No more dripping water across bathroom floors with Dyson’s new hand wash and dryer innovation.

Dyson unveiled on Monday their new ‘Airblade Tap’, along with two other new products.

The new system uses infrared sensors to determine whether or not you are putting your hands underneath to wash or dry them. Similar products already exist in airports, train stations and restaurants, but with a price tag of £999, you won’t see this new Dyson product in every bathroom.

Find out more information at Wired.co.uk, where they tested the new Dyson Airblade Tap.

Business leaders have revealed their proposed route for a £12bn Crossrail 2 train line spanning London.

The London First business group proposed the line would run from the south-west to the north-east of London

Under the proposals, the line would run from stations in Hertfordshire to parts of Surrey and open in the early 2030s.

In central London, it would pass through Euston, King’s Cross, Angel, Tottenham Court Road and Victoria under London First proposals.

It is hoped the line would relieve the Victoria line and much of the Piccadilly and Northern Tube lines.

Crossrail 2 would be linked with walkways to connect Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras stations rather than building a new station.

London First created a working group in October 2011 to examine the case for the new rail link beneath central London.

Continue reading about the new plans at BBC News.

Find out how this will transform London with Crossrail’s recently released images.

Quarterly independent research reveals changes in recruiter & jobseeker behaviour for Winter 2012-13

Evenbase’s latest Quarterly Recruitment Review reveals:

• The average number of vacancies advertised has risen to 7.8 per business, the highest figure of 2012
• 54% increase in temporary/contract roles advertised since a year ago
• Almost two-thirds of job vacancies are advertised online
• 83% of jobseekers cite job boards as their most considered job search method
• Mobile shift – 76% of jobseekers now own a smartphone (up from 43% in 2010)
• 13% increase in the number of SME businesses (50-249 employees) looking for staff

Global digital recruitment group Evenbase releases its latest Quarterly Recruitment Review (Winter 2012/13), detailing changes in UK business and jobseeker behaviour. Conducted on a quarterly basis by an independent research agency, the latest report is available to download for free now: www.evenbase.com/RecruitmentReviewWinter12

Evenbase’s Winter 2012/13 Quarterly Recruitment Review sees a continued trend in the hiring uplift reported in the Autumn Quarterly Recruitment Review, with the average number of vacancies advertised per business back up to 7.8, which was last seen in Nov 2011 and is the highest figure reported in 2012.

The most recent Recruitment Review saw a 13% surge in temporary/contract vacancies being advertised by businesses with 4.3 temporary/contract vacancies per business; this can be linked with the annual trend of seasonal jobs, but it is still a 54% increase in temporary/contract roles year on year.

Almost two-thirds of all vacancies are now advertised online, which has risen since the autumn to an average of 5.1 online vacancies per employer. However, businesses’ consideration of using newspaper ads has leap-frogged job boards for the first time in 2012. This shift in vacancy advertising is likely to be attributed largely to the 13% increase in the number of SME businesses (50-249 employees) looking for staff as smaller businesses with less resources perhaps prefer to stick to traditional mediums of recruitment advertising and their own personal networks.

To continue reading The Evenbase Quarterly Recruitment Review (Winter 2012/13) and to download now for free visit: www.evenbase.com/RecruitmentReviewWinter12 . The next Quarterly Recruitment Review will be available in March/April 2013.

From the foundations upwards, the whole construction will be erected within three months at a rate of five floors a day.

Work will start at the end of this month and it should all be finished by the end of February.

It is a challenge only China could attempt to take on and it will be built in a city most people will have never heard of - Changsha in Hunan Province.

The building will be called Sky City and its statistics are quite remarkable. It will be 838 metres high, with 220 floors and a construction area of one million square metres.

To achieve that, 200,000 tons of steel will be used.

There will be space for 31,000 people inside, who will be able to move up and down with the help of 104 high speed lifts.

Some 83% of the building will be for residential use, with room for 17,400 people.

It will also contain a hotel with a capacity for 1,000.

There will be schools educating up to 4,600 children and a hospital which will treat 1,400 patients.

Only 3% of the building will be for office use. Any remaining space will be shops and restaurants.

The building will be just a few metres taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai but will be constructed at a fraction of the cost.

The company behind it, Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), specialises in prefabricated modular technology which allows them to cut costs significantly.

The Burj in Dubai cost £9,500 per square metre, whereas Sky City will cost just £950 per square metre.

Some of the same team who built the Burj will work on this new project.

It is not the first seemingly impossible, fast construction project by the company. In January, they built a 30-story hotel in just 15 days and it is still standing.

Any concerns that the speed of construction will seriously jeopardise the safety of Sky City have been refuted by the company.

BSB claim that the building will be state-of-the-art in every respect. It will be resistant to fire for up to 15 minutes and will, they claim, even be able to withstand magnitude nine earthquakes.

