UK Construction Week Birmingham is featuring a dedicated focus to the sector on its very doorstep - the West Midlands.

Visitors to the NEC will see the West Midlands' finest construction and manufacturing companies, not only exhibiting but hosting networking events, holding demonstrations and staging seminars.

Nathan Garnett, show director commented: "The great thing about the Birmingham show is we have so many incredible businesses and professionals in the West Midlands, that we are able to shine a real spotlight on local authorities in the construction and manufacturing industries."

FinditinBirmingham are one of this year's show partners; an online search engine that connects global organisations to local businesses allowing them to engage with the local supply chain. They hosted two networking events that took place before the doors opened to UKCW Birmingham itself, allowing visitors and exhibitors to meet local contractors and specialists. The first event takes place on today, 05 October in collaboration with Lendlease; a global construction and real estate company. The second event will take place on Thursday, 06 October with West Midlands Housing. Both networking events will be held between 8-10am. Register your interest on the FinditinBirmingham website.

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The Manufacturing Technology Center (MTC), based in Coventry, will be holding live demonstrations of the work it has done with large-scale ground-penetrating radar (GPR). This yellow, wedged shaped object assists with infrastructure asset management and scanning structures such as bridges and rail tunnels to inspect for subsurface defects with the help of the automation of data processing. This aims to improve quality, speed, and safety of inspection which provides greater objective insight into asset conditions and reduces time spent by examiner in hazardous environments.

In the Offsite Alliance Hub, Birmingham Housing Week will be launching the city-wide MOBIE Schools Challenge with TV presenter and architect, George Clarke. To coincide with this, they will be running Hackathon workshops across the day to get their creative thinking started. Professionals and students will work with each group to help them collate and present their ideas in short, group thinking and design workshops. They will be asking the city's young people, as future designers and creators of Birmingham’s next generation of housing, 'What do you want from the future homes and communities in Birmingham?' and exploring a range of topics and questions including:

How can you design homes that are future-proof, flexible and adaptable enough for future changing needs, lifestyles and technologies?

How can you make the homes energy efficient, sustainable, with minimum waste and use of scarce resources?

How can you design for climate change and the problems arising from global warming?

UKCW has also announced an extensive seminar and speaker programme to take place over its six stages. Keynote speakers include Andy Street, Mayor of West Midlands, who is due to take the Main Stage today, 05 October, to discuss The West Midlands and Manchester devolution and rebirth, the devolved future for the respective regions and the impacts on the built environment.

Coventry University will also be in attendance at UKCW Birmingham, offering visitors the chance to try their state-of-the-art training simulator. Here you can experience a virtual reality simulation of a real-life construction site, which can offer a range of scenarios to prepare future construction workers before entering the workforce.