Crossrail Ltd has updated the Crossrail Board on progress to complete the Elizabeth line.

Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering announced the appointment of Jane Towse-Laval as Director of Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering, responsible for providing strategic leadership to the company’s portfolio of geotechnical projects across the UK.

Technology group wishes to strengthen nonwovens business

Balfour Beatty, working in partnership with Thames Water, has saved over one million plastic bags from landfill by utilising a waste plastic asphalt on a key London cycle lane in Stratford, through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

• A further 24 km of mechanised tunnelling and construction of 37 km underground mineral transport system
• Start of construction for Drives 2 + 3 in late June 2019
• Mining of world’s largest polyhalite deposit at Woodsmith Mine near Whitby in North Yorkshire, England, from 2021

Balfour Beatty was commended at the New Engineering Contract (NEC) awards ceremony last week as it secured the 2019 ‘Contract of the Year’ award.

HS2 has released a set of new images showing progress at London Euston where the team this week completed the demolition of the former BHS warehouse on Hampstead Road, close to the new station’s proposed Camden Town entrance.

Esri UK, the world's leading provider of geographic information systems (GIS), has awarded a solution developed by a Skanska, Costain and Strabag joint venture working on HS2 with the ‘Map Creator’ award at its annual event.

Andrew Wyllie visited a polyhalite mine as part of his tour of the region. ICE President Andrew Wyllie has described the Sirius Minerals polyhalite mine as a “fantastic example of UK engineering at its best”.

Highways England has revealed that self-driving trucks are being tested on the UK’s biggest road upgrade, the A14 improvement scheme between Cambridge and Huntingdon, which is being delivered by a joint venture comprising Costain, Balfour Beatty and Skanska.

Infrastructure professionals can find out how the latest site characterisation strategies and Geo-data sharing platforms are transforming ground risk management in the delivery of major projects as Fugro launches its 2019 UK seminar programme.

Soil samples in the laboratory may seem a world apart from the gleaming high tech of the high speed train. Yet both share the spotlight in a current exhibition at the National Railway Museum in York giving a rare insight into the role of testing and prototyping in pushing the boundaries of rail engineering.

Costain announces that Andrew Wyllie CBE, after 14 years as CEO of the Company, is retiring in order to pursue a non-executive career. He recently took up the presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers and is a non-executive director of Yorkshire Water Services. Alex Vaughan, currently managing director of the Group’s natural resources division, will be appointed as CEO with effect from the conclusion of the Company’s AGM on 7 May 2019. The appointment of Alex is in accordance with the Board’s succession plan which included an extensive internal and external search process.

Work to transform Euston station and deliver extra capacity as part of the HS2 project took a very visible step forward today, with the arrival, on the London skyline, of the project’s first tower crane.

Scientists have discovered that bacteria in the deepest parts of the seafloor are absorbing carbon dioxide and could be turning themselves into an additional food source for other deep-sea life.

• Supply of electrical equipment for two Blair Multi-Rope machines (BMR)
• Multi-channel brake system Cobra01 from Olko and Siemens for reliable and safe stop at all events
• Highest international safety standard for a mine hoist – certified to Safety Integral Level 3 (SIL3) as well as German standards (TAS)
• The new development is for the mining of the world’s largest polyhalite (fertilizer) deposit

Andrew Wyllie, Costain chief executive, becomes the 154^th president of the ICE

Fugro has come away from this year’s British Drilling Association (BDA) awards with success in categories celebrating exceptional individuals, industry excellence and project performance in the geotechnical field.

Mott MacDonald has appointed Gregg Barton as a divisional director in Leeds, UK. Gregg will be responsible for further developing the consultancy’s growing transport advisory business across the north of England, with a focus on rail and local authority clients.

HS2 has successfully completed the demolition of the former carriage sheds at Euston station, revealing for the first time, the site of the approach tunnels for the new high speed rail link’s London terminal.