This is an abridged transcript of the inaugural address of Rachel Skinner, who became the 156th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 4 November 2020. Her inauguration included both live speech and filmed elements, all of which are available on the ICE website.

A recent UK infrastructure industry report says that reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions will simply not be possible without making radical changes to the way homes and buildings are heated. Sam Friggens and Monica Donaldson-Balan of Mott MacDonald explain.

Carbon dioxide capture, utilisation and storage is an expensive but necessary option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Adina Popa of Mott MacDonald says the UK is well placed to adopt it but more government support is needed to boost investor confidence.

The importance of ensuring fire compartmentation in buildings is properly designed, specified and installed cannot be understated. David Ing of Weare Fabrick says a new industry best-practice guide will help project teams to meet their obligations to deliver safe and secure buildings.

Platform-based design for manufacture and assembly involves using a standard kit of parts and rules. Ben Carlisle and Paul Webb of Mott MacDonald say it represents a cheaper, greener and more socially advantageous way of delivering infrastructure.

In addition to Civil Engineering, ICE Proceedings includes 18 specialist journals. Papers and articles published in the most recent issues are listed here. Summaries of all these and other papers and articles published can be read free in the ICE Virtual Library at www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/journals.

Bridge Street overbridge next to Newport station in south Wales was replaced to enable electrification of the Great Western main line railway between London and Cardiff. The former 120-year-old steel truss bridge was too low and in poor condition, so a half-through weathering steel–concrete composite bridge deck with a smaller structural depth was lifted onto the existing abutments. The new bridge

A specialised emergency field hospital was constructed in record time in Wuhan, China shortly after the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Covering an area of 34 000 m2 and providing 1000 beds, Huoshenshan Hospital was more advanced and had more rigorous isolation systems than most current infectious-disease hospitals, but it was delivered in just 10 days. The rapid construction benefited from

Communities in London and along the tidal River Thames in the UK already benefit from world-class tidal defences, but climate change means flood risk continues to increase. In 2012, the Environment Agency published a plan for how 1.3 million people and £275 billion worth of property will continue to be protected from tidal flood risk until the year 2100. The first 10 years of the plan, which includes

This paper describes the key challenges faced in three recent long-span bridge projects in India and explains how they were overcome through the application of novel construction methods. They include constructability changes in the precast works for the Barapullah elevated corridor phase 3 in New Delhi, a temporary bamboo pile jetty system for Bihar’s New Ganga Bridge project near Patna and a combined

The greenhouse gas emissions of a range of current and recent built-environment projects in the UK and internationally were studied to give a benchmark of current levels and to identify where impro...

Through collaborative working, staff engagement, grassroots input, culture change and leadership support, the Greater West Programme rose to the challenge of ‘delivering environmental benefits and ...

The UK’s £3 billion Great Western railway electrification programme was completed in 2019, enabling electric trains to run from London to south Wales. This paper describes the complex testing and c...

Overhead contact wires on electrified railways often have to deviate from their standard height to pass over road crossings or under overbridges. Long height transitions are usually needed to ensur...

A vast volume of documentation was generated by the £3 billion electrification of the Great Western railway in the UK. It was therefore critical to have early agreed requirements and well-configure...

Overhead line electrification of existing railway lines is an essential contribution to sustainable, low-emissions public transport. Civil engineering enables a programme of electrification through...

Electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales in the UK required the design and installation of 13 000 individual foundations for overhead line equipment along 650 km ...

Worker fatigue is an important risk factor in civil engineering and construction projects, particularly when night-time shift working is required. It is a significant cause of accidents and negativ...

Patchway rail tunnels in Bristol were a major obstacle to the £3 billion electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales, completed in December 2019. The tracks in the t...

Building information modelling (BIM) transformed the delivery of Network Rail’s Greater West programme, which included electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales in...

