Welcome to the November 2015 issue of Civil Engineering, the flagship journal of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
I write this at the outbreak of the global diesel emissions scandal, the ramifications of which will no doubt run for many years to come. Indeed, we highlighted the problem nearly 2 years ago in our February 2013 article, ‘Road schemes at risk from persistently dirty diesels’ (Tate, 2013). The good news is that cars – and the air around roads – should at last now get cleaner.
With most new trains now electric, air quality is certainly no longer an issue for urban rail schemes. These include the £1 billion fleet of new energy-efficient, air-conditioned Aventra trains which Bombadier is delivering for London’s Crossrail project. This vast £14·8 billion scheme remains on track for completion on schedule and within budget in 2018, with the ICE’s NEC3 contract suite at the heart of its procurement. We are currently working with Crossrail to commission and publish a special issue of Civil Engineering on the project next year.
In the meantime we have two papers in this issue focusing on specific aspects of Crossrail’s delivery. In the first, Douglas et al. (2015) describe design and construction of the huge Moorgate shaft base at Liverpool Street station, one of the deepest in London. Construction of the 2 m thick slab at the base of the 42 m deep shaft required close collaboration between the client, designer, contractor and suppliers to ensure it was watertight and to avoid overheating during curing. The paper describes the many challenges involved in pouring 1750 m3 of concrete in just over 17 h deep underground.
While much of the technology being used on Crossrail is tried-and-tested, innovation was actively encouraged. The second paper, by DeBarro et al. (2015), describes the development and implementation of an innovation strategy on the project. The aim was to encourage the supply chain to develop and apply genuinely beneficial new products, processes and services – then to ensure these were shared throughout the project. In the first 12 months of the programme over 400 ideas were submitted, of which over 180 were developed into innovations and published athttp://www.innovate18.co.uk. Examples include using telescopic clamshell excavators, re-use of London Clay as lightweight aggregate, putting safety messages on safety gloves and creation of segregated mobile communications zones.
From innovations in Europe we move to standards in Asia. Many non-EU countries which previously used British standards are now trying to adopt Eurocodes, but Hicks (2015) reports from New Zealand that this is proving difficult without access to construction products complying with European product standards. Using steel construction as an example, he describes the different approaches to overcoming the problem that are being used in the Asia-Pacific region. He also identifies what resources are required to support the EU’s aim of increasing international trade and competitiveness.
But whatever structural material or standards are used, today’s civil engineers should have no problem putting things in the right place thanks to Earth’s ever-increasing constellation of navigational satellites. Roberts et al. (2015) provide a much-needed update on this fast-moving positioning technology. The 31 US GPS satellites are now complemented by 24 Russian Glonass satellites and, when the European Galileo and Chinese BeiDou systems become fully operational in 2020, there will be over 120 navigational satellites to choose from. Provided they all manage to avoid each other, they should enable civil engineers to achieve millimetre positioning accuracy world-wide.
Finally, looking ahead, ICE will be celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2018. If you have any ideas for articles and papers that in some way reflect the profession’s achievements over the past two centuries, we would like to hear from you. We will of course continue to welcome all contributions to this and the other ICE Proceedings journals, so please include ‘Write a paper for ICE’ in your new year’s resolutions. Best wishes for 2016.
