Geomechanics.io

Pagabo has opened bidding for its £4.15bn National Framework for Civil Engineering, Infrastructure and Enabling Works 2026, merging its existing civils and infrastructure framework with its demolition and land preparation framework under a single agreement managed with YPO as centralised procurement authority. The closed framework comprises 13 main lots plus regional sub-lots across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with an open procedure aimed at both major contractors and SMEs. Applicable to local authorities, NHS bodies, emergency services, housing and education clients, the framework will cover works from new roads and rail routes to brownfield regeneration and energy supply upgrades, with tenders due by 12 June.

Steelwork assembly has begun on Sheffield Forgemasters’ new open die forging line, including a 13,000-tonne press building beside the Midland Mainline and a 30,000 m² machine shop on Weedon Street, both central to a £1.3bn recapitalisation of the MoD-owned plant. Main delivery partners include McLaughlin & Harvey, Arup, Bond Bryan, Turner & Townsend, JLL, Ipsum and JBA Bentley, with structural frameworks for both buildings due by year-end and cladding to follow before winter. The upgraded facilities are designed to boost nuclear-grade, large-scale forging capacity for UK defence and civil nuclear programmes.

National Highways has appointed WSP as technical partner, supported by Mott MacDonald, Ramboll, Arup and Aecom, to deliver its Water Quality Plan targeting the most polluting road run‑off discharges on the Strategic Road Network by 2030. The programme will design and implement treatment for high‑risk outfalls using nature‑based systems (e.g. swales, wetlands) and mechanical solutions installed within existing highway boundaries, focusing on oils, tyre‑derived suspended solids and brake‑related metals. For designers and geotechnical teams, this signals significant upcoming work on retrofit drainage, attenuation and treatment assets constrained by current carriageway footprints.

Governments are losing roughly one‑third of their infrastructure budgets to waste, with IMF analysis pointing to systematic leakage across project planning, procurement and delivery. The piece argues that building a business case for transparency requires quantifying savings from open tender data, standardised cost benchmarks and digital project controls, rather than treating openness as a compliance burden. For engineers and asset owners, this means embedding transparent cost, schedule and performance metrics into contracts and BIM-based workflows to justify upfront investment in data systems and independent oversight.

Urenco has completed a UK trial to produce Europe’s first batch of LEU+ nuclear fuel, enriched above conventional low-enriched uranium yet still below the 20% U‑235 threshold, for use in existing gigawatt-scale reactors and planned small modular reactors. The higher assay fuel is designed to extend fuel cycle length compared with standard LEU, potentially reducing refuelling outages and spent fuel volumes per megawatt-hour. For civil and nuclear engineers, LEU+ could influence core design margins, outage scheduling, and long-term storage and transport requirements for higher-burnup fuel.

Sisk Infrastructure has installed the main bridge beams over Network Rail’s East Coast Main Line at the York Central regeneration site for Homes England, completing a critical possession-stage lift over one of the UK’s busiest intercity corridors. The operation required detailed coordination with Network Rail to manage overhead line equipment, track access windows and crane positioning within the constrained rail corridor. Completion of the beam installation now fixes the primary span geometry, allowing follow-on works on the bridge deck, approaches and associated highway and utilities infrastructure to proceed on programme.

Sixteen small and medium-sized enterprises have secured a combined £19M of work packages on Sellafield’s £7bn Programme and Project Partners (PPP) framework, facilitated by chartered quantity surveying practice Solomons Europe. The awards open up specialist roles in cost management, commercial support and project controls across long-duration nuclear decommissioning and infrastructure schemes on the Cumbrian site. For contractors, the move signals growing scope for SME participation in complex NEC-based frameworks, with associated demands on nuclear safety culture, assurance processes and long-term resource planning.

Eagle Nuclear Energy has begun comprehensive environmental baseline studies at its Aurora uranium project on the Oregon–Nevada border ahead of a 27,000 ft pre-feasibility drill programme at what it calls the largest conventional measured and indicated uranium deposit in the US. Work covers hydrology, hydrogeology, surface and groundwater quality, flora and fauna, wetlands delineation, geochemistry, meteorology and cultural heritage to feed into impact assessment, mine design optimisation and permitting. The company is also permitting a 10 m meteorological mast for installation by early June to log wind, temperature gradients, humidity, pressure and solar radiation.

