New Civil Engineer
19 April 2012
View all stories from this issue.
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ACE engineering excellence awards shortlist revealed
The Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) has revealed the shortlist for its Engineering Excellence Awards. -
Amey’s £2bn Sheffield highways win boosts PFI as funding model
The future of PFI as a method of funding large-scale highways maintenance has been given a boost following the selection of Amey as winner of Sheffield’s mega £2bn scheme last week. -
Armitt in frame for Presidency
The ICE Council last week agreed to elect Olympic Delivery Authority chairman Sir John Armitt as succeeding vice president in 2012, with a view to him becoming ICE President in 2015. -
BAA to sell Edinburgh airport to Gatwick and City owner
Airport operator BAA yesterday announced it had agreed to sell Edinburgh airport to fund manager and infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) for £807.2M. -
Bauer reports rising revenues
Ground engineering contractor and equipment producer Bauer has reported a 5.2% rise in revenues to €1.37bn (£1.12bn) for the last financial year, although net profits were down 16.7% at €34.1M (£27.9M). -
Bridgwater quay wall: Going to the wall
At the end of last year the Somerset town of Bridgwater was thrown into chaos by the sudden collapse of its river wall. Mark Hansford describes the rapid recovery effort and the ensuing complex rebuild. -
Christchurch gets cardboard cathedral
Officials this week approved plans for a transitional “cardboard” structure to replace the earthquake-ruined 131 year old Anglican Cathedral in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. -
Costain progresses preparatory works for A465 on Wales
Contractor Costain is pushing ahead preparatory work on its contract to improve the A465 Heads of the Valleys road in South Wales. -
Coventry Cathedral awaits cathodic protection cash decision
Coventry Cathedral officials were this week anxiously awaiting a decision from conservation body English Heritage about the award of a grant to fund a pilot anti-corrosion project. -
Crossrail plans to transform Tottenham Court Road and West End approved
Westminster City Council has given its approval for the regeneration of Tottenham Court Road and the east end of Oxford Street, including the former Astoria site. -
Crossrail's Connaught tunnel refurbishment surges ahead
Site workers have begun drilling wells at Connaught Tunnel to draw down the water table ahead of works to deepen and widen the 130 year old tunnel in East London, Crossrail announced this week. -
Crossrail's telescopic excavator: Deep behaviour
The UK’s largest telescopic clamshell excavator is poised to start work on Crossrail. Geoff Ashcroft reports. -
Dedicated BIM group for rail set up
A dedicated BIM group for rail clients, consultants and contractors has been set up as an offshoot of the government-backed BIM Task Group -
Embracing machine control for growth
Nick Caulfield explains why he decided to invest in machine control for future growth. -
Energy: Building the plasma cage
Provence in southern France is well known to us Brits as a warm, pleasant land. But part of it will soon get hotter - 10 times hotter than the sun in fact. Mark Hansford reports from Cadarache, where engineers are currently pushing more than a few boundaries in building the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion reactor. -
Fehmarnbelt crossing project hit by one year delay
Construction work on the fixed link under Fehmarnbelt is set to commence about a year later than originally planned – in the middle of 2015 instead of 2014. -
Further delays threaten 8 Storey’s Gate
The refurbishment of the ICE’s 8 Storey’s Gate office could be six weeks late and may push back plans to move into the building to June. -
Government considers backing flood insurance
Ministers are considering an insurance industry proposal to avert a crisis that could leave up to 200,000 households without flooding cover -
Government says industry on track to cut cost of delivering infrastructure
The construction industry is on track to deliver cost savings demanded by government, according to the first annual report of Infrastructure UK’s three year cost review programme. -
Ground Investigation contractors selected for Inveramsay Bridge upgrade
Allied Exploration and Geotechnics have been appointed by Transport Scotland to undertake ground investigations for the upgrade of the Inveramsey Bridge on the A96. -
High Speed 2 case further undermined
Backers of the controversial High Speed 2 (HS2) scheme were dealt a blow this week with news that its economic benefits had been revised down for the second time since January. -
ICE must adapt to remain relevant, says Baveystock
The ICE must “step up to the plate” to set a strategic vision and organisation structure that keeps it relevant in a changing world, ICE director general Nick Baveystock warned Council last week. -
ICE Storeys Gate contractor goes bust
