Geomechanics.io

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has pledged to reinstate the cancelled HS2 Phase 2 leg between Birmingham and Manchester if he becomes prime minister, reviving a high-speed corridor originally designed for 360km/h operation and released capacity on the West Coast Main Line. The commitment would reopen questions on safeguarding of the former HS2 route, reactivation of major structures such as the planned Crewe hub and Manchester Piccadilly underground station box, and integration with Northern Powerhouse Rail and existing classic-compatible rolling stock strategies.

A National Precast Concrete Association Australia initiative has created an Australian-first, precast-specific Certificate III pathway for manufacturing workers, with South Australia the first state to adopt it. The qualification targets skills such as mould preparation, reinforcement fixing, concrete mix control and dimensional tolerances for factory-cast elements like bridge beams, culverts and wall panels. By formalising these competencies, producers gain a clearer framework for QA, safer lifting and handling practices, and more consistent compliance with AS 3850 and related precast installation standards.

Bitumen and fuel supply disruptions are prompting the Australian Flexible Pavement Association (AfPA) to coordinate public and private stakeholders to keep road construction and maintenance programmes operating. Australia’s historically narrow, locally tailored bitumen specifications are under review, with AfPA exploring broader performance‑based grades and alternative supply chains to reduce vulnerability to refinery closures and import constraints. Any shift in binder specifications will have direct implications for mix design, pavement performance modelling and quality control on both state highway and local council networks.

GMI Construction Group has broken ground on a 282,000 sq ft logistics and manufacturing facility expanding Cummins’ Darlington power systems campus onto a 5.38-hectare site at Ingenium Parc. The building will connect to existing engine manufacturing, assembly and testing operations and includes internal automated storage, ancillary office space and a large service yard with HGV circulation, dock levellers, dedicated lorry parking and more than 230 staff car spaces. Designed to operate either as an integrated extension or standalone unit, the scheme uses multi-facing brickwork, aluminium curtain wall glazing and composite cladding, with new access from Salters Lane and a landscaped biodiversity enhancement zone.

Approval has been granted for 236 new homes at Crescent Salford, designed by Buttress Architects for ECF, the partnership of Homes England, Legal & General and Muse. The residential phase forms part of the wider Crescent Salford regeneration being delivered with Salford City Council and the University of Salford, backed by Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Good Growth Fund. For civil and geotechnical teams, the scheme signals continued medium‑density urban housing demand on brownfield river‑adjacent land, with associated ground remediation, drainage and utilities coordination requirements.

Work has started on a £13.1m WB Property Group and Citizen scheme to deliver 47 affordable homes on a long-vacant brownfield site on Hagley Road, Edgbaston, comprising 37 flats and 10 rent-to-buy houses. Five flats will be for social rent, supported by the £40m West Midlands Social Housing Accelerator Fund launched by mayor Richard Parker in autumn 2023. The design incorporates living roofs on the apartment blocks, solar panels on townhouses, new tree planting and dedicated pedestrian routes, signalling higher environmental performance expectations for urban infill housing.

Murphy has built a carbon negative car park at its One Murphy Hub in Golborne using a new asphalt mix containing ACLA, a pyrolysed waste-biomass material supplied by Huyton Asphalt in collaboration with Tarmac and Low Carbon Materials. ACLA uses timber offcuts and surplus forestry products treated through pyrolysis to lock in carbon, with each tonne of ACLA permanently removing about 800kg CO₂e; since its March 2024 launch it has already accounted for roughly 820,000kg CO₂e removed. For civil and highways schemes, the project shows carbon-negative surfacing is now deployable at depot and car park scale using existing asphalt supply chains.

WSP has appointed chartered civil and structural engineer Ruth Bailey as deputy chief operating officer for the UK and Ireland, bringing more than 20 years’ international experience across full project lifecycles from design delivery to large-scale operational leadership at AtkinsRéalis. Bailey will focus on “operational excellence” across WSP’s UK & Ireland business, tightening project execution and business operations to better support multidisciplinary delivery teams. For contractors and consultants, the move signals WSP’s intent to systemise high-performance project controls and governance as its regional workload expands.

