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NexGen Energy will begin construction this summer on the C$2.2 billion Rook I uranium mine in Saskatchewan’s southwest Athabasca Basin, after securing Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approval for its environmental assessment and construction licence. The Arrow deposit hosts 4.57 million tonnes of probable reserves grading 2.37% U3O8, with feasibility work indicating output of almost 30 million lb. U3O8 per year over the first half of an 11-year mine life, making it the largest planned uranium producer in North America. At a US$95/lb uranium price, Rook I carries an NPV8 of C$6.32 billion and a 45% IRR, with a four-year build expected.

Vizsla Silver has confirmed two more deaths among the 10 workers kidnapped from its Panuco silver-gold project near Concordia, Sinaloa, in late January, bringing the death toll to seven as Mexican authorities continue search and investigation efforts amid cartel-related violence about 50 km east of Mazatlán. The company is reviewing and tightening on-site security protocols in coordination with local authorities, directly affecting risk planning for future underground and surface operations at Panuco, which targets first production in 2027. Vizsla’s Toronto-listed shares dropped as much as 4.6% to C$5.39 before recovering to C$5.51, leaving its market capitalisation around C$1.9 billion.

A £15.2m remodelling of Colchester’s St Botolph’s Circus has been awarded to Jackson Civil Engineering, with main construction scheduled from April 2026 to autumn 2027. The scheme removes existing pedestrian underpasses on Southway and installs new at-grade crossing points to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety and connectivity into the city centre. For designers and contractors, the works will involve complex traffic management and staged demolition/reconstruction in a constrained urban gateway.

Morgan Sindall Construction has begun a £13m expansion of Kingsbrook School in Aylesbury, adding a 2,300 m², three-storey block to increase capacity from 1,080 to around 1,440 pupils by moving from six to eight forms of entry. The scheme delivers 20 classrooms, new science labs, food preparation rooms, enlarged SEN provision and additional sixth form study and social space, supporting growth from the surrounding Kingsbrook housing development. A traditional steel frame with precast floors is being used for rapid erection, with segregated worksites and a dedicated access tunnel to maintain safe pupil routes to sports facilities.

Waverley Borough Council has approved a revised £36m budget, including an extra £4.9m, for Willmott Dixon to deliver a new Passivhaus‑certified leisure centre in Cranleigh by winter 2027. Designed to replace the 1969, high‑energy facility, the building is expected to use about 60% less energy per square metre and cut operational carbon emissions by roughly 75%. The design includes upgraded air‑handling and latest‑generation pool microfiltration, with most cost escalation attributed to rising materials and services prices despite prior inflation allowances.

HBC Construction (formerly Henry Boot) has become the first major contractor to join MukAway, a digital spoil-management platform that matches sites with surplus soil to projects needing fill. The app, already used by major housebuilders including Vistry, Barratt, Bellway and Keepmoat, operates on a low subscription model to broker soil movements and cut waste to landfill. HBC managing director Lee Powell expects the platform to reduce muck-away costs and enable direct collaboration between contractors and housebuilders on bulk earthworks.

Taylor Wimpey’s 2025 pre-tax profit fell more than 50% to £146.5m despite a 13% revenue rise to £3,845m, as it booked £243.8m of exceptional costs including a £225.8m cladding fire safety provision and an £18m Competition & Markets Authority settlement over cartel investigations. The cladding provision directly impacts remediation budgets on legacy high-rise schemes, tying up capital that could otherwise support new housing delivery and land acquisition. The 2026 order book slipped to £2,182m or 7,678 homes by 1 March, down from £2,283m and 8,097 homes a year earlier, although spring sales are reported as improving.

UK construction output contracted faster in February as the S&P Global UK Construction PMI fell to 44.5 from January’s 46.4, marking 14 consecutive months below the 50.0 threshold, with residential work weakest at an index of 37.0 and civil engineering at 41.0. New orders have declined every month since January 2025, yet 42% of firms still expect higher output over the next year, citing forthcoming infrastructure and energy projects. Contractors report sharper input cost inflation for concrete, copper, insulation and steel, even as material lead times have shortened for seven straight months.