The contractor carrying out the £5.1M refurbishment of the ICE’s new 8 Storeys Gate gate office has gone into administration. -
Land speed pioneer fronts industry event
The Construction Equipment Association (CEA) has announced that the keynote speaker at its ‘Constructing the Future’ conference in May will be Richard Noble, pioneer of the Thrust2 programme that brought the world land speed record back to Britain in the 1980s. -
Letters: The unravelling of HS2 accelerates
High Speed 2I wonder if Antony Oliver’s championing of major civil engineering projects and passion for mega projects in last week’s Comment column is a slightly old-fashioned view of the way that civil engineering should impact on modern society.A recurring theme -
Lorries need to be fitted with technology to prevent ‘blind-spot’ deaths, say engineers
Collision-avoidance technologies which help eliminate cyclist and pedestrian deaths caused by driver ‘blind-spots’ should be made mandatory for all UK buses and lorries by 2015, according to a new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. -
Mott MacDonald wins Indian road scheme
Mott MacDonald has been appointed design consultant by IVRCL Raipur-Bilaspur Tollways for the planned Raipur-Bilaspur national highway 200 in India. -
NCE 19.04.12 Trench Warfare
Rapid reaction and innovative thinking provide key to stabilisation and repair of Bridgwater’s collapsed river wall -
New chief executive announced for construction skills body
The Construction Skills Certificate Scheme (CSCS) has appointed Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering managing director Graham Wren as its new chief executive. -
New Holland launch: Fuel for thought
New engine emission legislation has forced manufacturers to update their bestselling models. But price conscious customers want more than just new engines, as Margo Cole discovers on a visit to New Holland’s Italian production and test facility. -
No.11 Nicoll Highway collapse
The Nicoll Highway collapse in Singapore was possibly the greatest civil engineering disaster of the last decade. -
Ofshore wind energy: Weighty challenge
Engineers are hard at work to ensure UK produced concrete gravity bases are central to the Round 3 offshore wind programme. Declan Lynch and Daniel Fulcher find out the latest developments. -
Olympics organisers reveal likely extent of congestion on Tube and rail network
London 2012 organiser Locog, Transport for London (TfL), Network Rail, train operating companies and the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) have published full and final information on when and where the UK’s Tube and rail networks will be most affected during this summer’s London 2012 Games. -
Piling progress for west London school extension
Work on extending Notting Hill and West Ealing High School is now underway following completion of the foundations work by Westpile. -
Plant giant JCB posts record results with turnover up 37%
UK-based equipment manufacturer JCB today reported record financial results, with a turnover for 2011 of £2.75bn - up 37% on the previous year. -
Research says carbon capture and storage technologies can work
Government plans to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to reduce carbon emissions from coal and gas fired power stations have received a cautious boost after a new report concluded that most of the uncertainties facing these technologies can be resolved. -
Saudi Kingdom Tower to be complete in 63 months
Saudi Arabia’s 1,000m tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, set to become the world’s tallest building, will be completed in 63 months, according to Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) chairman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. -
Scotland's finance secretary welcomes Scottish-Japanese partnership to invest in renewables
Scottish finance secretary John Swinney has welcomed the formation of a Scottish-Japanese partnership to invest in oil and gas and renewables opportunities in Scotland and internationally. -
Sir John Armitt can help the ICE meet future challenges
The election by ICE Council of Sir John Armitt as a succeeding vice president from November and potentially ICE President in 2015, is a hugely significant piece of news. -
UK and US to work together to develop floating wind turbines
Developing floating wind turbines is to be the initial focus of a new agreement between Britain and the United States, it will be announced this week. -
Universities told to teach innovation better
UK universities need to teach their engineering students how to innovate in a way they have not done before if the country is to thrive economically, the Royal Academy of Engineering has warned. -
Volvo breaks ground on new Russian excavator factory
Volvo Construction Equipment announced at Intermat in Paris that it will break ground at the site of it’s new Russian factory today. -
Work halted on ICE's 8 Storeys Gate refurb
The ICE has confirmed that work stopped on the 8 Storeys Gate development on Wednesday following the news that its contractor Killby and Gayford had gone into administration.
