Construction staff from Barratt Homes in Scotland swapped their regular hi-visibility gear for pink hats and jackets this week to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Now’s Wear it Pink campaign. Builders at the housebuilder’s Westlin Walk development in Kilmarnock, Lockhart Gardens in Stonehouse and Castlewell development in Ellon,
A workshop at the Open Urban Day on 14th October – part of the 13th European Week of Regions and Cities, held from 12th-15th October in Brussels – discussed and promoted the benefits of incorporating green infrastructure in city planning. The workshop, entitled ‘Green Infrastructure – revitalizes cities and boosts
Bam Nuttall and sister company Bam Ritchies have been charged with improving Lerwick harbour’s deep-water facilities in a move that will boost the Shetland Islands capacity to service the region’s offshore oil and gas industry. An integrated Bam construction team of Bam Nuttall and in-house geotechnical specialists BAM Ritchies are
A new software programme that generates detailed ‘reality meshes’ using photos taken with any digital camera could boost construction works. The Bentley Systems software stitches together photos to produce highly detailed 3D models which can be used to create ‘fly through’ videos. The photo-textured, geographically located 3D model can be
Chancellor George Osborne has hacked into the spending power of the Department for Transport (DfT). Osborne said the DfT was one of four that had agreed to cut their revenue spending by an average of 30% over the next four years. His announcement comes ahead of the 25 November spending
Construction staff from Barratt Homes in Scotland swapped their regular hi-visibility gear for pink hats and jackets this week to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Now’s Wear it Pink campaign. Builders at the housebuilder’s Westlin Walk development in Kilmarnock, Lockhart Gardens in Stonehouse and Castlewell development in Ellon, put their weight behind the charity’s Wear it Pink day and raised more than £3,500 in the process. Douglas McLeod, regional director for Barratt Homes in Scotland said: “Taking part in Wear it Pink at a few of our sites provided a talking point for staff and visitors, raising important awareness of breast cancer and bringing in vital funds for the work of Breast Cancer Now. Of course, in the process we had lots of fun too.” For more information about Breast Cancer Now and the Wear it Pink campaign visit www.breastcancernow.org www.barratthomes.co.uk
A workshop at the Open Urban Day on 14th October – part of the 13th European Week of Regions and Cities, held from 12th-15th October in Brussels – discussed and promoted the benefits of incorporating green infrastructure in city planning. The workshop, entitled ‘Green Infrastructure – revitalizes cities and boosts sustainable territorial development’, was attended by over one hundred practitioners, experts and city representatives from across Europe, together with EU parliamentarians and EC commissioners. Neil Huck, Technical Director of the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI), spoke on behalf of the European Landscape Contractors Association (ELCA) in his role as ELCA Vice President. He used his knowledge and experience of the UK’s approach to incorporating green infrastructure in urban planning to inform and illustrate his presentation. Addressing delegates at the KBC conference centre in the regenerated former industrial Canal Area of Brussels, Neil Huck explained that ELCA represents some 80,000 small and medium sized businesses operating in the landscape gardening sector across Europe. The sector currently generates an annual turnover of Euros 30 billion. ELCA has 23 European national associations as members, including BALI (representing the UK), and a further five partner associations from outside of Europe. It works tirelessly to ensure that EU legislation affecting the natural environment in which its member companies in the landscape gardening sector operate, is well thought through, practical and can be readily implemented. Continuing with the theme of the workshop, Neil Huck said that despite UN predictions that urban populations are likely to increase by 75 per cent by 2050, urban green spaces remain a relatively low priority for political decision makers. He argued that ‘green cities’ can only be considered truly ‘green’ if, in addition to incorporating ‘green’ technologies such as solar cells and electric cars, they offer a high percentage of accessible green space in the form of parks, sports grounds, playgrounds and leisure facilities to mitigate the effects of CO2 emissions and climate change. These green spaces will also benefit the health and wellbeing of those people living and working in cities and encourage flora and fauna to establish and thrive. As cities become more densely populated and green spaces are lost to the built environment, CO2 emissions are causing extreme weather events. Long, hot, dry periods of weather negatively affect those people who work and live in cities and they drain global energy resources. Heavy rainfall, storms and, in some parts of Europe, hurricanes, cause urban flooding. This can present a danger to life and damage urban economies. Neil Huck argued that investment in the construction, development and maintenance of quality urban green spaces will pay dividends by reducing particulate pollution, combating the urban heat island effect, reducing damage caused by flooding, improving climatic conditions in buildings, and improving air quality. With the case argued for incorporating green infrastructure in cities, Neil Huck asked politicians, when they are considering sustainable job creation and the ‘green economy’, to include the many landscape gardening businesses across Europe that create and maintain urban green spaces. An investment of Euro 1 billion in green infrastructure would, he argued, deliver 13,000-15,000 landscape gardening jobs and this should be considered alongside the contribution of businesses delivering low carbon technologies. Neil Huck then cited the European Commission’s recent midterm revision of its biodiversity strategy, which indicated that more work needs to be done to reach its 2020 targets. He said that ELCA strongly supported the strategy and that increasing the amount of green space in cities would make a major contribution to helping the Commission reach those targets. He also expressed ELCA’s commitment to contribute to European policy making by communicating the benefits of green infrastructure to decision makers at a European and national level at every opportunity. Through its ‘Green City’ initiative, established in 2002, ELCA has been instrumental in demonstrating how living conditions in cities can be improved by the inclusion of more public and private green space. Individual countries have subsequently adopted the initiative under their own titles. In bringing his presentation to a close, Neil Huck invited countries not currently signed up to the ‘Green City’ initiative to join and strengthen the cause for more green spaces in cities across Europe and the world.