Vinci’s UK construction division has acquired Ion Property Services and will merge it with Vinci UK Developments into a single Ion Developments brand, headquartered in the Grade II* listed Port of Liverpool Building. The combined developer is already delivering large urban regeneration schemes in Derby city centre, Chester Northgate 2, the Coventry Civic Centre site and Northwich Weaver Square, and will take forward Ion’s existing portfolio at Borough Yard, Birkenhead, Stafford town centre and Westgate Wakefield. Led by Steve Parry, Rob Mason and Ian Hudson, the new structure is aimed squarely at local authority land and mixed-use regeneration projects.

FLS has secured multiple repeat contracts to supply key technologies for a Banded Haematite Quartzite iron ore beneficiation plant in South Asia, centred on a High-Pressure Grinding Roll described as the largest of its kind. The package also includes nine of the world’s largest stirred media mills, indicating a flowsheet geared to fine grinding of low-grade BHQ ore into premium concentrate. For process engineers, the scale of HPGR and stirred milling points to high throughput, energy-intensive comminution with significant implications for wear materials, water balance and tailings handling.

HTI Group – owner of Leitner and its Agudio Flyingbelt, cableway and ropeway bulk haulage systems – is acquiring a majority stake in South Tyrol-based Seik to expand its materials handling portfolio. The deal consolidates design and supply of suspended conveyor and ropeway solutions for bulk materials and single-load transport under one industrial group, targeting mine sites and quarries with difficult topography or long overland haul distances.

Pressure is mounting on UK infrastructure contractors to deliver a £718bn government pipeline spanning the New Hospital Programme plus major rail, energy and water schemes, where latent design and construction errors can lock in decades of operational risk and cost. The piece argues that current training rarely covers error management, human factors or structured learning from near-misses, leaving site teams reliant on informal workarounds. It calls for formal curricula on error theory, checklists and peer review, embedded from apprenticeships through to CPD for project directors and design leads.

Jackson Civil Engineering has secured a £14M contract to deliver a flood and coastal erosion risk management scheme at Langstone in Havant, south Hampshire, for the Environment Agency and local partners. The FCERM works are expected to include new or raised sea walls and reinforced embankments to protect low-lying residential and transport assets along this exposed section of the Solent coastline. For geotechnical and coastal teams, the project will involve foundation design in soft marine deposits, tidal working constraints, and durability detailing for saline conditions.

Balfour Beatty Vinci will close Saltley Viaduct in Birmingham to all vehicles and pedestrians on Sunday 10 May to start a four-stage demolition programme for a new HS2 structure. The phased removal of the existing viaduct will require staged traffic management on surrounding routes and careful sequencing of works around live rail assets and buried utilities. Contractors and designers will need to manage demolition-induced vibrations, temporary stability of remaining spans and abutments, and potential settlement impacts on adjacent infrastructure.

AtkinsRéalis, Jacobs, Mott MacDonald and Pell Frischmann Consultants have been appointed to Birmingham City Council’s £200M Transportation and Infrastructure Professional Services Framework. The multi-supplier agreement will cover design and advisory work for highways, public transport corridors and associated civil infrastructure across the city. For contractors and consultants, the framework signals a steady pipeline of feasibility, detailed design and asset renewal commissions within the UK’s largest local authority by population.

A forthcoming New Civil Engineer webinar examines how fragmented outputs from BIM authoring tools, common data environments and asset management systems complicate digital handover on major infrastructure schemes. Speakers will explore creating structured asset information models, aligning COBie and ISO 19650 requirements, and managing thousands of tagged objects, inspection records and O&M manuals at project close-out. The session signals growing pressure on designers, contractors and clients to define data schemas, ownership and validation rules early, or risk unusable asset data at commissioning.