Addison Hunt has appointed chartered quantity surveyor and project manager Daniel Garfoot as director of its Lincoln office, six months after opening the branch and only weeks after hiring senior quantity surveyor Steve Fleming. The Loughborough and Lincoln-based consultancy now employs 13 staff and is coming off its strongest first quarter on record, with a significant local project pipeline across Lincolnshire and the Midlands. Garfoot, with over 25 years’ experience in the Lincolnshire market, will work alongside directors Chris Hunt and Simon Collin to lead the next phase of regional expansion.

Ramboll’s DESNZ-commissioned study on undergrounding high-voltage transmission lines finds that cable ploughing, horizontal directional drilling and microtunnelling (pipe jacking) can approach the costs of conventional cut-and-cover over 20–50 km routes. Cable ploughing, already used in Wales by Aneurin Thomas Plant with Foeck equipment in sensitive environments, could cut total project costs by 20–40%, with civil works alone reduced by up to 66–72%. The report points to further savings from emerging technologies, including graphene-enhanced conductors and improved converter station design.

Hampshire County Council has launched its Gen5 Consult – Transport, Highways & Infrastructure Consultancy Framework, establishing a pre-approved panel of suppliers under standardised NEC-based contract terms for road, bridge and drainage projects. The framework is expected to cover multi-year design and advisory commissions for highways maintenance, junction upgrades and active travel schemes across the county’s 5,500km road network. For consultants and contractors, early inclusion on Gen5 streamlines procurement for feasibility, detailed design and construction support, particularly for repeat geotechnical and pavement engineering work.

Northumbrian Water is investing £4M in Northumberland to install a new 6.6km potable water main to reinforce its existing distribution network and reduce outage risk. The scheme will create additional connectivity between key service reservoirs and trunk mains, providing alternative supply routes during maintenance or bursts. Designers and contractors will need to manage long linear works, multiple road and utility crossings, and pressure management to integrate the new main without adversely affecting existing network hydraulics.

Delivering the annual Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park requires engineers to turn highly experimental, one-off architectural concepts into buildable, demountable structures within a few months, often using unconventional geometries and materials. Recent pavilions have used complex steel space frames, CNC-cut timber shells and fibre-reinforced polymer elements, all designed for rapid off-site fabrication, minimal foundations and tight tolerances on a small urban site. For practitioners, the programme acts as a live testbed for digital design-to-fabrication workflows, temporary works strategies and performance of novel materials at full scale.

Kier has secured a two-year extension on South West Water’s £140M Network Services Alliance contract, covering maintenance and upgrade works across the utility’s full operational region. The framework typically includes repair and replacement of trunk and distribution mains, pressure management assets and associated civils on live networks, requiring tight outage windows and complex traffic management. For contractors and suppliers, the deal signals continued demand for trenching, no-dig rehabilitation, pipeline condition assessment and rapid reinstatement materials in the South West water infrastructure market.

PfH Scotland has launched a £300M, four-year framework to procure civil engineering, consultancy, specialist surveys, low‑carbon technologies and major retrofit works for public sector decarbonisation programmes. The framework is structured into multiple lots covering fabric upgrades, M&E decarbonisation (including heat pumps, solar PV and battery storage), and whole‑building retrofit, with call‑off contracts available to councils, housing associations and other public bodies across Scotland. Contractors will need capability in PAS 2035/2038‑aligned retrofit design, complex occupied‑building phasing and performance monitoring to compete effectively.

Thames Water is investing more than £20M to upgrade ageing potable water infrastructure in Woodley, Berkshire, as part of what it calls its biggest network modernisation in 150 years. Works are expected to focus on replacing critical trunk mains and local distribution pipes, refurbishing valves and service connections, and improving resilience against leakage and low-pressure events. For civil and geotechnical contractors, the programme signals multi-year demand for trenching, pipe-laying, and streetworks in constrained urban corridors with tight traffic management and groundwater control requirements.