Construction of the £8.4m Hethel spine road has started in South Norfolk, with Jackson Civil Engineering moving from preliminary works into main construction, including a new roundabout giving direct access to an expanded employment zone beside the Lotus Cars factory. The scheme will unlock 20 hectares of development land owned by Hethel Enterprises, allocated in the Greater Norwich Local Development Plan for engineering and technology businesses. Delivered jointly by South Norfolk Council and Norfolk County Council, the road is intended to support growth of the Hethel Engineering Centre and co-located start-ups.

Student licences for PLAXIS and GeoStudio now apply visible watermarks to outputs, with PLAXIS marking all plots and reports and GeoStudio watermarking only exported graphics, not on-screen views. The watermark text typically includes “Student Version” or similar, cannot be removed or hidden, and persists in printed or PDF deliverables, making results unsuitable for formal design submissions, commercial reports, or regulatory approvals. Educators and students are advised to use these licences strictly for teaching, coursework, and non-commercial research, switching to full licences for any professional geotechnical design work.

Maptek has acquired PETRA in full, increasing its stake from 25% to 100% and bringing PETRA’s orebody learning and data fusion technology fully in‑house. The deal consolidates PETRA’s AI‑driven orebody intelligence tools with Maptek’s existing mine planning and design platforms such as Vulcan and Evolution, aiming to link block models, drill‑and‑blast, and production data in a single decision‑support workflow. For geologists and mining engineers, this signals tighter integration of real‑time data analytics with long‑term resource and scheduling models.

Overland Conveyor Company has returned to private ownership effective 12 February 2026, led by long-term employee and now shareholder-president Paul Ormsbee as it nears 30 years in the conveyor design and software market. The move separates OCC from its former corporate parent and positions its niche tools for complex overland conveyor analysis and optimisation, such as dynamic modelling and belt capacity studies, under tighter specialist control. For mine planners and materials handling engineers, this signals continuity of OCC’s technical direction with potentially faster decision-making on product development and support.

Rio Tinto has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese battery manufacturer CATL to develop mine electrification strategies covering mobile equipment, fixed plant and supporting energy storage. The partnership will focus on integrating CATL lithium-ion battery systems into Rio Tinto’s operations, co-developing supply chains for critical battery materials and establishing circular-economy pathways for end-of-life cells. For engineers, the deal signals closer alignment between mine design and OEM battery platforms, with potential implications for fleet selection, power infrastructure and decarbonisation project timelines.

Metso has secured orders worth about €39 million ($45 million) to supply crushing and grinding plant equipment for Artemis Gold’s Blackwater Mine Expanded Phase 2 (EP2) project in central British Columbia, supporting the next throughput step-up at the open-pit operation. The package includes a Superior MKIII primary gyratory crusher and Nordberg HP Series cone crushers, integrated into a new comminution line. For process engineers, the standardised Metso flowsheet should simplify spares, liner management and control integration across Blackwater’s staged expansions.

Rio Tinto and the Western Australian Government have formed a 50:50 joint venture to deliver the A$1.1 billion Dampier Seawater Desalination Plant, comprising Stage 1 and Stage 2. When fully operational, the plant will supply 8 GL/y of desalinated water into the West Pilbara Water Supply Scheme, easing demand on stressed regional aquifers that currently support mining and communities. For mine planners and water engineers, the scheme signals a shift towards coastal desalination as a primary source for Pilbara process and potable water security.

Epiroc is analysing how electric surface drill rigs interact with weak and remote mine grids, focusing on load profiles, start-up currents and grid contingencies that can destabilise existing 11–33 kV distribution systems. The company is testing smart power management strategies such as ramped starts, active power factor correction and local energy storage to smooth high transient loads from large electric drills. For mine planners and electrical engineers, the work points to earlier integration of grid studies with fleet selection and potential use of hybrid on-site generation to avoid costly grid reinforcements.

