Asbestos management consultancy Acorn Analytical Services has expanded its contracts team, promoting long-serving staff member David Kelsey to senior contracts manager and elevating Ellis Bastable and Charlie Dalby to contracts managers. Kelsey, one of Acorn’s first full-time employees with nearly 13 years’ service, will oversee the contracts department, manage two contracts managers and ensure nationwide deployment of asbestos analysts. Bastable and Dalby, both former asbestos analysts who gained BOHS P402 surveying qualifications, will now manage client asbestos portfolios, coordinate removal works and arrange analytical support.

A 15‑year review of the Environment Agency’s Thames Estuary 2100 (TE2100) Plan finds sea levels in the estuary are rising faster than earlier design assumptions, putting additional pressure on the 520‑square‑kilometre flood risk management area. The findings are expected to trigger earlier or more extensive upgrades to defences including the Thames Barrier, raised tidal walls and embankments, and secondary barriers on tributaries. For geotechnical and civil engineers, this signals a need to revisit crest levels, overtopping criteria, and foundation performance under higher hydraulic loading over the plan horizon to 2100.

Fourteen illegal chrome miners were found dead and at least eight injured after a cave-in near an abandoned shaft by the Nkaneng informal settlement, close to Marikana in South Africa’s North West province, with the collapse estimated around 21:00 on Monday. Police have intensified action against illegal chrome operations in the province, seizing 20 trucks and 15 excavators over the past two years and arresting survivors on suspicion of illegal mining. The incident underlines ongoing geotechnical and safety risks where informal miners re-enter abandoned gold, platinum and chrome workings without ground support or regulated access control.