Day: 20 May 2023

Low carbon concrete to become standard on all Laing O’Rourke UK projects

Stuart Mitchell

Laing O’Rourke has announced it is mandating the switch to low carbon concrete on all of its new UK projects. The exclusive use of low carbon concrete from 1 April this year will accelerate the company’s progress towards its net zero targets. The change will be introduced with immediate effect and applies to all new projects that begin main construction on or after 1 April 2023. It will result in a significant reduction in the company’s scope 3 carbon emissions. Following a long-term research programme co-funded by Laing O’Rourke and…

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Smith Mordak announced as new Chief Executive of UKGBC

Stuart Mitchell

The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) welcomes industry trailblazer, Smith Mordak, into the Leadership role as it continues to drive ambitious transformation across the sector. The Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the appointment of Smith Mordak as the incoming Chief Executive of UKGBC.  Smith will take on the role on 1 June 2023, with a handover from Julie Hirigoyen, who will be standing down after over eight years at the helm. Over six months, the Board of Trustees conducted a rigorous and extensive search process to find the…

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PRCA & CIPR endorse Standards Committee recommendations on APPGs for enhanced transparency and accountability

Stuart Mitchell

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the PRCA has welcomed a new report recommending significant changes to the rules on All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs). ‘All-Party Parliamentary Groups: final proposals’ is the eighth report on the subject from the Committee on Standards and makes a series of recommendations including that no APPG secretariat should be funded by a foreign government. As part of their inquiry, the Committee took oral evidence from the CIPR. Earlier this year the CIPR wrote to the speakers of both Houses about the value of…

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People Like Us highlights ‘autocorrect bias’ as it launches national campaign to correct pay gap disparities

Stuart Mitchell

Not-for-profit People Like Us is highlighting autocorrect failures, often leading to misidentification and a sense of exclusion for individuals with diverse names. Their latest campaign taps into this insight to help underline the pay gap between ethnicities. Their national ‘Autocorrected Pay Gap’ billboard campaign went live UK wide on April 4th, and uses real autocorrect examples to highlight that subconscious bias in favour of British-heritage names affects everything from autocorrect to your pay packet. In 2022, People Like Us research showed workers from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minority ethnic…

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IPA Council split after deepfake debate on threat of AI to adland

Stuart Mitchell

Agency leaders are split on whether AI is a threat to the advertising business. This is the conclusion of the recent IPA Council debate on the subject, in which the arguments for and against the motion were presented via AI-created and deepfake deployed versions of former IPA President Julian Douglas and IPA Director General Paul Bainsfair. It was decided by just one vote that AI does not spell trouble for advertising agencies. The films were created by Morten Legarth, Creative Director at VCCP, and generated by AI – the scripts…

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