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

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

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

Dealing with adverse geology during construction of tunnels and underground spaces can lead to significant delays and cost increases if not adequately predicted. As described in this paper, seismic prediction during excavation allows sporadic or continuous prediction of geological uncertainties over 100 m ahead of the excavation face. To improve reliability, seismic exploration should be used at least

Southam quarry in Warwickshire, UK, supplies clay and limestone to a nearby cement works in Rugby. A new conveyor tunnel completed in 2017 will ensure its continued operation for a further 28 years. The 60 m long, sprayed-concrete-lined tunnel under the A426 highway houses part of a new 1 km long conveyor system that now transports 2500 t/day of quarried material to the processing plant. Construction

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 statutory limits. For health and safety reasons, working at such pressures requires the use of mixed-gas breathing mixtures and saturation exposure techniques. It requires a much greater knowledge of hyperbaric

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 Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has recently published a territory-wide Cavern Master Plan, broadened cavern applications and reappraised cavern engineering practice to enable future

The 4·5 km long northern subsea tunnel section of the new Tuen Mun–Chek Lap Kok Link in Hong Kong had to overcome challenging ground conditions, not least groundwater pressures of over 5 bar. Hard ground meant some 2000 disc cutters on the two 14 m diameter slurry tunnel boring machines needed changing during the drives, initially by professional divers kept in saturation conditions. Two robotic systems

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 sprayed-concrete-lined tunnel regularly interfaced to eliminate hazards where possible and, where not possible, control risks through best practice. This paper outlines some previous incidents from tunnelling

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 predictive ground-modelling approach to manage subsurface risk for key subsurface project stakeholders, namely owners, designers and constructors. Using a recent case study from the UK mining sector, it highlights