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Civic Engineers has acquired Edinburgh-based Quattro Consult Limited (including Stuart McTaggart Limited), adding 15 structural and civil engineers and technicians and deepening its presence in Scotland’s residential, hotel, industrial/logistics and heritage sectors. The deal is Civic’s third since 2024, following the purchases of planning consultant New Practice and building services firm Watt Energy & Consulting Engineers, signalling a push towards integrated, design-led delivery. Quattro’s existing client base, including Artisan, GSS Developments and Buccleuch Property, gives Civic an immediate pipeline and stronger local footing in Edinburgh.

Around 100 Wolffkran tower crane operators, averaging nearly £66,000 a year with top earners just under £110,000, have begun intermittent strike action across major UK projects including the Grenfell Tower deconstruction, Cambridge Science Park and the new ECMWF headquarters in Berkshire. Operators, whose par rates have risen 38.3% over 10 years but been frozen for the past three, have rejected the latest pay offer and will select strike days fortnightly to maximise disruption. Wolffkran, which has seen crane utilisation fall 26% and hire fleet drop about 40% since 2016, blames Unite’s “inflexibility” for the dispute.

A sole-trader roofer, Daniel Jenner trading as Jenner Roofing & Building Services, has received an eight‑month suspended sentence, 280 hours’ unpaid work and £500 costs after a subcontractor fell approximately 4 m through a rooflight on an industrial estate in High Wycombe on 12 August 2023. The worker, operating alone on gutter and drain cleaning, stepped onto a fragile rooflight beside unguarded roof edges and suffered life‑changing injuries including skull, cheekbone, leg and wrist fractures. HSE found no edge protection, no fragile‑roof controls and no fall‑prevention or mitigation systems, leading to a guilty plea under Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

Costain has secured a £100m, five-year contract under National Highways’ Regional Delivery Partnership to design and build a new M5 junction 22A in Somerset between Burnham-On-Sea and Bridgwater. The junction, with north-facing slip roads, will connect directly to the planned Gravity Smart Campus and Agratas’ £4bn EV battery gigafactory, expected to be the UK’s largest. WSP will act as design partner, with the scheme intended to relieve congestion on the M5 south of the Huntspill river and upgrade strategic access for heavy industrial traffic.

A major landslide in Pasir Langu village, West Bandung, West Java has left at least 17 people confirmed dead and dozens missing, triggering large-scale search and recovery operations using excavators, drones and K9 units on steep, rain-saturated slopes. Continuous heavy rainfall and highly weathered volcanic soils are complicating access to buried houses and farm structures, with rescuers reporting repeated minor slope failures and debris up to roof level. Authorities are assessing the stability of adjacent hillsides and considering temporary evacuation zones and traffic restrictions on nearby rural roads.

Costain has secured a £100M, five-year design-and-build contract for a new junction on the M5 near Bridgwater, Somerset, to provide direct access to a planned gigafactory site. The scheme will require complex tie-ins to live motorway carriageways and associated slip roads, with staging and traffic management critical on this heavily trafficked strategic corridor. For geotechnical and civils teams, early ground investigation, settlement control around existing pavements, and drainage upgrades to motorway standards will be key risk drivers.

A £260M programme is under way to modernise the Victorian Vyrnwy Aqueduct, a 110km gravity-fed trunk main supplying drinking water to around 1M people in north west England. United Utilities and its delivery partners are refurbishing and relining multiple cast iron and masonry tunnel sections, adding new access shafts and isolation valves to improve inspection, resilience and water quality control. Works are being sequenced to maintain supply while upgrading ageing assets to current pressure, leakage and microbiological performance standards.

Titan Mining has begun producing natural flake graphite concentrate at its fully permitted 1,200 t/y Kilbourne pilot plant, integrated within the Empire State Mine complex in St. Lawrence County, New York. The company plans to scale capacity to about 40,000 t/y, which it says could supply roughly 50% of current US graphite demand, supported by a proposed US Export-Import Bank loan facility of up to $120 million for project build-out. Start-up coincides with a new White House Executive Order invoking Section 232 on processed critical minerals, including natural graphite, tightening the policy focus on domestic supply.

