Geomechanics.io

Kier has secured the £101M construction phase of the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier Scheme, advancing Environment Agency and Somerset Council plans to cut tidal flood risk to Bridgwater and nearby communities. The scheme will deliver a new tidal barrier and associated flood defences on the River Parrett, designed to protect thousands of properties from storm surges and high spring tides. For civil and geotechnical teams, key tasks will include deep foundations in soft alluvial soils, complex cofferdam works, and integration with existing embankments and drainage infrastructure.

WSP has been appointed to Transport for London’s Professional Services Framework to provide programme, project and commercial management support across the capital’s multi-modal network, including Underground, Overground, bus and active travel schemes. The framework will be used to resource complex upgrades such as signalling renewals, station capacity works and major asset maintenance on bridges, tunnels and viaducts. For civil and geotechnical teams, this signals continued demand for integrated design–delivery capability, robust cost control and constructability input on constrained brownfield sites.

Gold climbed 1.2% in early New York trading to move back above $4,200/oz as reports of “encouraging progress” in US‑Iran peace talks in Switzerland eased some inflation fears from the Gulf conflict. Bullion is still down about 20% since the end‑February outbreak, when closure of the Strait of Hormuz drove energy prices higher and pushed markets to price an 89% chance of a December US rate hike via the CME FedWatch Tool. Goldman Sachs has cut its year‑end target to $4,900/oz and Bank of America now sees its $6,000/oz call as unlikely until rate hikes are fully priced out.

Blockade of the main access road to Oyu Tolgoi last week marks the latest escalation in a two‑decade saga around Rio Tinto’s flagship copper‑gold project in Mongolia. Disputes since the early 2000s have centred on investment terms for the multi‑billion‑dollar underground block cave, ownership of the 66% Turquoise Hill stake, and state control over one of the world’s largest known copper resources. Continued unrest around site access and logistics poses direct risk to concentrate haulage, supply deliveries and long‑term expansion planning.

China has placed MP Materials and USA Rare Earth on its export control list, blocking Chinese dual-use goods and technologies from reaching the operators of the Mountain Pass mine in California and USA Rare Earth’s emerging domestic magnet and processing projects. The move follows China’s April 2025 curbs on key rare earth elements and magnets and comes just days after the G7 agreed to cap rare earth imports from any single non-bloc supplier at under 60% by 2030. For project developers, the blacklist tightens constraints on Chinese-origin processing equipment, magnet technology and robotics, increasing pressure to qualify non-Chinese suppliers.

New drilling at Alamos Gold’s Island underground mine in northern Ontario has returned high-grade intercepts, including 5.2 metres at 12.05 g/t gold from 968 metres in hole MX26-031 and 5.6 metres at 8.07 g/t from 928 metres in MX26-035W in the Island West Extension Zone. Additional hits include 5.2 metres at 14.51 g/t from 460 metres and 16.1 metres at 3.95 g/t from 23 metres, within a newly defined ~60,000 m² zone up to 500 metres along strike west of current reserves. Backed by a C$43 million 2026 exploration budget and planned Magino mill capacity doubling by 2028, the Island–Magino district is targeted to deliver about 534,000 oz/year from 2028 and underpin Alamos’ 1 Moz/year production goal by 2030.

Gladiator Metals has raised over C$35 million in a BlackRock-led private placement, issuing 7 million flow-through shares at C$3.87 and 3 million non-flow-through shares at C$2.65, lifting its treasury to about C$50 million and its market capitalisation to C$357.9 million. The funding fully covers the 2026–2027 drilling campaign at the Whitehorse Copper project in Yukon, targeting multiple high-grade prospects across a 35 x 5 km belt. Cowley Park, with more than 300 historical holes and 700 m of defined copper-molybdenum strike, will see drill capacity doubled from three to six rigs by late summer.

China’s lithium carbonate futures on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange have fallen nearly 10% over two sessions, dropping a further 2.4% on Monday to about 157,000 yuan/t, as traders bet on a restart of CATL’s Jianxiawo mine in Jiangxi. Authorities have issued a preliminary, limited land-use assessment for the site, which has been offline since its permit expired in August 2025 and is estimated to supply around 3% of global lithium output. Citigroup notes that while a restart could pressure prices, Q3 battery capacity additions should keep the market tight.