Through collaborative working, staff engagement, grassroots input, culture change and leadership support, the Greater West Programme rose to the challenge of ‘delivering environmental benefits and sustainable outcomes to the highest industry standard’, with the strong belief that ‘environmental protection and sustainable development are everyone’s business’. The programme developed and implemented

A vast volume of documentation was generated by the £3 billion electrification of the Great Western railway in the UK. It was therefore critical to have early agreed requirements and well-configured information management systems, automation and visualisation to control and manage documentation effectively. Displaying the right information at the right time to the right people gave the programme team

Overhead contact wires on electrified railways often have to deviate from their standard height to pass over road crossings or under overbridges. Long height transitions are usually needed to ensure safe and reliable operation, otherwise line speeds need to be restricted. This paper sets out how data analysis combined with advanced simulation of the dynamic interaction between pantograph and overhead

Overhead line electrification of existing railway lines is an essential contribution to sustainable, low-emissions public transport. Civil engineering enables a programme of electrification through clearance of the route and the protection of the public from live overhead wires. This paper considers the key civil engineering works carried out as part of the £3 billion Great Western railway electrification

The Patchway rail tunnels in Bristol were a major obstacle to the £3 billion electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales, completed in December 2019. The tracks in the three nineteenth-century brick-arch tunnels needed to be lowered to provide the required clearances for new overhead line equipment. Extensive surveys, stability analyses and strengthening measures were

Electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales in the UK required the design and installation of 13 000 individual foundations for overhead line equipment along 650 km of live railway tracks. A key design requirement was to provide a simple method of allocating large volumes of foundations while providing a robust design for the wide range of ground conditions, topographies

The UK’s £3 billion Great Western railway electrification programme was completed in 2019, enabling electric trains to run from London to south Wales. This paper describes the complex testing and commissioning process required to bring the new overhead line system into service. Starting with testing the new overhead line equipment design on a dedicated 21 km test track in Leicestershire, the testing

A specialised emergency field hospital was constructed in record time in Wuhan, China shortly after the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Covering an area of 34 000 m2 and providing 1000 b...

Prior to the 1970s it was common for the designers of major civil engineering projects to use experimental tests on reduced-scale physical models to complement design calculations made by hand. Sin...

This paper describes the challenging temporary works used for demolishing the vast Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, UK, in particular the removal of a major access bridge and one of the mai...

Three new adits were required between existing underground railway platform tunnels on the Bank station capacity upgrade project in London, UK. Normally they would have been built by traditional ha...

Beijing Daxing International, which officially opened in September 2019 after 5 years of construction, is the largest airport in China and has the world’s biggest airport terminal. It is also the f...

David Thorpe of The One Planet Centre says boosting the green jobs market will help to drive economic recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic. Examples include promoting labour-intensive retrofitt...

The International Organization for Standardization has published new free guidelines on environmental communication. Chair of the drafting committee John Shideler, of US consultancy Futurepast, say...

Priti Parikh of University College London and Petter Matthews of Engineers Against Poverty say civil engineers will be in even more demand to deliver the United Nations’ sustainable development goa...

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically cut the amount people travel, with possible long-term effects on demand. Greg Marsden of the University of Leeds says civil engineers need to reconsider how t...

An innovative chemical boundary engineering approach can produce ultra-high strength steel at much lower cost. Ran Ding, Zhigang Yang, Sybrand van der Zwaag and Hao Chen at Tsinghua University in C...

This paper describes the innovative temporary works used for abutment construction of a moveable bridge in London’s Docklands. Completed in 2019, the 27 m span Water Street Bridge and its approach ...

Triggered by the potential challenges of providing supporting infrastructure for future very-fast ground-transport systems such as hyperloop, the British Tunnelling Society carried out a year-long ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically cut the amount people travel, with possible long-term effects on demand. Greg Marsden of the University of Leeds says civil engineers need to reconsider how they plan future transport infrastructure accordingly.

David Thorpe of The One Planet Centre says boosting the green jobs market will help to drive economic recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic. Examples include promoting labour-intensive retrofitting of energy-efficiency measures in existing buildings and green infrastructure.