Austmine and AusIMM, with Expande (Chile), Peru Mining Innovation Hub, CEMI (Canada) and Colab Partner Baker Hughes, have launched the Global Open Innovation Colab challenge “Critical Disruptors: From Discovery to Recovery” to run at the Global Resources Innovation Exchange 2026 (GRX26). The challenge targets technologies that compress exploration-to-extraction timelines, including concepts for faster orebody characterisation, integrated drilling-to-processing data streams and step-change recovery methods. For miners and METS suppliers, it offers a structured route to pilot novel sensing, automation and processing solutions with multi-jurisdictional partners.

MacLean Engineering has delivered its first Volvo Penta-powered underground mining machine to a Quebec operation, using an industrial off-road diesel from Volvo Penta supplied through Canadian distributor Wajax. The deal follows the formalisation of the Volvo Penta–Wajax distribution partnership in Canada, targeting MacLean’s fleet of battery-electric and diesel support units such as bolters, shotcrete sprayers and utility vehicles. For mine operators, the move standardises powertrains around a globally supported engine platform, simplifying parts, service logistics and emissions compliance across mixed fleets.

National Highways has awarded a £968M framework to Graham, John Sisk & Son and Kier to reconstruct ageing concrete pavements across the Strategic Road Network in England. The multi-year programme will target rigid carriageways nearing or beyond design life, replacing them with modern concrete or composite pavement structures designed for higher traffic loading and reduced maintenance interventions. Contractors are expected to deploy large-scale slab removal, fast-track slipform paving and night-time possession strategies to keep key motorways and trunk roads operational during works.

A proposed £130bn high‑speed “rail loop” concept from Riba president Muyiwa Oki would link major cities across Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland in a single integrated network. Oki confirms maglev is being considered alongside conventional high‑speed rail, raising questions over guideway geometry, viaduct and tunnel design, and long‑span crossings for the Irish Sea. For engineers, the key issues will be route alignment, interoperability with existing hubs, and whether UK demand and geology justify maglev’s higher capital and maintenance costs.

Heathrow Airport has shortlisted five teams in its 2026 Early Careers Innovation Challenge, run with New Civil Engineer, to progress concepts aimed at improving airport infrastructure and operations. The finalists, drawn from early-career engineers, will now develop proposals that could influence future upgrades to airside pavements, terminal assets and landside transport interfaces at one of Europe’s busiest hubs. For consultants and contractors, the programme signals Heathrow’s interest in piloting novel civil and systems solutions from younger practitioners within a structured development framework.

A 150km hydrogen pipeline running from the Lincolnshire coast to Nottinghamshire has entered public consultation, with promoters positioning it as strategic energy infrastructure for local industry. The scheme would create a dedicated transmission route to move low‑carbon hydrogen from coastal production and import facilities inland to industrial users in Nottinghamshire. For civil and pipeline engineers, key issues will include long‑distance route selection across agricultural land, geotechnical risk management in low‑lying flood‑prone areas, and integration with existing gas and industrial networks.

Women are taking on a wider range of roles in Australian mining, from underground production and haul-truck operation to senior leadership in major producers and METS companies. Operators report more mixed-gender crews on large open-cut coal and iron ore sites in the Pilbara and Bowen Basin, supported by flexible rosters, remote operations centres and redesigned PPE for smaller body sizes. Company leaders are linking gender targets in site-based technical teams to ESG reporting, contractor prequalification and board-level remuneration structures.

Geoscience Australia’s Public Talks series is returning in 2026 with monthly evening sessions in Canberra and live-streamed broadcasts covering topics from critical minerals mapping to induced seismicity near major mines. Chief scientist Dr Steve Hill and invited researchers will present new data from national geophysical surveys, including high-resolution aeromagnetic and gravity datasets used in greenfields exploration targeting copper, nickel and rare earths. For practitioners, the programme offers direct access to pre-competitive datasets, workflow case studies and Q&A on integrating these layers into 3D geological models and resource assessments.