Yancoal has set a new 2025 production record, lifting coal sales and pushing its cash balance above $2 billion as it heads into 2026. The company’s latest quarterly results show stronger output across its Australian thermal and metallurgical coal operations, with higher realised prices and disciplined unit costs driving the cash build. For mine planners and contractors, the numbers signal continued demand for overburden removal, dragline and truck–shovel fleets, and potential capital spend on brownfield capacity rather than greenfield developments.

Core Lithium has reported a substantial ore reserve increase at its Finniss lithium project in the December 2025 quarter, materially extending mine life and supporting higher spodumene concentrate output from the Grants open pit and BP33 underground deposits. The updated reserve, derived from infill drilling and revised pit and stope designs, is based on a conventional dense media separation plant near Darwin Port, with trucking distances kept short to reduce logistics costs. For geotechnical and mine planners, the larger reserve base supports longer-term pit slope optimisation, underground sequencing, and potential plant debottlenecking studies.

Michelin has introduced the MICHELIN Xtra Power L5** 26.5 R25, a new OTR tyre engineered for the latest high-powered mine and quarry wheel loaders operating in extreme loading and mucking conditions. The L5** profile and 26.5 R25 size target severe-duty fronts on large loaders, where sidewall damage, rock cuts and heat build-up typically limit tyre life. Michelin is positioning the design to combine higher robustness and productivity with improved operator comfort, signalling incremental gains in tyre performance for hard-rock loading fleets.

NHL has completed and delivered the first three commercial “oil-to-electric” conversions of its 55 t class TR60 mining dump trucks at its Baotou plant in Inner Mongolia, shifting the model from diesel to battery-electric drive. The TR60 retrofit package replaces the diesel powertrain with a high-capacity traction battery system and electric drive components while retaining the original chassis and payload class. For mine operators, the upgrade route offers a lower-capex path to electrification, reduced diesel logistics, and compatibility with existing TR60 fleets and maintenance regimes.

Epiroc reports that exploration was again one of its fastest-growing business lines in 2025, with President and CEO Helena Hedblom linking the uptick to a broader market push for new orebody discovery alongside automation, electrification and digitalisation. The company is leveraging its integrated exploration portfolio – from surface and underground drill rigs to rock drilling tools and digital data solutions – to capture this demand. For mine planners and geotechnical teams, the trend signals sustained investment in early-stage drilling campaigns and associated data quality, core handling and resource-definition workflows.

Industry leaders in Roads & Infrastructure Magazine’s “Roads Review: Looking Forward” say optimism for 2026 is driven less by mega-projects and more by a cultural shift towards valuing the people who keep pavements, bridges and drainage assets operating. David Lightfoot, QLD Delivery Coordinator at RoadAid, points to stronger, more capable maintenance teams and a deeper appreciation of frontline crews managing resurfacing, pavement repairs and traffic control under live loads. For practitioners, this signals continued investment in workforce capability, retention and collaborative delivery models alongside traditional capital works.

MPB Structures has begun Phase 2 civils on the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension of the West Midlands Metro under a £37M contract covering the full civil engineering package. Works will include formation of trackbed, structures and associated utilities for the light rail corridor, building on the partially completed Phase 1 alignment. Contractors and designers will be watching how MPB sequences earthworks, drainage and structural interfaces to minimise disruption on a constrained brownfield route through the Black Country.

The UK Government’s December announcement of the “biggest ever boost” to local roads funding gives highways authorities a rare multi‑year uplift after a decade of short, stop‑start settlements. With budgets now stretching into 2026, councils can bundle resurfacing, drainage renewal and junction safety schemes into larger, multi‑year contracts, cutting unit costs on asphalt, traffic management and site mobilisation. For geotechnical and pavement engineers, the shift enables more whole‑life asset management, earlier intervention on failing subgrades and better planning of coring, condition surveys and design work.

