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Thwaites has completed a new 4,000 m² production building at its Cubbington site, built by Interclass over a 71‑week programme, to consolidate production and parts operations and lift site dumper manufacturing capacity by 15% from early 2026. The facility, described by the company as its most significant investment in 88 years, is fitted with 1,483 roof‑mounted solar panels expected to supply up to 33% of site power demand. The site also gains 36 EV charging points for staff and visitors, supporting fleet electrification.

Alumno Group has secured forward funding from Henderson Park for a 453-bed purpose-built student accommodation portfolio split between a 191-bed new-build at Jock’s Lodge, Meadowbank, Edinburgh, and a 262-bed scheme on St George’s Road in Glasgow’s Woodlands district. Both projects already hold planning consent, with Alumno retaining delivery responsibility and targeting practical completion by September 2027. The timing and scale signal continued institutional appetite for PBSA in Scotland’s core university markets, with long lead-in for design coordination, utilities, and site logistics on two dense urban plots.

Consolidated guidance for cranes operating near live rail tracks has been issued by the Construction Plant-hire Association’s Crane Interest Group and Tower Crane Interest Group in collaboration with Network Rail, replacing CPA1402 and CPA1801 with a single 58-page document, Requirements for Lifting Equipment Adjacent to Railways Controlled by Network Rail. The guidance is aligned with Network Rail’s CIV0063 (Issue 2), giving contractors and client a shared technical baseline and clearer allocation of responsibilities. Key changes include a defined hierarchy of control, explicit treatment of oversailing and collapse radius, and tighter procedures for working range limitation and notifications.

WSP has appointed Sharif Narouz as major programme director for the UK and Ireland, recruiting him from the Ministry of Defence’s Atomic Weapons Establishment where he led the Future Materials Campus programme. Narouz also served as a high-risk project reviewer with the National Infrastructure & Service Transformation Authority and previously held senior rail delivery roles at Network Rail, Transport for London and Crossrail as supply chain delivery director. WSP signals a push to expand its capability on complex, multi-billion-pound major commissions from early-stage inception through to completion.

Scrapping the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) from 31 March 2026 will remove £1.3bn a year of funding that currently delivers energy‑saving retrofits to about 5,000 UK homes a month, cutting average bills by £150 but leaving the replacement Warm Homes Plan still delayed and undefined. Retrofit firms including Domna, Net Zero Renewables and Eco Approach warn that without at least a 12‑month ECO extension, up to 10,000 installer, coordinator and surveyor jobs and thousands of low‑income households in fuel poverty face a cliff‑edge. For contractors and consultants, the main risk is a multi‑year hiatus in funded retrofit pipelines, eroding hard‑won delivery capacity.

European Metals Holdings’ Cinovec lithium-tin project in the Czech Republic has secured a €390 million (US$417 million) grant commitment, one of the largest direct project-level funding packages for critical raw materials in Europe. The underground project, located near the German border in the Krušné Hory/Erzgebirge region, targets hard-rock lithium hosted in zinnwaldite mica and is planned to supply battery-grade lithium chemicals to EU gigafactories. The funding materially de-risks project finance and signals strong EU backing for domestic lithium supply chain development.

Petra Diamonds has confirmed Vivek Gadodia and Juan Kemp as joint CEOs following interim appointments since February, with Gadodia responsible for corporate strategy and Kemp for mine operations. The board overhaul comes as the company manages mature underground assets at Cullinan and Finsch, where operational performance and cost control are highly sensitive to leadership stability. Split responsibilities between strategy and operations signal closer executive focus on long-hole stoping, plant throughput and capital allocation for deep-level block cave development.

Montage Gold is acquiring African Gold for US$170 million, adding the Didievi gold project in central Côte d’Ivoire to its portfolio. The deal consolidates control over a contiguous land package in a proven Birimian greenstone belt, close to existing regional processing and haulage infrastructure. For mine planners and geotechs, the transaction signals further drilling, resource definition and pit optimisation work at Didievi as Montage seeks to scale its West African development pipeline.

SolGold has rejected a second unsolicited takeover approach from Jiangxi Copper in less than a week, as competition intensifies for large copper assets. The London- and Toronto-listed explorer controls the Cascabel project in Ecuador, centred on the Alpala deposit, one of the world’s larger undeveloped copper-gold porphyry systems. The move signals continued strategic interest from Chinese state-linked buyers in pre-production copper resources, with implications for funding options, joint ventures and offtake terms on major greenfield projects.

Silver prices jumped 4% to a record spot level of US$55.66/oz after a technical outage halted trading on the CME Group’s Comex platform. The spike follows weeks of tightness in physical supply reported by major bullion banks and refiners, with elevated lease rates and backwardation already signalling stress in near-term delivery. Price volatility at these levels may complicate hedging strategies for primary silver producers and polymetallic miners, particularly those with high by-product exposure in Mexico and Peru.

Copper three-month LME futures jumped 2.5% intraday to a record US$11,210.50/t in London, extending a rally driven by bullish positioning. The move pushes prices well above the previous 2022 peak, tightening margins for copper smelters and wire-rod producers while improving project economics for high-cost operations and marginal sulphide deposits. Miners with near-term brownfield expansions or shovel-ready greenfield projects may find financing conditions more favourable if prices hold above the US$10,000/t threshold.

Allied Gold shares hit their highest level since listing in September 2023 after the company reported five new gold targets at its Kurmuk project in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region. The discoveries lie within trucking distance of the planned Kurmuk central processing facility, which is being designed as a large-scale open-pit operation. The new targets could extend the project’s mine life and support higher throughput, with follow-up drilling expected to focus on near-surface, oxide-hosted mineralisation to fast-track potential satellite feed.