The engineering giant is buying Horizon Nuclear Power, which has the rights to build reactors at Wylfa on Anglesey, North Wales, and Oldbury in Gloucestershire, from its German owners E.ON and RWE npower.

In what it described as the start of a 100-year commitment to the UK, Hitachi confirmed that it intends to progress Horizon’s plans to build between two and three new nuclear plants at each site.

The facilities could be feeding electricity into the national grid in the first half of the 2020s and are expected to generate power equivalent to up to 14 million homes over 60 years.

Up to 6,000 jobs are expected to be created during construction at each site, with a further 1,000 permanent jobs at both locations once operational.

Hitachi has also signed supply chain deals with UK engineering firms Rolls-Royce and Babcock International and has pledged to establish a module assembly facility in the UK.

The Horizon venture, which currently employs around 90 people, was set up in 2009 as part of the drive to meet the UK’s carbon reduction goals.

But RWE and E.ON put the business up for sale in March after Germany’s move to abandon nuclear power in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

Since then, doubts have grown about the private sector’s commitment to the UK’s nuclear programme.

Hitachi plans to employ its advanced boiling water technology, which is already in use in four reactors in Japan having been built to time and budget.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey told Sky News the investment was “a huge shot in the arm for the UK economy and a vote of confidence in UK energy policy”.

The Cabinet minister dismissed any concerns over safety, insisting that Britain had the “toughest safety regulatory regime in the world”.

He added that the technology Hitachi was proposing had “a very good track record” and it was different from the reactors used at Fukushima.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Hitachi’s involvement represented a “decades-long, multibillion-pound vote of confidence in the UK”.

Mike Clancy, general secretary-designate of the Prospect union, said: “The Horizon venture is an important milestone in securing future low-carbon energy generation capacity within the UK and its importance to local and national economies cannot be overstated.”

Gary Smith, national officer of the GMB union, added: “This is positive news. However, we should be under no illusions that there are still real concerns with UK energy policy.”

Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint said Hitachi’s decision to buy Horizon was “welcome news” for the nuclear industry, and underscored how important it was that the Government’s reforms of the electricity market provided certainty and confidence for other investors.

Tatsuro Ishizuka, vice president of Hitachi, told a news conference in London that the company would invest billions of pounds in UK nuclear operations, stressing that it has already built nuclear power plants safely, on time and on budget.

He said: “Our aim is to build safe nuclear power stations, on time and on budget, to provide long-term, affordable energy.”

Read the full story at Sky News 

A 550-tonne tunnelling machine called Elizabeth has been lowered into a 40m (131 ft) shaft in east London as part of the £16bn Crossrail project.

The operation required one of Europe’s largest cranes to lift the equivalent of 280 London black cabs. When complete by 2018, the Crossrail line will pass through 37 stations and run 73 miles (118km) from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

If weather conditions are good next week the operation will be repeated at the site adjacent to Canning Town station with Elizabeth’s sister machine Victoria.

Elizabeth will begin tunnelling later this year, travelling under the River Lea towards Canary Wharf. In 2013 the tunnelling will continue towards Whitechapel, Liverpool Street and Farringdon. In all, eight tunnelling machines will construct 10 separate tunnels across 21 km.

Get pictures of ‘Elizabeth’ on the BBC website

With a 1.75 per cent increase in UK employment over the past year compared to the 1.37 per cent growth seen in the US, the UK economy is set to return to growth this week as figures suggest Britain is creating jobs faster than the US.

Whilst employment figures have now risen to 29.59million, the highest we’ve seen since 1971, there are 1.4million people working part-time that are looking for full-time employment.

This much needed growth presents a number of opportunities for recruiters. Here at JustEngineers, we have seen our visitor figures increase by 34 per cent year on year, new registration figures by nearly 50 per cent and the number of clients posting with JustEngineers has grown by 62 per cent.

We are confident this positive trend will continue into 2013 as employment rates continue to rise.

According to the Engineering and Technology Magazine there has been a revival in engineering employment. The Higher Education Careers Services Unit’s (HECSU) What Do Graduates Do? research figures show an increase in employment rates for architecture and building at 65.9 per cent, civil engineering at 62.8 per cent, electrical and electronic engineering at 63.9 per cent and mechanical engineering at 65.6 per cent.

Despite engineering employment being one of the hardest hit industries during the recession, employment rates have increased over the past year and are set to continue, presenting opportunities for both recruiters and candidates.

If you’re looking to advertise your vacancies, or would like to find out how JustEngineers can help you with your recruitment needs contact the team at sales@justengineers.net or call them on 0844 561 9340.

