Geomechanics.io

Watkin Jones has agreed a second development partnership with Latium Enterprises to deliver an 11-storey, 294-room hotel on a former brownfield site on Worple Road in central Wimbledon, targeting BREEAM Excellent. The scheme, due for completion in summer 2028, is expected to generate £40m in revenue for Watkin Jones and follows a previous joint project on New Kent Road announced in January 2025. For engineers, the project signals continued high-density, mixed-use style hotel development on constrained urban plots with strong sustainability credentials.

Kier has secured a £120m main works contract from the Government Property Agency to deliver a new Darlington Economic Campus hub on Brunswick Street, designed to accommodate more than 1,600 civil servants from HM Treasury, ONS and DCMS by early 2028. Early ground remediation, including removal of legacy fuel tanks and thick concrete slabs, started in September to de-risk foundations and substructure in the constrained town centre site. The superstructure will use extensive offsite prefabrication, with core risers and pre-cast concrete façade panels manufactured offsite to simplify logistics and programme control.

Demolition of the 130-metre-long Clifton Bridge carrying the West Coast Main Line over the six-lane M6 near Penrith was completed in a 55-hour closure using some of the UK’s largest excavators, allowing the motorway to reopen 70 minutes ahead of schedule. The £60m Network Rail–Skanska scheme retained the existing support structures to receive a 4,200-tonne composite steel-and-concrete replacement bridge, to be installed during a further 57-hour closure from 9–12 January 2026. Overall, nearly £200m of West Coast Main Line works proceeded over the festive period, including a £26m track renewal between Northampton and Milton Keynes.

Volumetric modular builder Reds10 reported marginal growth for the year to 31 March 2025, with revenue up 1.5% to £144.7m and pre-tax profit essentially flat at £7.06m, but remains debt free with £20m cash and a secured pipeline exceeding £350m. Chairman Paul Ruddick is targeting £500m turnover within a few years, leveraging positions on the Defence Infrastructure Organisation SLA alliance, the London Construction Programme education framework, and the NHS SBS Modular Buildings 3 framework. Reds10 operates five factories totalling 300,000 sq ft in Driffield and is pushing AI-enabled industrialisation of modular delivery, including a standardised Hospital 2.0 in-patient bedroom prototype.

The sale of Henry Boot Construction Limited to PWS Construction Limited, a vehicle owned by managing director Lee Powell and commercial director Chris Weathers, completed on 31 December 2025 for an initial £4.0m funded via a vendor loan note from Henry Boot plc. Additional deferred consideration will depend on future trading performance, shifting risk and upside to the management team rather than the listed parent. The business will now operate as HBC Construction Group, with continuity of leadership likely to stabilise existing UK building and infrastructure frameworks and supply-chain relationships.

Mark Reynolds, chair of Mace and former industry-side chair of the Construction Leadership Council, Roni Savage, founder and chief executive of geotechnical and environmental consultancy Jomas Associates, and Andrew McNaughton, executive director for infrastructure projects at AWE and former leader on HS1, London 2012 and Heathrow T5, have all been made CBEs in the 2026 New Year honours. Additional CBEs go to architecture journalist Paul Finch and MHCLG director Catherine Francis, while OBEs include Hywel Davies for building safety and standards and David McDonald for historic building conservation. MBEs span rail engineer Andrew Windass of AGH Engineering, sustainable engineering lead Ruth Shilston of Mott MacDonald, and Concrete Canvas co-founders William Crawford and Peter Brewin for engineering materials innovation.

McLaughlin & Harvey has secured a £210m contract to build a 30,000 m² machine shop for Sheffield Forgemasters on a 16-acre brownfield site at Weedon Street, adjacent to the existing Brightside Lane works. Advanced works have already installed more than 4,000 piles, capping beams, pile caps, and site-wide drainage and storm-water attenuation tanks, with structural steel erection scheduled to start in January 2026. The facility will house 24 new machines, including some of the world’s largest vertical turning lathes, and will sit alongside Vinci’s £138m open-die forging line on the North Brightside Lane site.

Modular building manufacturer Thurston Group has been bought out of administration in a same-day pre-pack sale to GCH Corporation, the private industrial group led by former Tomkins chief Greg Hutchings and CEO Cassie Hutchings. The Wakefield-headquartered firm, founded in 1970, runs three UK manufacturing sites producing modular and offsite units for healthcare, education, commercial and industrial projects, and reported £47m turnover and £4.1m profit to 1 November 2024. The deal secures 275 jobs and signals continued capacity for UK volumetric and temporary accommodation supply.