Kazakh steel and mining company Qarmet has installed an almost total underground visibility system at its eight former ArcelorMittal coal mines in Karaganda, combining helmet‑mounted cameras with live location tracking of every miner on a central control‑room schematic. Pre‑shift “health booths” at the portal process about 50 workers per hour, checking blood pressure, pulse, eye fatigue and alcohol, with roughly 1% barred from descending, and all footage stored on 1 TB helmet units and uploaded after each shift. The in‑house system, developed by teams of about 30 per mine, is paired with a privately funded medical centre delivering around 200 check‑ups a day, but raises unresolved questions about consent and long‑term use of pervasive surveillance in a company town setting.

TerraLithium, an Occidental subsidiary, and BHE Renewables have produced lithium chloride from geothermal brines at BHE’s Calipatria geothermal plant in California’s Imperial Valley and converted it to battery-grade lithium carbonate. The partners have also directly converted lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide using a commercial-scale electrolyser at TerraLithium’s Brawley R&D facility in the US’s second-largest geothermal field, validating high-purity output against commercial processing standards. BHE Renewables plans to build, own and operate full-scale lithium production facilities in Imperial County once technical and economic feasibility is proven.

British Columbia gold miner MCC Canadian Gold Ventures has filed a multi‑million‑dollar lawsuit against the province after 2024 Orders in Council under section 7 of the Environment and Land Use Act sterilised its Banks Island mineral claims and banned further exploration. The orders were issued as part of the province’s response to Gitxaala Nation’s legal challenge to online mineral claim grants and the BC Supreme Court ruling that the Mineral Tenure Act regime breached the duty to consult. MCGV, which says it invested millions to restart and clean up a bankrupt gold mine on Banks Island, has received no compensation and is citing parallels with the Carrier Lumber v. British Columbia damages case.

Barminco has secured a 45‑month underground mining services contract worth about A$275 million (US$193 million) from Barrick for the Fourmile gold project in Nevada, with mobilisation scheduled to start in July 2026. The project, 100% owned by Barrick and located adjacent to the high‑grade Goldrush deposit on the Cortez trend, will focus on developing new underground access and ore drives to advance resource definition and early extraction. The deal extends Perenti’s North American footprint and signals continued investment in mechanised underground gold mining in the Carlin‑style systems of Nevada.

WSP is expanding an integrated mining capability in West Africa as regulators and investors tighten requirements on responsible mining, local content and long-term asset performance, with Ghana remaining a core hub due to its mature gold sector and established technical skills base. The consultancy is positioning to bundle mine planning, tailings and water management, environmental and social impact assessment, and resilient power and transport infrastructure design into single project teams across the region. For operators, this signals growing demand for early-stage integration of ESG, geotechnical risk, and infrastructure resilience in feasibility and expansion studies.

Portal cutting at Core Lithium’s BP33 deposit has started the underground decline at the Finniss lithium project in Western Australia, establishing the transition from open pit to long-life underground operations. BP33 is planned as a low-cost underground production base with a mine life exceeding 10 years, supporting spodumene concentrate output from the existing Grants open pit and processing plant near Darwin. The move signals a shift to deeper, higher-grade ore extraction, with geotechnical focus now on decline ground support, water management and long-term stope stability.

Sandvik Mining has launched the DD423iE battery-electric twin-boom development drill, pairing the proven DD423i drilling platform with onboard battery power and electric driveline to cut diesel use and exhaust emissions in underground headings. The unit targets the same 4 x 4 m to 5 x 5 m tunnel profiles as the diesel DD423i, but with claimed productivity gains from automated drilling cycles, i-series control architecture and optimised boom geometry. For mine operators, the key implications are reduced ventilation demand, lower heat load and easier integration into existing Sandvik i-series digital and automation ecosystems.

Sandvik has agreed to acquire Italy-based Diemme Filtration, adding high-performance mining filter presses and dewatering systems as a new Filtration division within its Rock Processing business area. Diemme’s portfolio includes large automated filter presses for tailings and concentrate dewatering, targeting dry-stack tailings and reduced process water consumption in large concentrators. The move gives Sandvik an in-house solution for integrating crushing, screening and filtration flowsheets, with potential implications for tailings storage design and water balance in brownfield and greenfield plants.