For all our vacancies visit www.justengineers.net

For the full article visit the Mail Online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221193/Britain-creating-jobs-faster-US-soon-exit-longest-double-dip-recession-Second-World-War.html

Read more about engineering employment at: Engineering and Technology Magazine

Find out more about the What Do Graduates Do? report.

Up to 27,000 jobs could be created should plans for the Paramount theme park  in the Swanscombe Peninsula, Kent go ahead.

The ‘Disney-style’ entertainment park will see an investment of £2bn in a bid become one of largest theme parks in the world according to the report below by ThisisMoney.co.uk:

Planned for 2018, a Paramount Pictures-branded resort will be at the heart of a 872 acre site, twice the size of the Olympic Park.

To be built on what is currently a brownfield site in the Swanscombe Peninsula, it would be one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe and among the four largest theme parks anywhere in the world.

It would include a massive indoor water park, as well as theatres, live music venues, attractions, cinemas, restaurants, event space and hotels.

The site is on the doorstep of Ebbsfleet International railway station, which will provide a 17-minute journey time into London, and two hours to Paris.

Tony Sefton, project leader for the development company London Resort Company Holdings (LRCH), said the plans were Britain’s next major regeneration project following the Olympics.

‘We are at the start of a long journey, but have been encouraged by the support and buy-in we have had to date. We are particularly pleased with the appetite we are seeing from investors, who consider this a compelling investment proposition.

‘Over the next 12-18 months we will be progressing the planning application, while embarking on a wide-reaching programme of community consultation, while securing further commercial agreements with third parties. It is geared towards completion and opening in 2018.’

And he told Sky’s Eamonn Holmes: ‘We haven’t seen anything like this in the UK before. Job-wise this is very exciting. The direct jobs in phase one is 27,000 and that will be full-time jobs when we open.

‘We will announce the number of construction jobs shortly.’

Such a huge amount of jobs would be a welcome boost to the UK economy. Recruiter Michael Page this morning reported its UK division suffering with profits down 5 per cent lower as trading conditions remained ‘tough’.

LRCH has signed an agreement with Paramount Licensing Inc, the licensing division of Paramount Pictures, to give exclusive UK licensing for a Paramount entertainment resort at the heart of the site.

LRCH is also in negotiations with a range of major British brands to sign licensing agreements.

The company has also been working closely with Dartford and Gravesham Borough Councils, which have both offered support for the project.

In a joint statement, Jeremy Kite, leader of Dartford Borough Council, and John Burden, leader of Gravesham Borough Council, said: ‘This development represents a tremendous economic growth opportunity for the region.

‘We have been impressed by LRCH’s commitment to integrating the development with the local community, recognising the many economic and social benefits it promises to deliver.’

Read the full article at ThisisMoney.co.uk.

The BBC have issued a report on the current skills shortage within the engineering industry highlighting the need for more UK engineering graduates:

The UK needs to increase by as much as 50% the number of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) graduates it is creating, a report says.

The study, by the Royal Academy of Engineering, says 100,000 Stem graduates are needed a year just to maintain the status quo.

It argues the UK is already slipping down the international innovation league tables.

The UK has dropped to eighth globally in the number of US patents registered.

The report estimates 830,000 graduate-level Stem experts and 450,000 technicians will be needed by 2020.

In the UK some 23,000 engineers are graduating every year. But India is producing eight times as many, and China 20 times as many.

The report warns overall that the current pool of science, technology and engineering experts are already “stretched thin” and ageing rapidly. The median age of chartered engineers rises by 10 years for every 14 that pass.

UK firms are already having to recruit experts from abroad.

The report adds that the requirement for 100,000 Stem graduates per year between 2012 and 2020 will not be met by newly graduating students alone, and calls for Stem experts to be trained through other routes.

“With only circa 90,000 Stem graduates each year (including international students who presently cannot obtain visas to work in the UK after graduation) and knowing from earlier analysis of Hesa [Higher Education Statistics Agency] data that a proportion of Stem graduates choose non science occupations (26% of engineering graduates for example) there are clearly too few UK Stem graduates to meet the need,” it says.

Prof Matthew Harrison, director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering, said the shortage of Stem graduates was getting worse.

“In the last 10 years the general wage premium for graduates has been dropping, but over the same period the graduate premium for engineering has been going up.

“Engineering firms are crying out for engineers. They can’t get the people they need. Although they have been very very vocal about the subject it has not translated into public policy yet.”

A Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesman said it was working closely with industry and continue to look at various ways to support engineering at all levels, including engagement in schools, apprenticeships and postgraduate training.

“We have recently committed £3m to create up to 500 additional aeronautical engineers at masters level over the next three years, co-funded with industry,” he said.

Read the full BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19760351

Read the full report: www.raeng.org.uk/jobsandgrowth

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK unemployment has registered its first fall since last spring.

Read the full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17752753