The need to preserve the tent-like concrete roof of London's former Commonwealth Institute as the rest of the 52-year-old building was razed turned an adaptive-reuse project into a structural balancing act. With internal demolition temporarily undermining all but one roof support, the thin-shell, hyperbolic-paraboloid cover stands, thanks to an elaborate system of aids.Work on the future home of
Related Links: London Starts Plan To Fix Its Plumbing Link to U.K. National Audit Office report on Tideway Tunnel financing risks Europe's Largest Rail Project Ramps Up London's water utility invited international investors on June 10 to help finance, through a newly created special-purpose company, the estimated $7-billion tunnel program that will prevent polluted storm overflows from tainting the River Thames.Work on the 25-kilometer-long tunnel is due to start in 2016, subject to final government approvals that are expected this fall.Privately owned utility Thames Water already has short-listed construction bidders for three construction packages covering the whole project. It aims
Photo Courtesy of T-Engineering-Ceneva Final tranche from Turkish bankers will underwrite the country's third Bosporus Strait span. Related Links: Turkey Still Seeks Bids for Bosporus Crossing Byzantine Port, Botched Buildings With construction of Turkey's third Bosporus bridge about 25% done, its consortium has secured $2.3 billion of Turkish bank loans to complete the build-own-operate deal's project financing. The roughly 2.2-km-long bridge will cross the Black Sea mouth of the Bosporus waterway between Garipçe and Poyrazköy about 35 km north of Istanbul. Work began early last year and should end in 2016. Bankers finalized the final piece of funding on May
Images Courtesy Of Novarka With the vault's first half completed, the second section is taking shape within the lifting towers. Spanning 257 m, the structure (below) will cover the entire sarcophagus. Related Links: Radiation Threat Still Permeates Chernobyl's Entombment Work on Enclosure for Chernobyl Begins Twenty-eight years after devastating explosions and fire partially destroyed Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant, the first half of a vast safe confinement has been completed. As work continues on the 25,000-tonne steelwork vault—tall enough to cover the Statue of Liberty—the parties to the cleanup are about to agree to a new construction price of around $2
Related Links: Contractor Balfour Beatty and Professional Services Firm Parsons Brinckerhoff Seek Sweet Spot As Linked Companies Andrew McNaughton To Succeed Ian Tyler as Balfour Beatty CEO 01/14/2013 Client Dislike of 'one stop shop' Model at Heart of Balfour Beatty decision to sell PB-New Civil Engineer Balfour Beatty Suspends Managers in U.K. Gas Subcontracting Probe London-based Balfour Beatty plc. is considering selling Parsons Brinckerhoff some five years after buying the New York City-based design and management firm for the equivalent of $626 million.Balfour Beatty CEO Andrew McNaughton also announced he is leaving the firm, effective immediately. McNaughton had only replaced
Related Links: Hong Kong Secures $1.1 Billion To Cover Jump in Cost of Link Road Project Longest Immersed Tube Tunnels Chinese contractors have hit the halfway mark of building an immersed-tube tunnel (ITT) between Hong Kong and Macao that, when opened in 2016, will be the world's longest, at 29.6 kilometers. But engineers in Denmark are in the final procurement phase for a project that will be three times longer: a Denmark-Germany ITT across the Fehmarnbelt waterway.Final price bids for the 17.6-km-long Fehmarnbelt road-and-rail ITT are due this December, and work will start next summer, says Steen Lykke, technical director
Preparations have been finalized to demolish the first of four immense concrete chimneys at the historic Battersea Power Station in London. The stacks have formed the city’s dominant industrial landmark for decades.Rising more than 100 meters, the chimneys are in poor shape and due to be replaced by exact replicas as part of a multibillion-dollar,
HS2 HS2 Chairman Higgins is calling for an acceleration of phase two of the high-speed rail program from London to the north of England. HS2 Proposed route would open development in England's north, backers say. Related Links: Legislation for UK's $80-Billion HS2 Rail Program Will Move, Government Official Tells Engineers U.K. Launches $52-Billion Rail Plan The U.K. Transportation Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has accepted new recommendations to accelerate construction of the country’s second high speed railroad. Among other changes to the estimated $83-billion, two-phase HS2 project to win government support is an entirely new grand terminus at Euston, in London.McLoughlin’s decision
Photo courtesy Vinci Group Stalled highway projects were a visible sign of the economic crisis in Greece. Related Links: Research Automates Tunnel Inspection Robot Eurozone Debt Crisis Takes Its Toll on Construction Despite its huge debts, Greece is in recovery mode. Forecasters expect the stricken European state to start climbing out of its deep recession, and renewed construction of four large, internationally backed highway projects is seen as a sign of new life.The four stalled projects, which have a combined value exceeding $10 billion, were "visible casualties of the crisis in Greece," according to Johannes Hahn, the European Union's commissioner
By Richard Pare Moscow's Shukhov radio tower, completed in 1922, has fallen into disrepair and is scheduled for dismantling. By Richard Pare Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov's hyperbolic tower is one of the superlative engineering feats of the twentieth century, according to the engineers and architects that want to preserve it. Related Links: Shukhov Tower Federation Motherboard: Architects to Putin, "Save Moscow's Eiffel! Internationally renowned structural engineers and architects are calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to save from demolition Moscow’s iconic Shukhov radio tower. Designed by Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov, who is credited with developing the hyperbolic-tower concept, the 92-year-old steelwork structure
