Helena Russell

Work to strengthen and upgrade a Grade-II listed Victorian viaduct serving four major quarries in Derbyshire involved careful planning to minimise the impact on users and amendment to the geopolymer specification to cut costs. Chapel Milton is one of Britain’s great Victorian railway viaducts, built in 1867 by the Midland Railway to carry express passenger trains between London and Manchester and joined by a second viaduct two decades later to take trains towards Sheffield.

NCE finds out why robustness and recoverability are key factors in infrastructure resilience, and influence the design, management and maintenance of bridges. The importance of designing new structures to be resilient to climate change and extreme loading conditions is accepted wisdom, even as understanding of how this can be achieved continues to evolve.

An alternative technical solution for the substructure of high-spec laboratory buildings in Oxford is delivering significant savings on time, cost and carbon. Construction of the first of three new laboratory buildings at Oxford Science Park (OSP) reached roof level in February, with handover set to be completed five weeks earlier than originally anticipated thanks to an alternative substructure design.