Weekly news round-up - 14 November 2014

CH2MHill wins Thames flood role, commuters travelling 11 hours a month longer and Northern Line Extension gets the green light.

Jackie Whitelaw
13 November 2014

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1. The amount of time that commuters spend travelling to and from work has increased on average by almost 11 hours over the past five years, according to TUC analysis of official figures. For car users it is 7 hours more, for public transpot users it is 14 hours. The South East has seen the most dramatic annual increase – with commuters there facing an additional 20 hours to their journeys. The TUC believes that UK workers are spending far too much of their lives commuting – an average of nearly 211 hours per year, or the equivalent of more than a month’s full-time work.It wants more home working and flexi time to help workers and take pressure off public transport and the roads.

2. The £1bn extension of the London Underground Northern Line to Nine Elms and Battersea has been given the go ahead by the government.

3. Lambeth Council in London has given Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge planning approval. The £175M pedestrian crossing of the Thames will span the river between Temple and the South Bank and will feature a figure of eight of curving, paved pathways linking five gardens displaying plants from Britain and northern Europe.

4. Hinkley Point C, the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy, HS2 and the rebuilding of 261 schools across the UK feature in KPMG International’s latest Infrastructure 100: World Markets Report. The report identifies 100 of the world’s most innovative and impactful infrastructure projects – as judged by a panel of global independent experts - and highlights key trends driving infrastructure investment.

5. Business and energy minister Matthew Hancock has said that the Government is preparing to announce plans for a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ to hold the revenues from fracking for the north of England. He also announced creation of a new National College for Onshore Oil and Gas, based in Blackpool with offshoots in Chester, Portsmouth, Redcar and Strathclyde. It will train school leavers and graduates in fracking technology, enabling them to win lucrative jobs in the industry. Meanwhile the UK Energy Research Centre has said, in a new report, that shale gas was so early in its infancy it was impossible to know how much could be extracted and at what cost.

6. The Homes and Communities Agency has appointed a number of firms to its new £100 million multidisciplinary panel. The panel is: AECOM, AMEC Environment and Infrastructure UK, Atkins, BDP, CH2MHill, Hyder Consulting, Mott MacDonald, Mouchel, Ove Arup & Partners, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Pell Frischmann, Peter Brett Associates, Savills (UK), Tibbalds CampbelllReith Joint Venture, URS , WSP, WYG.

7. Unveiled this week was the £10M Urban Community Energy Fund which will give community groups in England the opportunity to bid for grants of up to £20,000, or loans of up to £130,000 to help kick-start local ‘power hub’ projects such as installing solar panels on local buildings or building anaerobic digestion energy to waste plant.

8. Antony Martin from Southwark became the 500th trainee to emerge from the Thameslink Programme’s London Bridge Skills Academy set up in 2013 to train and develop engineers working on the £6.5bn scheme.

9. BIM has helped Skanska Balfour Beatty, working on behalf of Connect Plus for the Highways Agency, complete a £1.3bn smart motorway upgrade of the M25 J25 to 27 thirty-six weeks ahead of schedule. BIM enabled the early detection of design issues while at the same time providing the customer, the Highways Agency, and stakeholders, such as Network Rail, with real-time information on design and implementation. BIM also sped up the traditional decision making process through, for example, the widespread use of ‘electronic sign-off’ as opposed to in person, and QR (Quick Read) codes were used on all drawings so that they could instantly be downloaded for surveyors and site managers to use without the need for printed copies. 

    

    

10. Environment Agency has awarded CH2M HILL the delivery partner contract for the Thames Estuary Asset Management Programme. This major tidal flood defence programme, valued at £300 million, represents the first 10 years of a 100 year programme developed by the Environment Agency to protect London and the Thames estuary from current and future tidal flooding through to 2100. Once underway the scheme will be one of the world's largest flood risk management programmes.  CH2M HILL will be working alongside Balfour Beatty and specialist suppliers including Critigen, Hunton Engineering Ltd, KGAL and Qualter Hall.