Our project at The Mall Ealing is beginning to make its stamp on the Broadway skyline! Working with our innovations partner Intrastack, the 9 storey co-living development being constructed for Urbane London is demonstrating the efficiencies in speed and logistics of this specialist off-site system.

Paul Owen, Claritas Project Manager said, “You couldn’t find a tighter site accessed via a 4.5m gap and flanked on all four sides by occupied buildings and a mainline station. The system has been delivered with ease and we can stack the wall panels for the entire building within the limited space we have. Delivered floor by floor the external panels are craned into position after each concrete pour and the frame is flying up”.

Andy Higson, Business Director at Instrastack commented, “The innovation partnership between Claritas and Intrastack is about finding the best-fit solutions for the client, and the construction project. Through working closely with the Claritas team from early-design stage, we have collaborated, and developed the right solution to address the many challenges of the site and optimised the design to fully-realise the many benefits of this lightweight-construction solution”

The scheme is also up for Best Practice recognition by the Claritas Safety Health and Environment committee. A site that is so tight would struggle to be as tidy with traditional materials, and it would be logistically challenging to deliver and store them. The system contributes to less carbon emissions through fewer materials deliveries and less waste to remove, in turn increasing health and safety.

Photo Credits Diane Aukland / Fotohaus

It was great to come together on Friday for a company-wide briefing held at the Institute of Structural Engineers, followed by Christmas drinks.

The afternoon had a strong focus on health and safety and it was great to hear site managers share experiences and debate important issues.

Jon Wardle, CEO was also delighted to announce that Claritas has achieved continued accreditation across the quality, environmental, health and safety ISO standards. The auditors had commented in their closing meeting that “members of the Claritas team were very passionate about the business and all confirmed the same ethos independently.”

The key message for the future continues in the vein of our overarching objective and culture, “to help transform our industry, breaking free of traditional transactional relationships to create something that works better for everyone”.

Jon commented “There is no denying that there are challenging times ahead across the entire industry, but by pulling together as a team we will succeed.”

Our current project at Aytoun Road, Stockwell involves constructing 33 shared ownership apartments for Network Homes.

Part of our added value delivery for Network Homes has seen Claritas working in collaboration with Network, Lambeth Council and the Construction Youth Trust. Throughout August and September, we supported the Lambeth Made Construction programme through various activities both on and off site, which focused on supporting young people in Lambeth who are classified as NEET with work experience and other employability skills.

Activities included helping the CYT to launch the programme and speaking with the young people about opportunities in construction as well as some work experience activities and visits to site. This included conducting interviews for four of the young people with our MEP partner London MEP, which resulted in one of the participants, Jacob being offered and accepting a four year electrical apprenticeship.

Jo Davis, Customer Relationship Manager at Claritas and our EST & Social Value champion commented “I am grateful to my colleagues that have volunteered their time to support the Lambeth Made Construction programme and to LMEP, it is so pleasing to see this successful outcome. We all wish Jacob the very best as he embarks on apprenticeship.”

We are delighted to announce the promotion of Marc Klus, previously Claritas’ Estimating Manger to the role of Preconstruction Director.

Marc has been an instrumental leader within the preconstruction team since joining Claritas in 2020. With a background in Estimating that spans 15 years Marc has worked across multiple sectors and brings a wealth of experience to the team.
Marc said “its important to ensure we ensure the highest levels of attention to detail during the precon stages giving our customers the confidence of a realistic price and programme and delivery for their project from the outset”.

Jon Wardle, CEO commented “I am pleased to welcome Marc to the Senior Leadership team, his commitment to developing robust relationships with customers and supply chain is conducive to the transparent and positive culture of Claritas and his attention to detail will ensure that we develop our delivery strategy from day one”.

A Swansea Uni Maths and Sports Science Graduate, Marc is a keen Rugby man and enjoys spending time with his wife and young family outside of work with high hopes that both his twin daughters and young son will one day be in the England First 11 !

Delivering social value for our customers and our stakeholders is of great importance to us and we were really pleased to provide a significant contribution in the provision of a new cupboard at The Arc Community Centre, Islington in partnership with the Hyde Group. Claritas sourced and funded the project with DGP Logistics despatching the manpower to complete the work. The cupboard was required as a valuable asset to the community food bank which operates from the centre.

Damien from The Arc said “The work that you guys have done is absolutely vital to the smooth running of the centre.  The cupboards also mean that everything can be safely stashed away and out of sight enabling us to use the room for more community activities and hire the space to generate essential income as well as reducing wastage through lack of suitable storage”.

Claritas continue to work with the Hyde Group and the Hyde Foundation through our involvement with the Hyde Main Contractors framework and, as we deliver 126 new homes for them in Stafford Road Croydon. So far we have created two job vacancies, and we have set targets for local spend as well as training and learning opportunities for a variety of groups within the community. The whole team at Claritas is keen to contribute and colleagues from across the company have pledged volunteering hours to work across a range of community projects.

Claritas is delighted to announce our appointment on the new £15.6bn Residential Delivery & Development Framework with SCF Frameworks. We have secured a place on Lot 2 Larger Value Projects of 65+ units within the sub regions of London and the South East.

Created to support public sector residential construction and development, SCF Residential is a four-year framework available to all public bodies in the South East, London and the South West.

It gives them access to market leading tier one and SME housebuilders and has been designed to be flexible and responsive to industry pressures, including carbon reduction, driving MMC and tackling the ongoing housing crisis.

Claritas CEO, Jon Wardle “This is a fantastic result for Claritas. Having secured a place within the framework amongst some strong competition we are now looking forward to working with SCF and our fellow framework providers in delivering on our promises and driving the #SCFvalues of collaboration and open book two stage tendering culminating in trustworthy, equitable and ethical contract delivery”.

For more information on the new Residential Framework –  www.scfresidential.org.uk

We hope all of our customers and stakeholders are staying safe and well during the Covid 19 crisis. Whilst we cant be ‘together’ at Claritas it has been lovely spending some quality ‘social’ ‘times with our Claritas family as we host various social’s via Microsoft Teams, thanks to our colleague Emma who organises them and always thinks of an interesting topic to get us all having some fun and laughter during these ‘different’ times.

Claritas has been appointed by HGG London Limited as principal contractor to deliver the redevelopment of 134 Old Street in the heart of Shoreditch, East London. The scheme involves the demolition of the existing two storey building and construction of a new seven storey building to provide office use on floors 1-6 with a retail unit at Ground Floor. The site, which is a tight infill site in a busy central London location, will comprise a CLT frame with attractive curtain walling to the front elevation. We are pleased to be working with Mary Duggan Architects (Mary Duggan) and Measur (Brian Woodhouse) to achieve the successful delivery of the project adopting our ‘two-way transparency’ culture. Works start on site in August 2020. The award of this project adds to Claritas’ recent significant wins in the London Commercial Sector