are Davis Langdon, Gardiner & Theobald, Cyril Sweett, Currie & Brown and EC Harris.