A round-up of the most impressive construction pictures from the past month.
New planetarium in Nottingham
GF Tomlinson has finished building a planetarium on top of an old 25m diameter Victorian reservoir in Nottingham. Architect AnotherKind used Graphisoft’s BIM software Archicad to show the building’s designs, using VR headsets to ‘walk’ around the site.
Menai Suspension Bridge maintenance
Spencer Bridge Engineering’s workers replaced and painted 168 of the 208 wire rope hangers of the Grade I-listed Menai Suspension Bridge in Wales, ahead of the crossing’s bicentenary in 2026. The structure is the world’s second-oldest operational vehicular suspension bridge.
Heathrow Cargo Tunnel project
Mace is completing the upgrade of an 870m-long cargo tunnel at Heathrow Airport built in the 1960s. The tunnel links the central terminal area with Terminal 4 and handles 6,000 vehicles per day. Mace has used MMC for the project, including manufacturing 730 MEP modules off-site.
Challenging large-scale excavation in UAE
Temporary works specialist Altrad RMD Kwikform provided 387 tonnes of Tubeshor material consisting of 24 Tubeshor props, each with a 1,060mm diameter, on a large-scale excavation in a mixed-use development in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The props were specifically designed for heavy-duty applications.
A pint of dust
Construction cleaning specialist Dustcontrol launched an awareness campaign, Dust to Dust, on the risks of overexposure to respirable crystalline silica. The company calculates that a construction worker could potentially ingest in their lifetime the equivalent of 0.68 imperial pints of respirable crystalline silica in an uncontrolled environment.
Rare find in Kier project
Archaeologists found an “extremely rare” prehistoric wooden spade at Kier’s habitat adaption scheme at Arne Moors, Dorset. Preliminary scientific dating confirms that the spade is around 3,500 years old, making it one of the earliest wooden tools discovered in Britain.
