NCE’s Top 10 most read in-depth pieces of 2025 span major UK infrastructure themes, from long-span bridge renewals and high-capacity rail corridors to complex urban tunnelling and flood defence upgrades. Interviews with project directors and design leads examine issues such as whole-life carbon in reinforced concrete, geotechnical risk allocation on large D&B contracts, and digital twins for asset monitoring. For practitioners, the list signals where peers are focusing attention: programme delivery under tight funding, resilience to extreme rainfall, and constructability on constrained brownfield sites.

Early-career civil engineers recognised as Graduates and Apprentices of the Year are calling for project delivery models that combine productivity gains with whole-life carbon reduction and climate resilience. They point to digital design tools and offsite manufacture to cut programme times while enabling low-carbon materials, and stress the need for earlier integration of environmental assessment into concept design. Their comments signal growing pressure on contractors and consultants to embed decarbonisation targets alongside traditional KPIs such as cost, time and asset performance.

The 20th International Conference of the Australian Flexible Pavement Association in Adelaide brought together more than 400 delegates, 50 speakers and 40 exhibitors to tackle emerging technical and delivery challenges in flexible pavements. Sessions focused on future-ready road design, including performance-based asphalt specifications, recycled materials in dense-graded and stone mastic mixes, and data-driven asset management for high-volume freight corridors. For practitioners, the event signalled accelerating adoption of advanced binders, additives and mechanistic-empirical design tools in Australian pavement practice.