Rope-access-trained inspectors are surveying the 30m-high cable-supported roof of London Stadium at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, using industrial abseil techniques to reach truss nodes, tension ring connections and cladding interfaces without full scaffold. The work focuses on close visual inspection of steelwork, fixings and membrane panels, checking for corrosion, fatigue cracking and water ingress paths that could affect long-span structural performance. Findings will inform targeted maintenance and any future strengthening or replacement of roof elements under live-event loading.

A UK Defence Innovation competition for counter‑uncrewed aerial systems (C‑UAS) to protect critical national infrastructure has attracted a high volume of technology proposals from industry. Solutions are expected to cover detection, tracking and defeat of small drones around assets such as substations, bridges, tunnels and water treatment works, where conventional perimeter security is ineffective against low‑altitude incursions. Civil engineers may soon need to integrate radar, RF sensing, optical tracking and electronic countermeasures into new and existing infrastructure designs and operational plans.

Construction in the UK has been formally classified as a “high-risk” sector for modern slavery in a new national report, alongside small cash-based businesses such as vape shops, barbers and hand car washes. The designation points to particular vulnerability in labour-intensive, subcontractor-heavy supply chains on building sites, including temporary works, groundworks and finishing trades where migrant and agency labour are common. Contractors can expect closer scrutiny of right-to-work checks, labour agency practices and tier-2/3 subcontractor oversight on major infrastructure and building projects.

Alemlube is supplying its Dingo series transfer pumps to mine sites to streamline handling of multiple fluids such as diesel, oils and coolants through a single, modular system. The electric and air-operated Dingo units are offered in multiple sizes to match different flow and viscosity requirements, enabling centralised storage and distribution rather than scattered drum pumps. For maintenance teams, the focus is on fast swap-out of pumps and components, reducing fluid cross-contamination risk and cutting unplanned downtime on large mobile fleets.

Jenike & Johanson has launched the second module in its Solids Flow Essentials microlearning series, focused on flow patterns in bins, hoppers and chutes for process and plant engineers. The Flow Patterns module covers mass flow versus funnel flow behaviour, common failure modes such as arching and ratholing, and the impact of wall friction and hopper angle on discharge. The short-format training is aimed at engineers responsible for designing or troubleshooting bulk solids handling systems in mines and processing plants, where poor flow can choke crushers, feeders and transfer points.

A methane and coal dust explosion at the La Ciscuda underground coal mine in Colombia’s central Cundinamarca province has killed nine workers and injured six, only weeks after the national mining agency (ANM) warned of gas accumulation risks at the site. The mine, operated by Carbonera Los Pinos, had been subject to ANM inspection visits focused on methane build-up and dust control, which the agency says can become dangerous if not properly managed. The incident again exposes ventilation, gas monitoring and dust suppression weaknesses at smaller Colombian coal operations, despite the country’s status as a major thermal coal exporter led by Glencore’s Cerrejón mine.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader has ordered an immediate suspension of all activity at GoldQuest Mining’s Romero gold-copper project in the country’s west after thousands marched roughly 20 km through San Juan province to the Sabaneta Dam, a key regional water supply. The project remains in the environmental assessment phase despite exploration concessions dating back to 2005, and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization briefly halted trading in GoldQuest shares after a drop of more than 19%. Protest leaders, including water protection activist Ruben Moreta, vow continued mobilisation over perceived contamination risks to farmland and irrigation.

Ekati diamond mine owner Arctic Canadian Diamond (ACDC) has obtained CCAA creditor protection in British Columbia, with the order extending to parent Burgundy Diamond Mines, after average realised prices collapsed from about $92/ct in early 2024 to as low as $24/ct by December. The remote NWT operation, accessible only by air and winter road and historically employing about 1,000 staff, will continue surface and underground mining while Burgundy seeks a financial and operational restructuring of C$175 million-plus in debt. Rising fuel costs linked to Middle East conflict, lab-grown competition, weaker Chinese demand and US tariffs on natural stones have driven “significant losses” despite cost-cutting and the July shutdown of the Point Lake open pit.