Minaurum Gold’s Alamos silver project in Sonora, Mexico has grown from three known veins in a small historic district to a district-scale system with multiple vein zones mapped over several kilometres of strike. The company is targeting its first NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate within weeks, following several drilling campaigns that stepped out well beyond historic workings. For geotechnical and mine planning teams, the shift from narrow historic stopes to a larger, structurally complex vein field signals a move towards more extensive drilling, structural modelling and staged underground access design.

Antofagasta’s transport division FCAB has launched Latin America’s first hydrogen-powered freight locomotive in northern Chile, converting an existing diesel-electric unit to run on fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries. The pilot locomotive, developed with engineering firm TMI and fuel-cell supplier Ballard, is designed for heavy haul on the Antofagasta–Bolivia corridor, where gradients above 2% and long distances have traditionally locked operations into diesel. The project will test hydrogen supply logistics, refuelling cycles and performance at altitude, informing future decarbonisation of ore and sulphuric acid rail transport.

New Civil Engineer and Construction News announced the TechFest Awards 2025 winners at a gala event at the Hilton Metropole in London, recognising digital and technical innovation across UK infrastructure and construction. Although individual project details were not released in the brief announcement, the awards typically cover categories such as digital design workflows, data-driven asset management and offsite or automated construction methods. Practitioners should watch for the full winners’ list to benchmark emerging tools and processes that are gaining traction with major clients and Tier 1 contractors.

Network Rail has confirmed a £225M package for the Stalybridge–Diggle section of the Transpennine Route Upgrade, including modifications to 10 bridges to create clearance for full route electrification. Works between Stalybridge, Mossley, Greenfield and Diggle will require track realignment, parapet upgrades and structural alterations to overbridges and underbridges on this constrained valley corridor. A completely new Mossley station will be constructed on the existing alignment, with platforms and access designed around the upgraded overhead line equipment and revised track geometry.

Greatland Resources is accelerating expansion of the West Dome underground project at Telfer after new drilling confirmed additional mineralisation, signalling scope to extend mine life at the ageing copper–gold operation. Step-out holes beneath the current West Dome orebody have intersected wider and higher-grade zones than existing reserves, supporting updated resource modelling and potential redesign of underground stopes. For geotechs and planners, the work points to deeper development levels, revised ground support regimes and possible changes to ventilation and haulage layouts within the Telfer underground complex.

Lampson’s Gladstone team has completed a complex relocation of a P&H 4100XPC electric rope shovel, moving the multi-thousand-tonne machine in discrete components using heavy-lift transporters. The operation required precision loading and unloading of the upper works, carbody and crawler assemblies, with strict control of ground bearing pressures and haul route geometry across the mine site. For mine planners and geotechnical engineers, such moves demand detailed assessment of haul road formation, temporary ramp stability and pad compaction to accommodate concentrated axle loads.

Moxa has launched the RKP-C220 Series, its first AI-ready rackmount x86 industrial PC family designed for harsh mining sites, targeting tasks such as real-time video analytics, equipment condition monitoring and autonomous haulage support. The 2U rackmount units integrate industrial-grade components, wide-temperature operation and high shock/vibration tolerance for deployment in control rooms, substations and edge cabinets close to crushers and conveyors. For engineers, the platform is positioned as a rugged edge-compute node to host GPU-accelerated AI models without relying on remote data centres.

Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act reforms negotiated between the Australian Federal Government and the Greens have been broadly welcomed by the resources sector, which is now pushing to shape detailed approval pathways and timelines. Industry groups are seeking clearer statutory timeframes for project assessments, more predictable offsets rules, and streamlined approvals for brownfield expansions, while accepting stronger biodiversity safeguards. Miners warn that without tightly defined processes and resourcing for the new EPA-style regulator, major projects in iron ore, critical minerals and coal could still face multi‑year delays and higher compliance costs.

Argo Queensland, a new vehicle backed by a European–Japanese investor consortium, has acquired a 70 per cent stake in BHP Mitsubishi Alliance’s Daunia and Blackwater coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin. The deal covers large-scale open-cut metallurgical coal operations that currently use draglines, truck–shovel fleets and extensive rail load-out infrastructure feeding the Goonyella and Blackwater systems. For mine planners and geotechs, the ownership change signals potential shifts in strip ratios, pit expansion sequencing and capital allocation for haul road upgrades, waste dump design and progressive rehabilitation.

Wirtgen Group is expanding its safety programme by partnering with Strata Worldwide to deploy and refine Proximity Detection Systems (PDS) on road construction and civil sites, targeting interactions between mobile plant and ground personnel. The systems use machine-mounted sensors and personal tags to create configurable warning and exclusion zones around pavers, rollers and milling machines, aiming to intervene before contact incidents occur. With Safe Work Australia reporting vehicle incidents as 42 per cent of work-related deaths in 2024, contractors may see PDS increasingly treated as a critical control alongside traffic management plans.

Young engineers Alicia Pera and Winnie Wilson are applying university training directly on Victoria’s Clyde Road Upgrade, working with contractor Seymour Whyte on complex roadworks in a live traffic environment. Both are rotating through on-site roles such as traffic staging, utilities coordination and pavement construction, gaining early exposure to design–construction interfaces and stakeholder management. Their experience points to a more structured pathway from classroom to construction site, with targeted mentoring and project-based learning used to build confidence and technical capability for women entering civil engineering.

Works on the Old Calder Highway and Watsons Road level crossings in Diggers Rest are now complete, with both crossings removed and replaced by new road bridges as part of the Victorian Government’s Level Crossing Removal Project, reaching its 88th removal. The package includes a new two-lane bridge designed to separate road and rail movements, eliminating boom-gate delays and reducing train–vehicle conflict points. For designers and contractors, the works add another reference for bridge-based grade separation on peri-urban arterial corridors in Melbourne’s north-west.