Priti Parikh of University College London and Petter Matthews of Engineers Against Poverty say civil engineers will be in even more demand to deliver the United Nations’ sustainable development goals in a post-Covid-19 world.

An innovative chemical boundary engineering approach can produce ultra-high strength steel at much lower cost. Ran Ding, Zhigang Yang, Sybrand van der Zwaag and Hao Chen at Tsinghua University in China say strengths up to 2300 MPa are possible.

The International Organization for Standardization has published new free guidelines on environmental communication. Chair of the drafting committee John Shideler, of US consultancy Futurepast, says ISO 14063 will be particularly useful to civil engineers.

In addition to Civil Engineering, ICE Proceedings includes 18 specialist journals. Papers and articles published in the most recent issues are listed here. Summaries of all these and other papers and articles published can be read free in the ICE Virtual Library at www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/journals.

Later in 2020 ICE president Paul Sheffield will present awards to the following papers published in the various ICE Proceedings journals in 2019. Journal editorial panels nominated their best papers and an awards committee, chaired by Tim Broyd, allocated the awards. These award-winning papers can be downloaded for free from the ICE Virtual Library’s ‘ICE Publishing Awards 2020’ page at https://www

Beijing Daxing International, which officially opened in September 2019 after 5 years of construction, is the largest airport in China and has the world’s biggest airport terminal. It is also the first to feature double-deck arrival and departure lounges and an underground high-speed rail service. Engineering highlights include a world-class seismic base isolation system, a long-span irregular curved

This paper describes the innovative temporary works used for abutment construction of a moveable bridge in London’s Docklands. Completed in 2019, the 27 m span Water Street Bridge and its approach causeway connect the Canary Wharf estate to the new Wood Wharf development on a reclaimed island site. Using strand-jacking, grout-bag seals, heavy temporary steelwork and innovative use of permanent works

Three new adits were required between existing underground railway platform tunnels on the Bank station capacity upgrade project in London, UK. Normally they would have been built by traditional hand-mining techniques with temporary support from within the platform tunnels. An innovative solution, involving a mechanised sprayed concrete lining with an optimised external support system, was developed

This paper describes the challenging temporary works used for demolishing the vast Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, UK, in particular the removal of a major access bridge and one of the main roofs. The bridge, which provided vehicular and pedestrian access between the two main exhibition halls over a railway line, was removed by cutting, lifting and sliding entire spans. The 1300 t truss roof

Bridge Street overbridge next to Newport station in south Wales was replaced to enable electrification of the Great Western main line railway between London and Cardiff. The former 120-year-old ste...

Building information modelling (BIM) transformed the delivery of Network Rail’s Greater West programme, which included electrification of the Great Western railway between London and south Wales in...

This paper describes the key challenges faced in three recent long-span bridge projects in India and explains how they were overcome through the application of novel construction methods. They incl...

A new water main siphon tunnel was built under New York Harbor in 2015 to allow larger ships to access the Port of New York and New Jersey. Located between Brooklyn and Staten Island, the 2.9 km lo...

Communities in London and along the tidal River Thames in the UK already benefit from world-class tidal defences, but climate change means flood risk continues to increase. In 2012, the Environment...

The steep hilly terrain of Hong Kong is a significant constraint on surface development but offers great opportunities for underground rock caverns. With multi-dimensional planning vision, the Gove...

Tunnels and underground spaces are expensive to build, and the ground continues to present a key source of construction risk. This paper outlines the tangible benefits of an iterative and predictiv...

Early contractor involvement during the design of the UK’s London Underground Bank station capacity upgrade project helped to minimise health and safety risks. Design and construction teams for the...

Working in compressed air is a well recognised technique for tunnelling in soft, wet ground. This paper describes techniques for working in pressures of up to 15 bar, significantly above normal sta...

This paper looks at possible innovations to reduce the environmental impact of underground construction. For example, the concrete and steel reinforcement in sprayed concrete linings are two of the largest contributors to the embodied carbon dioxide of tunnels and underground spaces. Improvements can be made by either replacing materials or changing the design. However, substituting materials and components