Kevitsa’s nickel-copper open pit in Finnish Lapland is subjecting Robit down-the-hole (DTH) hammers to extremely abrasive, high-strength host rock, pushing bit wear and hammer fatigue close to design limits. Robit has been trialling heavy-duty DTH configurations with modified carbide button profiles and optimised air pressure settings to maintain penetration rates and hole straightness for production drilling. The work is feeding into revised hammer life predictions and bit selection guidelines for hard, abrasive sulphide orebodies with similar geomechanical conditions.

Demolition of a major West Coast Main Line rail bridge over the M6 near Penrith was completed within a 55-hour full motorway closure, clearing the span and piers above live carriageways under tightly controlled possession. Network Rail’s team used high-reach excavators and staged deck removal to avoid damage to the motorway pavement and central reserve, with debris processing kept within the closed section. The work enables installation of a replacement bridge next weekend, with geometry and clearances to current rail and motorway standards.

Breakthrough of the 1.5 km Mountain Tunnel‑5 (MT‑5) in Maharashtra’s Palghar district marks a key advance on India’s Mumbai–Ahmedabad high‑speed rail corridor, designed for 320 km/h “bullet train” operation. Excavated through mixed hard rock in hilly terrain, MT‑5 is one of three mountain tunnels on the alignment and required sequential excavation with controlled blasting and continuous geotechnical monitoring. The completion reduces a major schedule risk on the corridor and locks in critical design assumptions on rock mass behaviour, groundwater inflows and lining performance.

An illegal artisanal mine shaft collapse in Monapo district, Nampula province, killed at least four people and injured 12 on Wednesday evening, after unsupported underground workings failed. Local authorities reported that informal miners were operating without engineered ground support, geotechnical mapping or ventilation, in a narrow, hand-dug shaft typical of unregulated gold and gemstone pits in northern Mozambique. The incident reinforces the high collapse risk in shallow, weathered profiles where excavation proceeds without slope stability assessment, support design or basic monitoring.

Allison Transmission has completed its US$2.7 billion acquisition of Dana Incorporated’s Off-Highway Drive & Motion Systems business, consolidating axles, drivelines and advanced propulsion systems for mining and construction equipment under one supplier. The deal folds Dana’s off-highway product lines, including heavy-duty drive and motion systems for rigid dump trucks and large wheel loaders, into Allison’s existing transmission and hybrid/electric portfolio. For mine operators and OEMs, this signals tighter integration between transmissions, drivetrains and electrified propulsion packages for high-tonnage haulage and loading fleets.

Ivanhoe Mines has started copper anode production at the Kamoa-Kakula direct-to-blister smelter in the DRC, a 500,000 tpa facility targeting 99.7%-pure anodes and an overall copper recovery of 98.5%, with first output achieved on 29 December, about five weeks after heat-up. The smelter is being ramped to handle concentrates from the Phase 1–3 concentrators, with 2026 mine output guided at 380,000–420,000 tonnes of copper and on-site concentrate inventories cut from 37,000 to about 17,000 tonnes. Stage 2 dewatering of the earthquake-flooded Kakula mine is complete, selective mining has restarted, and Stage 3 pump-station recommissioning is planned through Q2 2026 without constraining production.

Western aerospace manufacturers are forecast to need 1.6 million tonnes of titanium by 2044, yet the US has no domestic sponge production since the Henderson, Nevada plant closed in 2020 and now relies on imports from Russia- and China-dominated supply chains, where China’s share of titanium metals has surged from 40% in 2019 to over 75% in 2025. Project Blue’s Nils Backeberg notes US ilmenite and rutile mining is largely tied to TiO₂ pigment, not aerospace-grade metal, making new melt and sponge capacity critical. Timet is responding with an $868 million, 500,000 sq ft “Project Aero” titanium melt/rolling facility in North Carolina (target 2027), a new microgrid-powered melt plant in West Virginia, and an 8,500 t/y electron-beam ingot expansion in Pennsylvania, signalling tighter qualification and sourcing pressures for defence and aviation programmes.

