The U.K.’s construction sector found some solace in the Oct. 25 publication of the country’s first national infrastructure development plan. It was announced a few days after the government outlined huge cuts in infrastructure and other public budgets aimed at eliminating its deep budget deficit. Credit: ffice of The Prime Minister Prime Minister David Cameron’s budget cuts spare the Crossrail London railroad tunnel. Related Links: London’s Massive Rail Project Gains Favor How far the U.K.’s six-month-old coalition government and its conservative prime minister, David Cameron, will go to cut the deficit is shown by their willingness to pull back on

Workers floated out the last section of the old Willis Avenue Bridge on Oct. 26. The section will be moved on Nov. 2, decontaminated of asbestos and other harmful materials and transported to New Jersey for recycling. The new bridge section has been actively accepting traffic since Oct. 2, but construction of the $612-million project is scheduled to continue for the next two years, says Bill Nyman, project manager for Hardesty & Hanover LLP. “We’ve done this without affecting traffic,” says Nyman. “The project is on schedule, and there’s been limited impact.” Nyman says the project has caused quite a

A German consortium apparently has won a $1-billion concession to run San Francisco’s Presidio Parkway project for 33 years. The state of California, the California Dept. of Transportation and the San Francisco County Transportation Authority issued a notice of intent to sign a public-private partnership deal with Essen, Germany-based Hochtief Concessions. Meridiam Infrastructure, Luxemburg, is Hochtief ’s 50% partner on the Golden Gate Bridge southern access project’s design, construction, finance, operation and maintenance. The consortium’s construction team is led by Hochtief subsidiary Flatiron. The German firm set up Hochtief PPP Solutions North America in 2009 to bid on PPP projects

Construction on a 250-MW hydroelectric powerplant in Nicaragua is slated to begin in November after financing for the $700-million project was lined up through a slate of Brazilian firms and regional organizations. Earlier this year, a consortium led by Brazil’s state utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras (Eletrobras) and Centrales Hidroelectricas de Centroamerica (CHC)—a subsidiary of the Brazilian construction firm Queiroz Galvao—was awarded a 30-year, build-operate-transfer concession for the Tumarin hydroelectric facility on the Rio Grande de Matagalpa River, located northeast of the capital Managua. When completed in 2014, the 60-meter-high dam will create a 55-sq-kilometer reservoir in Nicaragua’s south Atlantic autonomous

Pakistan’s catastrophic floods this year overshadowed the Indus River’s pivotal role in irrigating the country’s farmland and generating its electricity. But even as river levees tumbled, engineers were completing plans to enlarge generating capacity of the Indus’ mighty Tarbela dam by 27% and to build the even larger Diamer Basha hydro project farther upstream. Photo: Courtesy Mott Macdonald Group Tarbela siltation prompted power planners to site a second dam upstream. Diamer Basha will be sited more than 300 kilometers upriver of Tarbela but will, nevertheless, boost the lower plant’s output by reducing sedimentation. Since Tarbela’s completion some 36 years ago,

More environmental cleanup work may be on the horizon for remediation contractors as a result of a $773-million settlement that will set up a trust fund—the largest of its kind—to clean up and repurpose numerous former General Motor sites across the country. The settlement, filed on Oct. 20 in the Manhattan court overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings, is between the liquidation company that now owns the assets of the old General Motors Corp. (Old GM) and the United States, 14 states and a tribal government. Under the agreement, Old GM will commit $773 million for the cleanup in 14 states of

The world’s longest tunnel, Switzerland’s 57-kilometer-long Gotthard Alpine rail crossing, broke through on Oct. 15. The Gotthard twin tunnels will be the longest of several being built through the Alps on the Milan, Italy, to Basel, Switzerland, corridor. The joint-venture Tunnel AlpTransit-Ticino (TAT) broke northward from its Faido section of the east drive into the awaiting Sedrun stretch, roughly halfway along the tunnel. The west tunnel’s breakthrough is scheduled for next spring. TAT used 8.8-meter-dia Herrenknecht Gripper tunnel-boring machines for most of the excavation. Because of difficult ground conditions on the south drives, including the Faido and Bodio sections, the

The Tennessee Valley Authority has invested nearly $100 million over the last year to shore up coal waste disposal facilities at its powerplant sites, and will spend up to $2 billion more to convert wet coal-ash storage sites to dry ash storage. But it’s not likely other utilities will follow suit until federal requirements become clearer. In the wake of the 2008 coal-ash spill at TVA’s Kingston, Tenn., plant site—the biggest environmental disaster of its kind in U.S. history—most utilities have inspected their coal- ash waste ponds to make sure they are not a hazard to life or property. But

The U.K.’s North Sea gas reserves are running out. But rather than let gas pipes go to waste, the national transmission network owner plans to use some of them to send carbon dioxide captured from a Scottish coal-fired powerplant for disposal in depleted offshore wells. Photo: Courtesy of Scottish Power With E.ON U.K. dropping out of the CCS race, ScottishPower’s Longannet powerplant in Scotland is the last project standing in the competition for funding a carbon-capture facility. Photo: Courtesy of TCM Norway’s Technology Centre Mongstad hopes to complete its nearly $900-million CCS test facility by 2018. Related Links: Ten Minutes