Geomechanics.io

Ecuadorian courts ordered a provisional halt to Dundee Precious Metals’ Loma Larga underground gold-copper-silver project in early 2022 after Indigenous and farmer groups filed a constitutional protection action over water and páramo impacts. NGOs are now urging DPM Metals to fully exit the high-altitude project in Azuay province, citing risks to headwater catchments supplying Cuenca and nearby communities. The dispute signals continuing legal and social constraints on hard‑rock mining in Ecuador’s sensitive Andean ecosystems.

Balochistan’s copper, gold and rare earth prospects are moving centre stage as Pakistan courts Chinese, Saudi and Western investors for large-scale developments beyond the long-disputed Reko Diq porphyry deposit. New road and port links through Gwadar under the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, plus proposed rail upgrades, are intended to move bulk concentrates from remote desert sites to deep-water export terminals. For miners and engineers, the province’s security risks, water scarcity and arid geotechnical conditions will heavily influence pit design, tailings storage and processing route selection.

BHP has withdrawn its latest takeover proposal for Anglo American but maintains that a combination still offers strategic value, as Anglo shareholders prepare to vote on the $14.2bn sale of its 77% stake in Teck Resources’ steelmaking coal business. The Teck deal would transfer four British Columbia steelmaking coal mines and associated logistics to Glencore, Nippon Steel and POSCO, reshaping seaborne hard coking coal supply. For mine planners and bulk logistics teams, the outcome will influence long-term contracting, rail and port utilisation, and capital allocation across competing coal and copper assets.

Harmony Gold is committing US$1.6 billion to build the Eva copper project in Queensland, targeting 100,000 t/y copper output once combined with production from its CSA underground mine in Cobar, New South Wales. The Eva build signals a strategic shift from Harmony’s traditional South African gold base towards long-life copper assets in Australia, adding openpit tonnage to CSA’s high-grade, deep-level stopes. For engineers, the scale and greenfield nature of Eva point to substantial new demand for bulk earthworks, tailings capacity, and high-capacity processing infrastructure in the Mount Isa region.

Anglo American’s Quellaveco mine in southern Peru has passed 1 million tonnes of copper produced since first concentrate in 2022 and is forecast to deliver 310,000–340,000 tonnes in 2024. The open-pit operation, developed at a cost of around US$5.5 billion and designed as a large-scale, low-cost producer, uses a 127 km slurry pipeline to the port of Ilo and a 1.5 km-long overland conveyor for ore transport. For planners, the ramp-up profile and stable throughput signal sustained concentrate volumes into regional smelting and shipping chains.

US EXIM will deploy up to $100 billion into critical minerals and energy projects, with chair John Jovanovic naming Egypt, Pakistan and Europe as the first tranche of target regions. Funding will back US-linked supply chains for battery metals, rare earths and energy infrastructure, using long-tenor export credit and loan guarantees to de-risk large projects. Developers of copper, lithium and rare earths with US offtake or equipment content in these regions are likely to see improved access to project finance.

Barrick Gold’s share price has jumped to a new 52‑week high after the company resolved a long‑running dispute with the government of Mali over its Loulo‑Gounkoto gold complex. The agreement secures continued operation of the underground and open‑pit mines, which together have historically produced in the order of hundreds of thousands of ounces of gold per year, and clarifies fiscal and ownership terms with the state miner Société des Mines d’Or de Loulo SA. For mine planners and geotechs, the deal stabilises the investment horizon for ongoing underground development, tailings expansion and pit slope design work in western Mali.

Cisco’s lithium discovery in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region has been named a finalist for the Association de l’exploration minière du Québec’s Discovery of the Year Award after Q2 Metals expanded mineralised zones using space-based remote sensing. The junior explorer has been integrating satellite spectral data with ground mapping and drilling to refine pegmatite targets across the Cisco property. For geologists and mine planners, the recognition signals growing confidence in the scale and continuity of the lithium-bearing pegmatites and supports further resource-definition drilling.