Mulberry Industries has signed a non-binding offtake MoU with Ramaco Resources for customised rare earth oxide blends from the Brook mine in Wyoming, billed as the United States’ first new rare earth and critical mineral mine in more than 70 years and sourced from coal and carbonaceous ore. Ramaco has begun full-scale mining and is building a pilot processing plant to supply oxides including samarium, NdPr, yttrium, gallium and Dy/Tb on a non-exclusive basis. Mulberry will use the domestic feed to supplement its 10-year stockpile for NdFeB, SmCo and AlNiCo magnet production at its Georgia plant for defence, aerospace, automotive and robotics customers.

Tapojärvi has restarted as main mining contractor at Sotkamo Silver’s underground silver mine in Finland, resuming a role it previously held from 2018 to 2023 under a new agreement signed in June 2025. The contract covers full-scale production mining services, including drilling, blasting, loading and haulage in a familiar orebody and infrastructure, allowing rapid ramp-up using existing site knowledge and established operating procedures. For geotechnical and production engineers, continuity in contractor, ground control methods and equipment fleet should reduce interface risk and support stable output planning.

STRACON has secured an integrated engineering, construction, financing and long-term operations and maintenance contract for the Pérez Caldera Tailings Dam at Anglo American Sur’s Los Bronces copper operation in Chile’s Lo Barnechea district. The scope combines dam design and build with funding and multi-year O&M, signalling a bundled delivery model for critical tailings infrastructure rather than separate EPC and operator contracts. For geotechnical and tailings engineers, this points to growing demand for contractors capable of lifecycle stewardship under Chile’s stringent post-Brumadinho regulatory environment.

Senior leadership changes in UK infrastructure this month include new appointments at Kier, Costain and the Sizewell C nuclear project, signalling continued boardroom churn despite a seasonal slowdown. Moves at Kier and Costain affect major highways and rail frameworks, where both contractors hold multi‑year NEC contracts with National Highways and Network Rail worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Governance and delivery capability at Sizewell C are also in focus as the project advances enabling works for the twin EPR units and associated marine and civils packages.

Rainfall-triggered rockfall on Highway 18 in San Bernardino County has blocked lanes and damaged barriers along a steep cut slope, following weeks of intense winter storms that saturated highly fractured granitic and metamorphic rock. Caltrans geotechnical crews report multiple failures from tension cracks and oversteepened slopes above the roadway, with debris reaching the carriageway and impacting existing rockfall fences. Engineers are now assessing options including expanded rock bolting, additional draped mesh, improved surface and subsurface drainage, and revised slope scaling protocols ahead of further atmospheric river events.

Metso has booked the third tranche of orders for JSC Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex’s copper smelter project in Uzbekistan, following equipment and project services contracts announced on 9 August 2024. The first two tranches, totalling €146 million, were booked in Q4 2024, with the latest booking covering additional core process equipment and associated services for the greenfield smelter complex. The staged order intake signals a multi-phase build-out where process design, commissioning support and long-lead items will be critical for throughput, energy performance and sulphur capture compliance.

Sofi Filtration has opened a new Sofi Filtration Test Center in Izmir, Türkiye, to run commercial testing and piloting of its filtration technology with local mining customers. The facility, established with local partner Ecoline Group, is aimed at on-site evaluation of mine water and process streams under Turkish operating conditions. For engineers, this signals easier access to pilot-scale trials and performance data without shipping samples abroad, potentially shortening design cycles for dewatering and water-reuse projects in the region.

Metso will supply several Nordberg MP800 high-capacity cone crushers to Grupo Mexico’s La Caridad copper mine concentrator in Nacozari, Sonora, as part of a plant capacity upgrade. The MP800 units, typically used for secondary and tertiary crushing in large copper concentrators, will be integrated into existing circuits to handle higher throughputs without major footprint changes. For plant and process engineers, the move signals continued reliance on large, fixed crushing assets rather than smaller, modular units for brownfield debottlenecking.

Grangex AB has signed a strategic commercial agreement with Anglo American to support the restart of the Sydvaranger magnetite iron ore mine at Kirkenes in northern Norway. The plan is to produce about 3.5 Mt/y of 70% Fe direct reduction, ultra-high-grade magnetite concentrate, targeting DR pellet and green steel value chains. For process engineers and mine planners, the high-grade DR specification points to tight control of impurity levels and beneficiation performance, with logistics routed through the existing ice-free Barents Sea port infrastructure.