NCE at 50

NCE’s 25th anniversary supplement made predictions for what the world of civil engineering would look like in 2022 – how did those forecasts hold up?

In NCE’s 8 May 1997 issue, the news team reported that the base slab pour at Westminster station on the Jubilee Line Extension had been completed,…

Getting journalists onto site quickly to ascertain the contributing factors that have led to engineering failures has been central to the success of the insight NCE has delivered over the last 50 years.  I feel fortunate that, at the time of writing, there have been relatively few major civil engineering…

Ferrovial Construction’s UK business has high hopes That it can do its bit to address the country’s long standing skills deficit with its new apprentice programme: Futures, mentoring initiatives and career ‘roadmaps’.

Closing the skills gap remains priority number one for the civil engineering sector, says Ferrovial Construction UK’s managing director…

Fully adopting sustainable practices has the potential to move construction from being climate villains to climate heroes but there is still a lot of work to do. 

Climate resilience, circularity and net zero are now common parlance in the civil engineering sector and the industry has come a long way in…

Bridge collapses have been an ongoing topic for NCE’s news team right from the launch issue. The collapse of the Polcevera viaduct on the A10 in Genoa, Italy on 14 August 2018 killing 43 people and injuring a further 16 sent shockwaves through the industry. It happened just as we…

Concept Engineering Consultants has gained a firm foothold in the ground investigation market by taking on challenging work. Twenty five years on, the business is pursuing “purposeful growth”.

Ground investigation technology has been a fast developing part of the construction supply chain in recent years and leading players are well established…

Civil engineering was once an adversarial industry. Today partnering and collaboration are now commonly used terms, but has the sector really changed and what further shifts are needed? 

NCE’s 25th anniversary issue – published in May 1997 – included an article predicting that battles between clients, contractors and consultants would be…

Materials science and technology can only take us so far when it comes to recycling construction waste. to take it further, industry attitudes must change and standards must evolve. 

Today, with the climate emergency, few would question why you would try to recycle and reuse construction waste. But 40 years ago…

Unthinkable. It was the single word that captured a stunned reaction to the sight of the New York World Trade Center Twin Towers collapsing into a plume of dust on 11 September 2001. It was the word chosen for NCE’s cover as we raced to capture that dark moment in…

There are opportunities as well as challenges in readying infrastructure to cope with climate change.

Designing infrastructure to ensure that it remains resilient in the face of climate change is becoming more urgent – but effective adaptation involves more than just making it tougher or bigger.  There is increasing awareness that…