U.K.-based bridge steel bridge manufacturer Mabey & Johnson Ltd., Reading, pleaded guilty on July 10 to corrupt practices in Jamaica and Ghana between 1993 and 2001, and also of breaking United Nations’ sanctions over trading with Iraq in 2001-2002. The company is the first to be prosecuted in the U.K. for corruption overseas, according to Serious Fraud Office, the prosecutor. Mabey & Johnson, which supplies small to medium size prefabricated modular bridges, was committed to sentencing by the Crown Court later this summer. The firm volunteered evidence of corruption to the authorities last year following its own internal investigation in
Builders of the U.K.’s tallest skyscraper, London’s Shard, will save valuable time by excavating its three-floor basement while slipforming the core. A novel machine is now at work, plunging columns into pile tops some 15 meters below ground to prop up the rising core as soil beneath is removed. Slide Show Photo: Peter Reina / ENR The small site sits hard against the busy London Bridge railroad hub. Related Links: Top Down To Speed Shard Building With the core on the critical path, “the month or two” top-down exercise is “giving us breathing space,” says Bob Gordon, chief engineer of
As a standard-bearer for French plans to control one-third of the global nuclear powerplant market, Finland’s Olkiluoto project falls short of expectations. Delayed and mired in contractual disputes, the project is the world’s first to include new Franco-German reactor technology on which Paris-based Areva NP is hanging its ambitions. Slide Show Photo: TVO First Franco-German EPR reactor for Finland’s Olkiluoto plant is late. Olkiluoto’s third unit (OL3) is the first of a kind, say Areva officials, in explaining some of the project’s difficulties, hinting that the joint venture may have bid too optimistically for the turnkey contract. Now in arbitration,
Investigators from the U.K. studying the deadly April 6 earthquake near Rome found that traditional stone masonry buildings with even basic strengthening survived the temblor. The engineers are calling for simple reinforcement of older masonry buildings throughout Europe. Photo: Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team Unreinforced stone houses failed. “We need more willingness...to spend a bit of money on reinforcing these traditional houses in Europe and the developing world,” says Tiziana Rossetto, who led 10 engineers and scientists from the U.K. Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT). The EEFIT team spent six days surveying the devastated city and surroundings of L’Aquila,
U.K. investigators studying the April 6 earthquake that rocked Italy west of Rome, killing some 300 people, found that traditional stone masonry buildings with even basic strengthening survived the temblor. As a result of their findings, the engineers are calling for simple reinforcements of older masonry buildings throughout Europe. Slide Show Photo: Cury Price Court Engineers are calling for retrofits of older stone masonry buildings after an earthquake that rocked an area west of Rome on April 6 killed 300 people. "It was good to see, where there had been upgrades, the buildings performed better," says Tiziana Rossetto, who led
Denmark seems to turn out another major fixed road and rail link on a regular basis. Rival design teams have just been chosen to work on bridge and sunken tube options for a 20-km crossing of the Femern Belt to northern Germany, with construction planned to start in just over two years. Two similar mega-projects had already been finished in quick succession. An early conception of the crossing that pictures cable-stayed spans. Related Links: Denmark, Germany Plan New Massive Baltic Sea Crossing In Next Decade For Contractors and Their Advisers, A Sinking Feeling Is Good in Busan The Danish government
Alow-profile 350-meter-long, 15-m-wide suspension bridge designed by a U.K.-French team will carry part of a 25.5-kilometer planned light-rail system, called Metro West, across Dublin’s Liffey River to the city’s northeast corner. The Irish government’s Railway Procurement Agency, which oversaw design competition, wanted a low-key design. “Because it’s sensitive, we didn’t want [tall] towers,” says Davood Liaghat, technical director at Buro Happold Consultants Ltd., Bath, U.K. The structural firm, with Paris-based Explorations Architecture S.A., won RPA’s com-petition and a $190,000 prize. Celtic Crossing. Suspension bridge will maintain a context-sensitive profile. “We decided to lean the towers back to [match] the tree
Progress on two major European skyscrapers may not represent the green shoots of economic recovery, but they help lighten the gloom. In London, pile work is just starting on the 310- meter-tall “Shard,” planned as Europe’s second-tallest building. Elsewhere, workers in Frankfurt are beginning to mobilize the planned Tower 185. Photo: London Bridge Quarter Ltd. Celtic Crossing. Suspension bridge will maintain a context-sensitive profile. Related Links: London Shard Tower Rises From Gloom Photo: Viveco Real Estate With Middle Eastern backing, London Bridge Quarter Ltd. recently signed a construction contract with London-based Mace Ltd. for the estimated $1.5-billion riverside development, including
Preliminary design of the world’s longest sunken tube tunnel is to begin following a recent contract award covering the roughly 30-km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao fixed highway sea link, China. At 5.6-km, the tunnel will be some 2-km longer than the current record holder, on the Denmark-Sweden Øresund crossing, according to the Scandinavian tunnel’s designer, Copenhagen-based Cowi A.S. Cowi is also in the design consortium just hired by the Chinese government, which includes the Hong Kong office of Arup Group, Chinese Highway Plan and Design Institute Ltd. and Shanghai Tunnel and Design Institute. The link will be elevated for 22.8-km and include
Governments throughout the world are pouring trillions of dollars into their economies to halt their decline and stimulate recovery. It’s still too early to detect results, and in most places construction has ground to a halt. But in Vietnam, a skyscraper continues to rise. Toronto also is relatively unscathed, thanks to pent-up demand for office space, and Calgary’s market is still floating on oil. Photo: Turner Construction Collapsing world economy has failed to halt the rise of Vietnam’s Bitexco Tower. “On a relative basis there is work in Vietnam, whereas work has stopped in India, Russia, Dubai and other places,”
