NDA Developed since the 1940s, the 4-sq-km complex has been a weapons-making center, the site of the world's first nuclear powerplant, and a fuel-recycling and waste-storage facility. Related Links: British Report Says Sellafield Costs Soaring as Cleanup Lags Facing Tough Competition, URS Lands Huge U.K. Contract U.K.-U.S. Team Picked For $4-Billion Nuclear Waste Cleanup at Scotland Site U.K. officials have slammed the management of the huge U.S.-led cleanup program at the Sellafield nuclear-waste site, located in northwest England, months after it was awarded a five-year contract extension.The consortium, called Nuclear Management Partners Ltd. (NMP), "has failed to provide ... clear
Related Links: Another 'Death Ray' Building Heats Up Reflective Solar Rays Two developers say they will spend several million dollars on the facade of London’s 37-floor “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper to prevent the solar glare that caused scorching damage in the adjacent street last summer (ENR 9/16/13 p. 20).Lightweight, 38-centimeter-long metal fins, or brise soleile, will be fixed to the curved south facade of the building at 20 Fenchurch St. in a six-month operation, subject to planning approval from the local authority. Eight levels of fins are planned for each floor, from No. 3 to No. 34.Solar-glare investigations ordered by the
Photo Courtesy of MMC-Gamuda Variable-density-slurry tunnel-boring machine was developed to dig through fissured limestone. Last month, it broke through on a transit project in Kuala Lumpur. Related Links: Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Link Plan Draws Global Interest Dual Purpose Tunnel Becomes Smart Solution A new type of tunnel-boring machine designed to excavate through fissured limestone recently made its global debut with a breakthrough on Kuala Lumpur's emerging mass rapid-transit system. Six new variable-density-slurry tunnel-boring machines (VDTBM) are deployed on the 9.5-kilometer-long twin drives of the Malaysian capital's notoriously difficult karstic ground.With the first VDTBM drives completed this January, the technology "is
Related Links: U.K.'s High Hopes For HS 2.0 The construction of tunnels and stations beneath central London as part of a $24-billion Crossrail project has hit the halfway mark on time and budget. The successes are feeding into ongoing planning for over $60 billion worth of high-speed rail."The industry is enjoying a renaissance and a reputation for delivering these projects on time and cost [to] a very, very high quality," says Andrew Wolstenholme, chief executive officer of Crossrail Ltd. (CRL), the city's project owner. Noting lessons learned on construction for the London Olympics in 2012, the Heathrow airport's Terminal Five
Related Links: U.K. Crossrail Project Hits Halfway Mark With a price tag of around $66 billion, the U.K.'s next high-speed-rail project is pressuring engineers to minimize costs while maintaining quality. As they prepare to procure the $28.1-billion first phase between London and Birmingham, officials are urging the international construction community to bring innovative ideas to the 10-year program.MCNAUGHTON"Here is a stream of work that gives you the incentive to invest in techniques, construction equipment and in skills of people at all levels," says Andrew McNaughton, technical director of High Speed 2 Ltd, the government's project company. "Things like tunneling have
Photo by Getty Images Workers will strip tiles from two curved facades and exposed steel will be painted white until a permanent solution is found. With tiles falling off its shell-like facades, remedial work started recently to safeguard the eight-year-old Queen Sofia Palace of Arts opera house in Valencia, Spain.Crews are stripping loose tiles from the two 4,000-sq-meter curved facades and painting the exposed steel white until a permanent solution is found for the centerpiece of Valencia's City of Arts and Science.The opera house's facades are formed by steel frames covered with metal plate, onto which some 20,000 irregularly shaped,
By Peter Reina Plaster ceiling failure in auditorium of historic Apollo Theatre in London called an isolated incident. Nearly 80 audience members at the 113-year-old Apollo Theatre in London's West End were injured, seven seriously, when part of the ornate plaster ceiling became detached from its supports on the evening of Dec. 19.On first inspection, city officials said the ceiling supporting structure appeared to be sound though detailed investigations had yet to start. The section of falling plaster, reportedly about 2 meters square, demolished parts of the balconies, according to the London Fire Brigade.The ceiling failure was "an isolated incident,"
Related Links: Specifications of UK's BIM Level 2 Mandate Bentley: BIM Also Means Information Mobility Contractors See Gains, Gaps With Growth of Mobility Tools Just a few years ago, "BIM" was just an acronym that meant little to most U.K. construction professionals.Now, building information modeling is the subject of increasingly crowded conferences up and down the country. What made the digital system such a hot topic is a U.K. government mandate saying that, by 2016, collaborative 3D BIM be deployed, with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic, on all centrally funded projects of any value.As a
Related Links: Dissonance Averted, Hamburg's New Philharmonic Hall on Track for Completion Hochtief Takes Profit Hit From Writedowns Spain's ACS Moves To Fix Hold On German Builder Hochtief While Marcelino Fernández Verdes was leading the contractor's negotiations over Hamburg's troubled phil-harmonic project, the shareholders of Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA (ACS), who were buying Hochtief A.G., Essen, were lining him up to become the company's chief executive officer.Fernández has since launched a major corporate restructuring, including U.S. operations, and managed divestitures of the group's airports and services businesses. He is waiting for the right time to sell its real
Related Links: The Spanish Conductor Orchestrating Hochtief's Makeover Elbphilharmonie Website Video: Hamburg's White Elephant With shimmering facades and roofs soaring 110 meters above the River Elbe, Hamburg's philharmonic concert center will create a maritime landmark for the city's old-harbor redevelopment when it opens in late 2016. By then, the Elbphilharmonie project will be some six years late and, at $695-million, more than double the original cost.The north German city's officials and the project team agree that hasty procurement led to debilitating hostility between the main parties. Converting the construction contract to design-build project delivery a few months ago put the