Rail services between Teignmouth and Dawlish Warren have restarted after Network Rail engineers removed debris from the coastal tracks caused by a sea wall collapse during Storm Ingrid. The failure occurred on the exposed Dawlish–Teignmouth frontage, a critical single coastal rail corridor where wave loading and overtopping have previously driven major resilience works. Engineers will now need to reassess wall stability, drainage and scour protection along this reach, with likely implications for design freeboard, armour detail and inspection regimes under more frequent extreme storm events.

Yorkshire Highways Alliance has opened tenders for a £37.4M multi-supplier Specialist Surface Treatment Works framework covering member councils’ road networks across the region. The framework will bundle programmes such as surface dressing, micro-asphalt and other thin surfacing to extend pavement life and defer full-depth reconstruction on both urban and rural carriageways. Contractors will need proven capability in high-output treatment trains, traffic management on live highways and quality control of skid resistance and texture depth to secure places on the panel.

A proposed amendment to the Railways Bill that would have required Great British Railways to commit to a rolling programme of mainline electrification was rejected by the House of Commons Bill committee. Ministers argued that mandating continuous overhead line installation in primary legislation is “not the right way”, favouring case‑by‑case schemes instead. The decision prolongs uncertainty for track designers, bridge clearance modellers and traction power planners seeking long‑term programmes for 25kV AC upgrades and associated civil works.

North Sea energy ministers from the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and six other European states have signed a joint declaration in Hamburg to deliver 100GW of offshore wind capacity and expand cross‑border electricity interconnectors. The agreement centres on large-scale co‑ordination of seabed planning, grid integration and shared offshore hubs in the North Sea basin. For civil and marine contractors, this signals a sustained pipeline of foundations, subsea cables and converter platforms in increasingly deeper, harsher offshore conditions.

A £2.4bn reduction in the Department for Transport’s capital spending line between the 2021 Spending Review and the Autumn Budget is being attributed by the Government to “accounting changes” rather than cuts to planned schemes. The shift appears in Treasury tables covering multi‑year allocations for rail enhancements, major road upgrades and local transport settlements, raising concern among project sponsors over how much funding is actually available in cash terms. For civil contractors and consultants, the uncertainty complicates pipeline planning, framework bidding and resourcing for long‑lead schemes.

Terrain Tamer is accelerating its global expansion from established branches in New Zealand, Fiji and France into high-growth mining hubs in southern Africa, supplying heavy-duty 4x4 driveline, suspension and filtration components for remote haul roads and exploration tracks. The company is targeting underground and open-pit fleets using Toyota LandCruisers and similar light vehicles, focusing on extended-life leaf springs, upgraded wheel bearings and reinforced differential parts designed for high dust loads and corrugated laterite surfaces. For mine operators, the move broadens options for reducing unplanned LV downtime and standardising parts across multi-country operations.

Belt support bars from Flexco have been installed at a high-throughput aggregate operation to control persistent conveyor spillage that was causing safety hazards and unplanned clean-up stoppages. The low-friction bars sit directly under the loading zone to maintain belt profile and seal integrity with existing skirting, reducing fugitive material at transfer points and limiting damage to idlers and belt edges. Operators report fewer shutdowns for manual clean-up and improved housekeeping around the conveyor structure, with knock-on benefits for inspection access and component life.

WA Mining Conference and Exhibition will return to the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre on 16–17 September 2026 as Western Australia’s flagship event for mining and resources. Organised by Prime Creative Media and led by show director Rebecca Todesco, the two-day programme will again combine a technical conference with a trade exhibition focused on equipment, automation, processing and decarbonisation solutions. Mining engineers, geotechs and operations managers can expect concentrated access to OEMs, technology vendors and service providers active across WA’s iron ore, gold, lithium and critical minerals sectors.