A Summer of Milestones: Q3 Newsletter 2026

Hello from all at Rodgers Leask and welcome to our Q3 newsletter– the best place to find a summary of the projects, events and networking that has kept us busy in recent months.

As always, don’t forget, we’re also interested in hearing what you are working on and if we can support you. To get in touch with one of our team, email us at rlladmin@rodgersleask.co.uk or call 01332 285000.

To stay up to date with our latest news and project updates, make sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

Behind the scenes

We’re thrilled to start this edition by celebrating some award-winning work. Sable House won Best Individual Home at the LABC East Midlands Awards, which is fantastic recognition for a project that brought together design, innovation and technical excellence across every stage of delivery.

Our civil and structural engineering involvement covered a complete surface water and foul drainage design, incorporating sustainable infrastructure and tailored attenuation solutions. It also included the full structural design, load analysis and connection detailing for the steel frame, along with pad and trench-fill foundations optimised for local ground bearing capacities. Our masonry detailing covered sizing, lateral restraint specifications and movement design to integrate seamlessly with the main frame.

Delivering projects such as this takes an extraordinary team effort from early planning through to completion, and it was great to work with Allen Joyce Architects to make this possible.

Our networking calendar was as busy as ever this quarter, starting with a day at the St Leger Festival at Doncaster Racecourse. A big thank you to our guests and our co-hosts at nineteen47 for making it such an enjoyable event. There were great conversations throughout the day, and special mention must go to the tipster who helped a few of the team back some winners for a change!

We also enjoyed an evening at the T20 Vitality Blast game in Derby, where the Derbyshire Falcons narrowly lost to Lancashire Lightning. We were joined by guests Les Needham, Jonathan Morgan, Paul Hallam, David Gardner and Jason Mound for the Marketing Derby Summer BBQ event in the marquee, and it was a great evening of sport and catching up with partners.

Our latest Rodgers Leask and Banner Jones Solicitors Property and Construction Netclimbing event also took place this quarter. It’s always enjoyable seeing our industry peers come together in a relaxed setting, and we were definitely ready for the post-climb sausage rolls! Our next bouldering event will be Friday 20th November – keep an eye out on LinkedIn for details on how to sign up soon.

Unlucky for some, but being one of 13 was a reason to celebrate in Q3 as this highlights how many promotions were made across the business. In recognition of their hard work, the following promotions were confirmed:

• Andy Jackson – Associate
• Amelia Daly – Business Administrator
• Ben Dorrington – Senior Project Engineer
• Chris Wilson – Associate
• Edward Hobson – Senior Project Engineer
• Elliot Goodey – Project Engineer
• Emily Rafferty – Project Engineer
• Finley Preston – Graduate Engineer
• Lee Cutts – IT & Information Security Director
• Majid Ahmed – Associate
• Matthew Boston – Project Engineer
• Robert Kemm – Project Engineer
• Tom Holmes – Associate

Industry insights

We’ve reached a major milestone on Ashfield District Council’s £20 million Automated Distribution and Manufacturing Centre (ADMC) at Ashfield Automation Park in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, with steel erection now underway. Our civils, geo-environmental, transport planning and structures teams have all collaborated on the project with Lindum Group.

Once complete, the 3,500m² centre will help businesses embrace automation, robotics and advanced manufacturing while supporting skills development, innovation and high-value job creation across the East Midlands.

Here is how multi-disciplinary engineering brought this state-of-the-art facility to life:

• Civils: Delivered master planning, LTN 1/20 compliant S278/S38 junction upgrades, designed above-ground SuDS, and secured S104/S98 agreements to save costs on a pumping station;
• Geo-environmental: Managed ground risk across historic landfill areas, completed comprehensive intrusive testing, and authored an Earthworks Specification and Materials Management Plan (MMP) to maximize on-site soil re-use;
• Transport Planning: Handled full scoping, TRICS trip modelling, swept path analysis, Stage 1 Road Safety Audits, and a sustainable Employment Travel Plan to ensure safe and efficient network access;
• Structures: Collaborated with Lindum, Maber Architects and the fabricator to design a new steel frame to house the research facility. This was designed on pad foundations with ground bearing slabs at ground floor and composite metal decks at high level floors, while future proofing through the inclusion of a crane support structure.

