Rethinking wastewater for homes that cannot connect to the public sewer is pushing UK engineers towards on-plot and small-cluster solutions such as packaged treatment plants and advanced septic systems with tertiary filtration. Designers are weighing infiltration fields, reed beds and pumped rising mains against tighter Environment Agency discharge consents and limited garden footprints on dense housing sites. For geotechnical and civil teams, this means more site-specific percolation testing, higher loadings on shallow soakaways, and closer coordination of drainage layouts with foundations and groundwater protection zones.

Restoration of the Lichfield and Hatherton canals will require jacked culverts to be installed beneath the A38 and an active railway, reinstating historic waterway alignments severed by past road and rail schemes. Engineers must design low-cover, large-diameter culvert barrels capable of carrying canal navigation loads while maintaining motorway and rail traffic, likely using long-distance pipe jacking from constrained launch shafts. The works will demand careful settlement control, continuous monitoring of track and pavement, and robust groundwater management to protect both existing infrastructure and canal water levels.

BGS will lead a three-year programme to remap seabed geology across the UK Continental Shelf, generating new high-resolution datasets and interpretative reports for offshore energy and infrastructure projects. The work will refine stratigraphy, sediment thickness and seabed geomorphology, improving ground model confidence for fixed and floating wind foundations, subsea cables and pipelines. Developers and designers will gain more consistent geotechnical baseline information for site selection, routeing and preliminary design, potentially reducing investigation redundancy and contingency allowances.