Editorial

Welcome to the May 2014 issue of Civil Engineering, the general journal of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Continuing our theme of innovative transport systems – such as the driverless metro in Dubai (Botelle et al., 2012) and the Emirates Air Line cable car (Randall, 2013) – we start with a report of the driverless ‘pod’ system at London's Heathrow airport (Kerr et al., 2014).

One of only three personal rapid transit systems in the world, the 3·9 km Heathrow pod has already successfully carried over a million passengers between Terminal 5 and its business car park. There are now plans to extend it to Terminal 3 and the new Terminal 2, which opens in next month.

With extremely lightweight infrastructure, high levels of operational reliability and an exceptionally positive response of passengers, personal rapid transit systems such as this appear to offer a valuable and viable contribution to future transportation.

Heavy rail of course continues to play a vital economic role and, following a review of the resilience of the UK's rail network (Doherty et al., 2012), we look in this issue at how the network has benchmarked itself for international comparison.

Algaard and Treacher (2014) discuss how Network Rail has made quantitative international comparisons to see how efficient it is and qualitative comparisons to identify best practice. They describe how the benchmarking was done, the variety of approaches that were used and how the resulting ideas for improvement were implemented. There are invaluable techniques and lessons here for every civil engineering organisation.

In our third paper we move to air transport, but more specifically to the role that building information modelling (BIM) can play in improving the infrastructure delivery. As reported in our recent briefings (Sibert, 2013; Vernikos, 2012), BIM will be required on all UK public sector projects by 2016.

Neath et al. (2014) describe how Gatwick airport – the busiest single-runway airport in the world – has taken an early lead by placing BIM at the heart of its ongoing infrastructure investment programme. Working in partnership with the airport's construction manager and software supplier, the airport has transformed project delivery and asset management through practical application of BIM. This is essential reading for everyone involved in infrastructure delivery.

Our fourth paper focuses on sustainability of infrastructure – in particular the use of low-cost retention systems to reduce flood risk, again at the top of the political agenda in the UK. Following our review of the Hampton development in Peterborough, one of the UK's largest applications of sustainable drainage systems (Henry, 2012), we report in this issue on a unique sustainable urban drainage demonstration project in the USA

Sample et al. (2014) describe how a variety of retention techniques were retrofitted to the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, USA, including bio-retention, planter trenches, a permeable pavement and a vegetated roof. The performance of each is comprehensively monitored and widely disseminated to both technical and non-technical audiences by way of a website, site tours, presentations and workshops.

As the authors conclude, demonstrator projects such as these – which help civil engineers engage with the public and politicians as well as each other – are all too rare. It serves a benchmark for how the profession can showcase to a wider audience its ability to provide innovative, sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

Finally, on behalf of the editorial panel, I would like to extend my thanks to those that have helped produce this issue, especially the authors of the above papers for sharing their experiences with us. I hope you find these enjoyable, and that they encourage you and your colleagues to consider sharing your own experiences through this and other ICE Proceedings journals.