Bam Nuttall and sister company Bam Ritchies have been charged with improving Lerwick harbour’s deep-water facilities in a move that will boost the Shetland Islands capacity to service the region’s offshore oil and gas industry. An integrated Bam construction team of Bam Nuttall and in-house geotechnical specialists BAM Ritchies are on site in the Shetland Islands completing a £11.75M project, which will advance plans for significant further expansion of Lerwick harbour’s deep-water facilities for supporting the offshore oil and gas industry. Employer Lerwick Port Authority (LPA) has commissioned Bam to lengthen the existing quay at Dales Voe South, by 75m to 130m overall, to support subsea developments and decommissioning. Lerwick has been servicing the offshore industry for over 50 years and LPA is aiming to enhance its reputation as a location for decommissioning. The extended quay will provide deep-water, versatile berthing and heavy load capacity to take an offshore structure in a single lift, with a substantial, expanded laydown area. Size matters: Bam is lengthening the existing quay at Dales Voe South Captain Calum Grains, Lerwick Port Authority deputy chief executive and harbourmaster, said: “The contract marks an important step in further developing Lerwick’s role as a leading centre of offshore industry operations. Dales Voe South is another value-added expansion and reflects our confidence in future activity, including ongoing subsea projects, particularly west of Shetland, and the developing decommissioning and offshore renewable markets.” The Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, are providing £2.39M in grants for the project, with Bank of Scotland supporting the port authority’s investment. The NEC Option A contract was awarded on the 30 January 2015 and the works began in April 2015 with scheduled completion due in May 2016. Arch Henderson LLP, are the employer’s designer, responsible for design and project management of the works. Heavy duty: Bam used a Bauer BG42 rig, which deployed a 30m telescopic kelly bar The contract to extend the quay by 75m, provide deck load-bearing capacity of 60t/m2 and link span line load of 800t/m run of quay to enable floating barge skid transfer of complete offshore topside modules with a minimum 12.5m draft, will provide an infrastructure that is among the deepest of its type in Scotland and the closest UK land fall for the offshore industry in the northern North Sea. The new quayside is being formed with 55,000m3 of reclamation using site won aggregate, retained behind a tied combi-pile wall constructed with 42, 1,575mm diameter 24mm wall thickness, maximum 21m long tubular piles with intermediate double AZ26 sheet piles. The front face of the combi wall is restrained with 18No. 125mm tie-bars to a 425m3 reinforced concrete anchor beam secured by 38No. multi-strand tension anchors up to 2250kN capacity and 114, 6m long shear dowel bars. The North and South combi walls are restrained by a further 19 tie bars connected to a reinforced concrete transfer beam. Quay capacity and support of the cope on the leading edge is enhanced by 24, 1,575mm diameter tubular bearing piles. These bearing piles create a double pile front face to the jetty extension. There are two return sheet pile walls each approximately 12m long, comprising of AZ50 sheet piles 12m in length. New look: An impression of the extended Dales Voe South Quay The tubular piles are installed in a rock socket of up to seven metres depth in highly competent quartz phyllite. In geological terms the local sequence comprises “Dales Voe Grit” – Quartzite, “Whiteness Division” – Metalimestone and the “Clift Hills Phyllitic Formation”. It was understood from the outset that the rock would pose significant challenges to conventional rotary drilling tools, so a unique pneumatic cluster drill was commissioned. Rock strengths in the area vary from very weak to very strong with peak characteristic strengths of 260MPa. A cluster drill A CDSZE1830 at 1.830m diameter with 13 No 0.2mdown-the-hole (DTH) hammers, forms a rock socket beyond the size that conventional rotary hammers are no longer viable. A 2m diameter conductor casing up to 24m in length is used to case off any underwater overburden. The drilling rig used for the tubular piles is a Bam operated Bauer BG42 deploying a 30m telescopic kelly bar. Bam are using an in-house designed modular piling platform to allow advancement of the combi-wall with the 165T BG-42 atop. To avoid using floating plant, the Bam engineering team has developed this temporary works solution to enable the heavy piling plant to