Nickel in electric vehicle battery packs has reached its second-highest value on record, while cobalt has hit a 30‑month high, driven by strong demand in low‑LFP markets and buyers accelerating orders into 2025. Europe is “off to the races” next year as NMC‑dominant chemistries retain market share, contrasting with higher LFP penetration in China. US customers are also pulling forward EV purchases ahead of subsidy cuts, signalling potential near‑term tightness for Class I nickel and cobalt hydroxide supply chains.

Caddick Construction has secured an £18m contract from Great Places Housing Group to build an 82-apartment affordable block at the junction of Grey Mare Lane and Ashton New Road in east Manchester, forming part of the wider Grey Mare Lane regeneration masterplan. The one- and two-bedroom units, all for social rent and part-funded by Homes England and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority brownfield housing fund, are due for completion in 2027. For contractors and consultants, the scheme signals continued pipeline on Great Places’ Innovation Chain North framework following Caddick’s 131-unit Edward Street and 88-unit West Vale deliveries.

Nottingham-headquartered construction consultancy Bentley Project Management has opened a London office in the Stanley Building at 7 St Pancras Square to support its expanding southern workload. Main board directors Jonathon Bentley and Tom Mascari will lead the launch, targeting strategic land projects and regionalisation set out in the firm’s 2024–2030 growth plan. Bentley currently has 13 live sites across the south of England and is recruiting locally, signalling more project and cost management capacity for developers and land promoters in the capital and wider region.

Warrenpoint Harbour Authority has been fined £80,000 at Newry Crown Court after 58-year-old employee Kevin McGeough was fatally struck and run over by a 20-tonne Volvo loading shovel at Berth 1 in July 2019. McGeough had been power washing in the dockyard close to the travel route of two large loading shovels transferring wood chip 150 metres across the berth, with one machine carrying about 2 tonnes in a 1.69-metre-high bucket at the time. Investigators found no clearly identified, segregated or physically protected pedestrian routes, exposing workers to uncontrolled vehicle movements.

Enabling works have started on Hartwell’s £50m regeneration of the 8.4-acre former Hartwells Garage site on Newbridge Road, Bath, including removal of the old damaged forecourt canopy and detailed pre-construction surveys. The Allford Hall Monaghan Morris-designed scheme will deliver 104 apartments, a 186-bed student block, new A1/A3 commercial units and landscaped public realm on the brownfield plot, vacated in 2019. Hartwell is working with Walsingham Planning, Ridge, Stantec, IMA Transport Planning and Aspect Ecology, with the main contractor still to be appointed.

Work has restarted on two nearly complete residential blocks at Southwark’s St Saviours Estate in Bermondsey after ARJ Construction, which had finished about 90% of the works, went into administration in April 2024. Newly appointed contractor Bloom Construction, founded in 2023, is now tasked with delivering 40 council homes at the Fendall and Maltby site by spring 2026. The remaining scope covers final fit-out, M&E commissioning, contaminated soil removal, external works and landscaping, lift installation, play equipment and full building control compliance.

The Welsh government has launched a Built Environment Mission Statement and a Digital Action Plan for Construction, committing to project bank accounts (PBAs), prioritising retrofit over new build, and promoting offsite prefabrication of large components. Developed with Constructing Excellence in Wales, the digital plan targets productivity gains, better project delivery and “future‑ready” skills, backed by a forward pipeline of public sector contracts to give earlier visibility of workload. The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 now makes socially responsible construction procurement a statutory duty, requiring public bodies to agree well-being objectives with trade unions or staff representatives.

A government-commissioned Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce has issued a 162-page Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 with 47 recommendations to cut delays and costs on projects such as Hinkley Point C, whose first reactor has slipped from a 2025 to at least a 2029 start-up. Led by former Office of Fair Trading chief executive John Fingleton, the taskforce calls for a unified Commission for Nuclear Regulation, a ‘one‑stop shop’ for approvals, and merging the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator into the Office for Nuclear Regulation. The review targets “unnecessary over‑specialisation” in components from bolts to cranes, urging greater use of commercial off‑the‑shelf solutions and clearer risk proportionality to save tens of billions in decommissioning and improve constructability.