The New South Wales Government has allocated an extra $190 million in its state budget to upgrade Windsor Road at Rouse Hill, a key Western Sydney arterial currently carrying more than 30,000 motorists per day. The funding targets capacity and safety improvements on this constrained corridor, which links rapidly densifying residential areas to major centres such as Norwest and Parramatta. For civil and pavement engineers, the scale of spend signals upcoming design and construction packages involving lane additions, intersection upgrades and associated drainage and utility relocations.

Work has started on a 67-home affordable housing scheme on a 2.23-acre site in Sunbury-on-Thames, delivered by Chartway Partnerships Group in partnership with Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTVH). The scheme will provide a mix of one to four-bedroom properties and forms part of MTVH’s programme to build around 1,000 new homes a year, adding to its existing stock of 57,000 homes for more than 120,000 residents. For contractors and consultants, the project signals continuing pipeline demand for medium-density residential schemes across Surrey and the wider South East.

Temporary works for the 7m-deep, triangular basement at 30 Marsh Wall in Canary Wharf are being delivered using Groundforce Shorco modular hydraulic props, supporting a secant piled wall and capping beam installed by Murphy Group on a highly confined site. Phase 1 uses five MP250 props up to 18.4m long, including 813mm-diameter extension tubes and remote load monitoring on the longest members, plus MP150 knee braces, all stiffness-matched to a Plaxis 3D model to meet tight deflection limits. Phase 2 adds four 6.3m-long MP375 raking props at 45°, each rated to 375 tonnes and fixed into 1,200mm-deep stub columns in the slab and capping beam, enabling progressive removal of flying shores as the concrete core and slabs advance.

Graham has broken ground on a £76.8m redevelopment of a Milton Keynes market site into 115 new homes for Milton Keynes City Council and developer Town, procured via Pagabo’s Major Works Framework. The scheme converts a brownfield urban plot, implying significant ground remediation, buried services management and tight logistics around an active city-centre environment. Contractors and consultants can expect framework-driven standardisation of specifications and procurement, with early contractor involvement likely influencing foundation solutions and utility diversions.

Donaldson Timber Systems has appointed James Lund-Lack, current chair of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) for Bristol and South West, as regional and quality manager to tighten process control across its timber frame operations. With over 15 years’ senior management experience, including as managing director of iHus Annexe, he brings a background in governance, legal compliance and sustainable performance for a CIOB membership of more than 6,200. He will coordinate estimating, design, procurement, manufacturing and project delivery teams, with a core remit to strengthen quality management systems and continuous improvement.

Kubota’s new U145 reduced-tailswing excavator is entering service with Park Cliffe Farm Ltd, a small Cumbrian plant business that already runs an 8.5‑tonne KX085‑5, a KX080 and a U18‑5, all supplied by dealer P.V. Dobson. The 14–15.2‑tonne U145, specified with a two-piece boom, Engcon tilt-rotator and twin proportional auxiliary circuits, will work with grabs, shears, grapples and buckets to maximise utilisation on larger projects. Powered by a 76.4kW Stage V engine, it offers three operating modes plus Boom Down Energy Saving, Auto Idle and Auto Shut Down for fuel-efficient site work.

South West Water has extended Kier’s Network Services Alliance contract by two years, worth about £140m, to continue reactive and planned maintenance, leakage activity, network reliability schemes, metering and developer services across its network. Over the past year Kier has delivered more than 25,000 repair and maintenance jobs, including over 18,000 leak repairs and 32,000 metering optant and maintenance jobs, with over 97% of priority jobs attended within the two-hour target and average peak response around one hour. The deal secures workload into AMP8 and reinforces Kier’s water portfolio alongside Anglian Water, Severn Trent, Southern Water, Thames Water, United Utilities and Yorkshire Water.

Tower Hamlets Council has appointed Guildmore Group to deliver the next phase of the St George’s Leisure Centre redevelopment, covering demolition, site preparation and detailed design ahead of main construction. The new BREEAM Excellent-targeted facility will include a 25-metre pool, learner pool, splash pad, multi-court sports hall, fitness suite with women-only area and multiple studios. The scheme also adds 30 council-owned homes, including three fully accessible units, with demolition set for autumn 2026, construction from early 2027 and completion expected in 2029.