operate while supported on each new section of piles as the works progress. The process of using fixed modules has allowed improved productivity over floating plant and reduced the risk of delays from weather conditions. On completion of the combi-wall a heavily reinforced coping beam 4.5m high and 5.1m wide is cast along the full extent of the berth. Following past success at Copland’s Dock in Orkney, Bam planned to form the cope using precast concrete sections infilled with in-situ concrete. “This is an important step in further developing Lerwick’s role as a leading centre of offshore industry operations” Calum Grains, Lerwick Port Authority The anchor beam was cast in-situ requiring mass pours of 1,200m3 underwater concrete to bring it up to formation. Formwork, reinforcement steel, anchor inserts and tie bars were then placed for the 460m3 beam cast in three pours, each commencing at low water. The rock anchors are up to 24m deep. The drilling is conducted by a Soilmec SM14 drilling rig deploying an Atlas Copco 8” Terranox down-the-hole hammer drilling at 216mm diameter. Both of the 18 and 13 strand anchors that are being installed have been provided by DSI to a Bam in-house design. All operations comprise heavy lifting. Full-time lifting support is provided by a Leibherr 300T and 135T crawler cranes. “The works have significant logistical and environmental challenges of a remote island environment” Graham Hopper, Bam Nuttall Bam project manager Graham Hopper commented “The works have significant logistical and environmental challenges of a remote island environment in addition to the technical challenges. The Shetland Islands, 960km north of London, are as
A new software programme that generates detailed ‘reality meshes’ using photos taken with any digital camera could boost construction works. The Bentley Systems software stitches together photos to produce highly detailed 3D models which can be used to create ‘fly through’ videos. The photo-textured, geographically located 3D model can be detailed to millimetre accuracy. The software was used by digital aerial mapping specialists Aerometrex to produce a 3D map of the city of Philadelphia in preparation for the Pope’s visit to the US city in late September. Source: AEROmetrex Aerometrex technical director David Byrne said “With Context Capture, we’re able to automatically construct highly detailed 3D models of virtually any size for our clients, faster and at much less cost than with traditional methods. “But what’s most powerful is the amazing context that it provides to facilitate better decisions throughout design, construction, and operations. “We think ContextCapture is going to revolutionize the geospatial industry.”
Chancellor George Osborne has hacked into the spending power of the Department for Transport (DfT). Osborne said the DfT was one of four that had agreed to cut their revenue spending by an average of 30% over the next four years. His announcement comes ahead of the 25 November spending review, when the government will outline spending plans for the rest of this parliament. The chancellor insisted the latest budget cuts would not impact on the £100bn infrastructure spend promised last week. “I can report to you that – with the support of my brilliant colleague Greg Hands, the chief secretary to the Treasury – we have reached provisional agreement on the spending plans of four government departments,” said Osborne. As well as the DfT, the deal applies to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Treasury. “The resource spending – that is the day-to-day spending of those four departments – will be cut by 30% on average in total over the next four years,” said Osborne. “These savings will be achieved by a combination of further efficiencies in departments, closing low value programmes, and focusing on our priorities as a country.” He insisted the cuts did not apply to capital spending. “As I set out last week at the launch of the National Infrastructure Commission, we will continue to invest in the things that make our economy more productive,” Osborne said. “We will spend £100bn on our infrastructure over the parliament – updating our roads and railways; investing in flood defences to protect our homes and businesses; and delivering superfast broadband across the country.” Further details of how the departments will achieve their spending cuts, and what they will spend their capital budgets on, will be revealed at the spending review. The ICE called in September for the ministers to protect infrastructure spending and to include cash for maintenance and repairs in initial budgeting.
