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.

ORE Catapult has issued an updated cost-reduction framework for floating offshore wind, targeting lower levelised cost of energy by standardising substructure design, mooring systems and dynamic cable configurations. The framework focuses on optimising fabrication and assembly in ports, modularising concrete and steel floaters, and rationalising installation strategies for deep-water sites beyond typical fixed-bottom depths. Developers and designers gain a structured route to compare platform concepts, refine geotechnical and anchoring solutions, and de-risk large-scale deployment in harsher metocean conditions.