It’s a successful example of how integrated engineering strategies keep complex developments moving forward safely, sustainably, and on schedule.

Engineering complex schemes into reality begins long before the first pile or rigid inclusion is driven into the ground, as demonstrated at Avonmouth Unit 26. For this impressive 215,000 sq ft unit for Indurent, our team delivered comprehensive civil, structural, and geotechnical design services, supporting Barnwood Limited in bringing this high-specification vision to life.
 
Designing a modern industrial facility to achieve BREEAM Excellent under a strict, embodied carbon management plan is a challenge in itself, and severe ground and hydrological constraints made the engineering puzzle even more interesting.

• Ground conditions: The site is heavily constrained by deep tidal flat deposits prone to significant settlement and also sits in Flood Zones 2 and 3;
• Drainage and biodiversity: Our civil engineering design extended and linked the existing rhine network to new attenuation systems, carefully balancing capacity while enhancing the local water vole habitat;
• Settlement control: We designed a ground improvement strategy where external areas were surcharged while the building footprint was left low. On completion, the surplus material from the external areas was used to bring the footprint up to level – reducing surplus soils;
• Piling: The superstructure and floor slab are supported by over 2,500 piles. We specified variable pile sizing across the footprint to maximize structural efficiency, while reducing unnecessary embodied carbon;
• Early-stage accuracy: The final subcontractor designs for the steelwork and floor slab closely matched our original tender designs, a testament to the accuracy of our early-stage engineering.

Our geo-environmental team joined the Handforth Garden Village project in Cheshire early on to assist with the pre-planning process. Their input began with a review of planning applications and a comprehensive gap analysis of extensive historical third-party reporting. This allowed them to design a ground investigation to fill the gaps in the previous datasets, and they worked with the client and their incumbent multidisciplinary team to produce a comprehensive Addendum Environmental Statement.

More recently, the team has been attending bi-weekly project meetings to offer ongoing advice and help guide the project through an updated planning approval process. They are also assisting the client with regulatory approval for the proposed reuse of site-won materials, including former MOD Made Ground, greenfield land, and historical landfill material.

Work is progressing well on the partial demolition and full refurbishment of a 37,000 sq ft unit at Barton Business Park in Eccles. We are working on the project with GV&Co on behalf of Mileway, alongside contractor Bansco. The structural adaptation is now complete, and work is underway on the attenuation tank and new service yard, meaning the project is on target to complete by its November 2026 target.

In the community

Our transport planning team supported the Derby Theatre expansion through the preparation of a Transport Statement, submitted alongside the planning application. The expansion forms part of phase one of the ‘New Horizons’ project and will provide a new accessible studio theatre, a new learning space and a research hub.

Our report presented the findings from a review of the potential traffic and transport implications associated with the extension, with a key focus on demonstrating how servicing arrangements would continue to operate. We’re pleased to see that the scheme has been granted planning permission and look forward to seeing this development commence on site.

Some of our Nottingham team spent an ESG day volunteering at FareShare Midlands. FareShare sources food directly from supermarkets and suppliers, then delivers it in more manageable sizes to schools, charities and foodbanks. The team’s tasks included bagging pasta, stripping cabbages and sorting carrots. Through the course of the day, our team’s efforts helped prepare more than 3,000 meals for the local community.

We also hosted a Women in Property South Wales event at Glan Llyn in Newport, together with Indurent and Glencar. Aimee Meredith-Smith gave a short presentation on the history of the site’s development and then walked through some of the key areas of interest. It was a brilliant session with plenty of interesting discussions, thanks to the scale of the site, its long history and attendees with incredible local knowledge.

Thank you to Carys Allen, Jamie Payne, Danielle Aberg, Alan Archer and Doug Higson for your support.