RSK has acquired Octavius Infrastructure from Sullivan Street Partners, moving the formerly consultancy-focused group into tier one main contracting across UK rail and highways, with Octavius’ 700 staff retained under chief executive John Dowsett. Octavius reported £322.9m turnover and £8.6m pre-tax profit to 31 March 2025, while RSK turned over £2.24bn but remained loss-making after 11 acquisitions in the year. Current Octavius schemes include Ryde Pier and Waterloo Station roof refurbishments, new stations at Okehampton and Charfield, and the A46 Walsgrave and A140 Long Stratton Bypass upgrades.

Three major National Highways schemes on the A47 near Norwich are being delivered in parallel to cut delays and collisions while doubling as training grounds for early-career engineers and apprentices. The projects include junction upgrades and dual carriageway sections designed to current DMRB standards, with works sequenced to maintain live traffic and integrate complex traffic management, drainage and earthworks phasing. Contractors are using the schemes to give graduates supervised experience in NEC contract management, temporary works design and digital construction tools such as BIM-based clash detection.

Cooling design for hyperscale data centres is becoming a critical constraint as AI workloads drive power densities well beyond traditional 5–10kW per rack, forcing operators to consider liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers and direct-to-chip systems. Engineers must balance evaporative and adiabatic cooling against tightening water-stress and abstraction limits, particularly in regions already facing summer drought restrictions. Site selection, pipework routing, thermal storage and integration with district heating networks are emerging as key civil and MEP interfaces, with planning authorities increasingly scrutinising water-use intensity alongside PUE.

Heavy rainfall in Sri Lanka’s Central Province triggered a fatal landslide that killed four people when a saturated slope above a narrow local road collapsed onto passing vehicles, according to the Disaster Management Centre. The failure followed several days of intense monsoonal rain that exceeded typical seasonal totals, with local authorities already recording multiple smaller slope instabilities and debris flows in adjacent hill districts. Geotechnical teams are now prioritising rapid slope inspections, temporary drainage and toe protection on weathered residual soils along rural road corridors that lack engineered retaining structures.

City of Bendigo’s Coordinator GIS & Asset Information, Paul Nicholson, is deploying GBM Konect, a mobile field management app, to overhaul how road and drainage assets are captured and maintained in the field. Konect’s flexible data model allows crews to map linear assets, attach photos and condition data offline, and sync directly to the council’s central GIS rather than relying on point-only, office-based systems. For civil and asset engineers, this means faster defect logging, fewer data transcription errors, and more reliable spatial information for pavement and drainage renewal planning.

Civilcast is launching a new range of custom precast road pits that Product Development Manager Brian Lee says are engineered for higher load capacity and durability in major road and urban projects. The pits are tailored to project-specific geometry and cover arrangements, aiming to reduce on-site adjustments and installation time compared with standard catalogue units. For designers and contractors, the focus is on improving long-term performance of buried drainage and services structures that typically carry significant traffic and environmental loads but receive limited design attention.

Roads Australia will rebrand as Transport Australia following member approval at its recent Annual General Meeting, signalling a shift from a roads‑only focus to a broader, multimodal transport remit. The peak body, which has spent more than a decade convening governments, contractors and consultants on issues such as road funding models, asset management and decarbonisation, will now explicitly cover rail, ports and integrated transport networks. For civil and transport engineers, this points to policy forums and guidance increasingly framed around whole‑of‑network planning rather than discrete road projects.

Construction has started on the first project in the $500 million Queensland Beef Roads programme, with a $47.5 million early works package sealing a priority section of the Clermont–Alpha Road about 89 kilometres north of Alpha in the Barcaldine region. The staged upgrades will progressively seal and strengthen key cattle and freight corridors that are currently partly unsealed, improving all‑weather access for high‑productivity road trains. For pavement designers and geotechnical teams, the focus will be on durable surfacing and subgrade performance under heavy axle loads and seasonal flooding.