Related Links: Full Competition Gallery The 10 Longest Arch Bridges in the World From fantastic to conventional, designs for a new pedestrian bridge over London’s River Thames have flooded the offices of the Borough of Wandsworth in response to its international ideas competition. The council is now displaying the 74 entrants for public comment before a panel of judges draws up a shortlist this March.With the competition attracting the “biggest names in architecture and engineering” as well as more humble designers, officials are keeping all the submissions anonymous to maintain a level playing field.“We challenged the world’s designers to come
Image Courtesy John Laing A Laing consortium started work in late 2014 on the 25-year DBFO for a new 60,000-seat stadium in Perth. Global infrastructure owner-developer John Laing plc., London, recently stepped up its Australian operations by closing a $1.7-billion deal to design, build, finance, operate and maintain (DBFOM) a light rail project in Sydney.Laing is “hopeful” about its Australian prospects, noted chief executive Olivier Brousse, following the February 12 partial initial public offering of the company in London.For its latest Australian venture, Laing took up just under a third of the shares in ALTRAC Light Rail Partnership, which reached
Courtesy TLSB Contract value for generator sets at Swansea Bay tidal project is estimated to be approximately $465 million. Courtesy TLSB Swansea Bay breakwater, off the South Wales coast, extends 9.5 km, enclosing 11.5 sq km where tidal range is 8.5 m. Related Links: Tide May Be Turning for Power Generated by Moon and Waves Scottish Offshore Tidal Project Receives Approval World records for tidal and offshore wind power are likely to be broken in the U.K., because two major energy projects made big advances during February. A 2,400 MW North Sea wind farm secured government approval, while generating equipment
Photo by Peter Reina for ENR With its truncated concrete core standing idle for several years, one of London’s tallest buildings is set to be completed following the acquisition of the project, formerly known as the Pinnacle, in a deal announced on Feb. 20.Originally due for completion some three years ago as the U.K.'s tallest building, the stalled 62-floor Pinnacle project at 22 Bishopsgate has been acquired by a consortium of investors led by AXA Real Estate, Paris, working with locally based Lipton Rogers Developments as developer.Structural and other engineering services on the project are being handled by the local
Related Links: Feds Step Up Quest for Private Infrastructure Financing | International Consortium Selected to Build Mersey River Bridge Serving just 125,000 people, the U.K.'s Halton Borough Council (HBC) might seem an unlikely sponsor for a $900-million privately financed highway bridge. But construction is underway, with barge-mounted rigs installing cofferdams in the mudflats of the River Mersey for the cable-stayed Mersey Gateway crossing.To get here, the authority, 20 kilometers upstream of Liverpool, overcame government reluctance and the banking crisis. It deployed innovative financing tools and a novel tolling strategy to reduce revenue risk to itself and the public- private partnership
Sellafield was the site of the world's first nuclear power plant and decades of weapons-making operations. Related Links: UK Officials are Unhappy with US-Led Cleanup of Sellafield Nuclear Waste Site The U.S.-led team managing multi-billion-dollar decommissioning of the U.K.-based Sellafield site, Europe’s most complex civil nuclear-energy site, will have its contract ended less than one year into its second five-year term.The U.K.'s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will retake control of the site license company, Sellafield Ltd., which is now owned by the private consortium called Nuclear Management Partners Ltd. (NMP).The authority determined that cleanup and decommissioning of the 4-kilometer complex posed
Related Links: Antwerp Freight Tunnel Has Twin Bore Beneath the River Schelde $5.25-Billion Panama Canal Expansion Program Moves Into the Final Leg Ship access capacity to the Antwerp’s Waasland Canal complex in Belgium will be more than doubled by construction of the world’s largest ship lock at the Deurganck dock. With a construction cost of some $290 million, the lock on the tidal River Scheldt’s left bank—500 meters long, 68 m wide and 17.8 m deep—is due to start operations in spring 2016.The new lock will be more than 4 m deeper than the current world-record holder, Antwerp’s 25-year-old Berendrecht
Related Links: Mammoth Lock Takes Shape in Belgium Belgian Diabolo Project Opens On Schedule Although Europe's second-largest port in Antwerp, Belgium, has more than 1,000 kilometers of railroad tracks, it moves only 8% of its throughput by rail. To help increase train use, the country’s railroad infrastructure manager, Infrabel N.V., has just completed the nation’s longest freight tunnel linking the port’s two halves on either side of the River Scheldt.The $1.1-billion Liefkenshoek freight tunnel includes roughly 6 km of new 7.3-meter-dia twin bores under the river, bypassing a 20-km route around South Antwerp, says Infrabel’s chief spokesman Frédéric Petit. With
Related Links: Balfour Beatty Chooses Turnaround Expert as Next CEO Balfour Beatty Notes New Profit Warning on Troubled UK Construction PennDOT Pushes On With P3 Plan To Replace 614 Bridges Skanska-Led P3 Team Wins Florida I-4 Job U.K.-based international contractor Balfour Beatty plc. is awaiting a formal $1.6 billion cash offer for all of its public-private-partnership projects from John Laing Infrastructure Fund.The London-based fund announced on Dec. 1 that it would finance the acquisition by raising new equity from its investors.Balfour Beatty’s PPP portfolio of some 60 projects represents a key pillar of the group’s business built up over many
More than 2,000 years of planning for a fixed link between Italy and the island of Sicily came tantalizingly close to fruition in 2006 when a construction contract was signed.
