Author Archives: Rob Hakimian

Construction of the 1.15km rail bridge across the Daugava River in Riga, Latvia as part of the Rail Baltica project has commenced.

Rail Baltica is the 870km high speed railway that will connect the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The £5bn (in 2017 prices) project is ramping up to…

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has scaled back its capacity growth target for Manchester Airport in the wake of the cancellation of High Speed 2 (HS2) north of Birmingham.

Manchester Airport has bounced back post-pandemic and is now at its previous level of 28M annual passengers. MAG had planned to see its…

Thames Water has announced the three partners it has appointed to its £300M Technical Partner Framework for the delivery of its Strategic Resource Options (SRO) programme.

The three consortia appointed to the framework are: Arup / Binnies JV AtkinsRéalis / Stantec JV Jacobs / Mott MacDonald JV Thames Water said that it…

Plans for new stations at Castle Bromwich, Coventry East and near Tattenhall will be taken forward after the West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE) earmarked £1M to develop proposals.

WMRE, part of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), has shortlisted these three locations following feasibility studies. The studies found that stations in…

Requirement for developers to ensure a 10% biodiversity net gain (BNG) has come into effect today, 12 February, with experts welcoming the move but warning of the effect it could have on local planning authorities.

Under the new rules, being enforced by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra),…

National Highways has revealed that it spent £352,000 removing the unwanted infill from beneath the Great Musgrave bridge in Cumbria – almost triple what it cost to install.

The infilling of the 8.4m single span masonry arch bridge with around 1,000t of concrete was carried out by between May and July…

London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (LBHF) has blamed the Department for Transport (DfT) for delays to fixing the Hammersmith Bridge and is temporarily opening a two-way central cycleway.

The crucial central London bridge has been closed to road traffic for five years. It is currently undergoing stabilisation works which has…

HS2 Ltd has signalled its intention to procure a £760M contract for the provision of zero carbon energy along the entire High Speed 2 (HS2) route.

The contract will encompass everything from trial operations to dynamic testing stages to full operation. HS2 Ltd’s periodic indicative notice has been released to inform…

National Grid is transporting two 178t supergrid transformers from Tilbury Docks to its new Biggleswade substation near Dunton.

The new substation is a new connection for UK Power Networks and will increase power capacity at Biggleswade, helping the community mover towards a low carbon economy. Each transformer will make the 111km…

The UK has become the first “major” economy to halve its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2022, new official statistics show.

The 50% reduction in emissions has come while the economy has grown by 79%, the government says. According to the government, the reductions are largely due to cutting emissions…