Weekly news round-up - 23 April 2014
Concrete chloride attacks Aston Expressway, HS2 Bill gets a second reading and eight renewable projects green lighted under EMR - our review of the week's infrastructure news.
Energy secretary Ed Davey has pledged government support under the new energy market reforms contracts for difference scheme for eight major renewable energy projects generating up to 4.5GW of power The deal will guarantee the price of energy from five proposed offshore wind farms and the conversion of three coal-powered plants to run on biomass which he said would attract £12bn in private investment while adding 2% to average household energy bills.
Nine firms have signed-up to the Construction Supply Chain Payment Charter. They are Barratt Developments, Berkeley Group, British Land, Imtech UK, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Skanska, Stanford Industrial Concrete Flooring and Stepnell. See article here
The Aston Expressway needs £26M of work to tackle concrete chloride attack problems according to Birmingham City Council. A new report by the authority warns that Birmingham could be affected like London when the Hammersmith flyover was closed for emergency structural repairs. The report says” Without action to maintain the viaduct, the risk of weight restrictions and collapse of the viaduct is considerable.
MPs are to debate the second reading of the HS2 High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill in the House of Commons on Monday. The debate is expected to start at 3.30pm.
Japanese firm Hitachi has secured £2.7bn of funding for its contract to bring new high speed trains to the East Coast Main Line. Nearly 500 carriages for the class 800 trains for the route will be built creating 730 jobs. The contract to deliver the trains was agreed with Agility Trains, a consortium of Hitachi Rail Europe and John Laing.
The Environment Agency has reported that 350 damaged flood defence assets have been repaired following the winter storms. A further 650 assets have repairs planned or underway.
Scotland’s biggest work of art, the Kelpies, has been officially opened in Falkirk and is the centerpiece for the Helix land transformation project, a joint venture between Falkirk Council, Scottish Canals and Central Scotland Forest Trust. The almost 35m high giant horses heads created by Andy Scott had engineering support from Atkins. Find out more here
EngineeringUK is looking for support for “Tomorrow’s Engineer’s Week” between 3 and 7 November. The aim is to create a buzz around engineering and promote careers to young people. The week was launched by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last year and involved over 70 engineering organisations, 65 events and 200 schools. Visit www.tomorrowsengineers.org.uk/TEWeek
Office of Rail Regulation reports that total government funding for the rail network was £4bn in 2012-13, representing 30.9% of the industry’s total income. This is a fall of 4.2% compared to 2011-12 and by 9.1% in 2010-11. Passengers covered an increasing portion of the income, up to 59.2% from 57.4% in 2011-12 and 55.6% in 2010-11.
Parsons Brinckerhoff has won a contract to undertake national road traffic census counts for the Government, almost doubling the company’s previous activity in the area. It will now be managing 1500 people and undertaking more than 6000 traffic count surveys a year.