Anglo Asian Mining has appointed Worley Europe Limited to deliver full feasibility studies for its Xarxar and Garadag copper-gold projects in Azerbaijan, moving both assets towards potential development decisions. Worley, part of Australia-headquartered Worley Group, will apply its global open-pit and processing-plant design capability to define mine layouts, metallurgical flowsheets and infrastructure requirements. The work is expected to firm up capital and operating cost estimates and clarify options for staged development and shared infrastructure across the two deposits.

Veracio and Bureau Veritas have signed an MoU to roll out Veracio’s advanced geological scanning technologies across Chile, Peru, Argentina and Brazil, with scope to extend into other Latin American markets. The collaboration is expected to pair Veracio’s digital core scanning and downhole sensing tools with Bureau Veritas’ regional laboratory and inspection network to speed up geological data acquisition and QA/QC. For miners, this could tighten drill-to-model cycles, improve orebody characterisation and standardise high-resolution geoscientific datasets across multiple operations.

WT National Director & Infrastructure Lead Sam Mendoza argues that Australia’s transport and civil pipeline is at a crossroads, with cost escalation, labour shortages and procurement risk threatening delivery of multi‑billion‑dollar road and rail programmes. He points to independent commercial advisory, earlier constructability input and more collaborative contract models (such as NEC‑style and alliance frameworks) as critical to keeping major works bankable and buildable. Mendoza also stresses structured mentoring and clearer career pathways to retain young engineers who will manage long‑duration megaprojects over the next 10–20 years.

Aptella’s Infrastructure and Paving Services division is providing intelligent positioning and machine control support for road and airport paving projects across Australia, integrating 3D machine guidance and GNSS-based automation into asphalt pavers, profilers, and graders. The team delivers 24/7 field and remote support for night-shift works in remote corridors, helping contractors maintain tight level tolerances and smoothness specifications on high-volume highways and runways. For civil contractors, the offering reduces rework, survey set-out time, and material overrun on large pavement and resurfacing programmes.

East West Rail Company has launched a route-wide consultation on the final design of the Oxford–Milton Keynes–Bedford–Cambridge line, as head of digital delivery David Lowery pushes a “right first time” approach to strip out avoidable costs before the 2027 development consent order. Lowery is driving federated BIM models, common data environments and 4D construction sequencing to standardise design across multiple stations, overbridges and earthworks packages. The strategy targets early clash detection, reduced rework on complex ground interfaces and tighter cost control across dispersed design-and-build contractors.

Community ownership of renewable energy is at risk of stalling in the UK, with a government committee warning that current grid access rules and financing conditions mean national targets for locally owned solar, onshore wind and small hydro schemes will not be met. MPs pointed to long distribution network connection queues and limited access to low-cost capital as key barriers for parish- and co‑operative-led projects typically sized in the tens of kilowatts to a few megawatts. For civil and electrical engineers, this signals continued uncertainty for small-scale grid connection design, land agreements and long-term O&M planning on community sites.

RMT members at Birmingham-based Heavy Haul Rail Ltd will strike for 48 hours from Thursday 25 June after the freight operator refused to rule out compulsory redundancies in a major restructuring programme. The dispute affects heavy freight services used for bulk movements such as aggregates, construction materials and other rail-served loads into key Midlands terminals. Civil and rail contractors relying on just-in-time deliveries by Heavy Haul Rail should expect disruption to possession logistics, material supply chains and site sequencing over the strike period.

Decarbonising the cement sector hinges on cutting process emissions from limestone calcination and fuel combustion in high-temperature kilns, which together make cement one of construction’s largest embodied carbon sources. The piece centres on how robust carbon accounting frameworks, including project-level whole-life carbon assessments and product-level Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), can expose the relative impacts of clinker content, alternative fuels and SCMs such as fly ash or GGBS. For designers and contractors, consistent accounting is critical to comparing low-clinker cements, specifying lower-carbon mixes and evidencing compliance with client net zero targets.