Tag: Environment

Planning and Building for our future environment: Constructing Excellence Yorkshire and Humber breakfast event

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There is growing concern regarding climate change and the effects of adversely inclement weather resulting in severe flooding and the rise in sea levels.  Constructing Excellence Yorkshire & Humber are pleased to showcase two award winning projects in our region that will improve the environment & protect residents homes including a flood defence protection scheme and a coastal erosion scheme.

Join us at our next breakfast event where we will hear from our CEYH Civil Engineering Project of the Year winners talking about ‘The Foss Barrier’ project in York.  We will also hear from our Innovation category winners talking about the ‘Runswick Bay Coastal Defence Scheme’ in North Yorkshire.

The Foss Barrier: Road to Recovery, JBA Bentley and the Environment Agency

In December 2015, the most severe floods in a generation hit the city of York. As water levels rose to the highest recorded on the River Foss, they entered the main control building at the Foss Barrier, which forms an important part of the city’s flood defences, rendering the facility inoperable.  The Foss Barrier and pumping station were built in the 1980s in response to severe flooding five years previous. In flood conditions, a mechanical gate can be closed to stop rising waters in the River Ouse from backing up into the River Foss, preventing flooding to a large part of the city. When the barrier is down, the facility relies on eight pumps to transfer flow (up to 30m3/s prior to the refurbishment works) from the River Foss around the barrier into the River Ouse.

After significant involvement in the initial emergency flood response, JBA Bentley were engaged to deliver the high-profile upgrade to the site, with the key objective being to enhance the resilience and capacity of the site, whilst critically ensuring the pump station remained operational throughout.

Working in challenging conditions on a constrained site – with extremely tight timescales – clever civil engineering and an innovative approach to temporary works has been pivotal to the success of the scheme. Although some elements of work are still outstanding, the pumping station is now fully operational from the new building and provides enhanced flood protection and peace of mind to the residents of York.

“Judges acknowledged the collaborative working approach and commitment in delivering a technically challenging scheme in a very public and sensitive environment. The innovative use of modular components to reduce the amount of temporary works was key in delivering the scheme to keep the people of York safe and makes this a very worthy winner”

Runswick Bay Coastal Defence Scheme, Esh Construction

The historic seawall at Runswick Bay had reached the end of its serviceable life with a failure predicted within the next 10 years. The coastal defence scheme involved concrete repairs to the toe prior to the placement of 9,500 tonnes of high-density rock armour to form a new revetment totalling 250m length. This combats the effects of degradation to the toe of the seawall by preventing undermining and scouring while combating the effects of sea level rise and increased storminess predicted as a result of climate change. Ecological enhancement also factored highly in the scheme and represented leading-edge coastal engineering practice.

This innovative award-winning coastal defence scheme involved collaboration between ecologists, engineers and coastal managers and will give 100 years of improved protection to homes and businesses and safeguard the village’s main income stream of tourism.

“Judges were impressed by the scale of this scheme, its longevity and attention to detail. The innovation shown in the project has been independently verified and showcases a great collaboration between engineers and ecologists. The knowledge will be shared within the industry and the team should be rightly proud of a really forward thinking engineering solution” 

 

Event Details

Thursday 7th November 2019 

08:30 to 10:00 (registration & networking breakfast from 08:00)

Addleshaw Goddard LLP, 3 Sovereign Square, Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1 4ER

CLICK HERE TO BOOK

Dark and true and technological is the North: Digitising the region

At a recent Constructing Excellence breakfast event we held, we were particularly struck by a statistic from a recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study which proposed that in terms of digitisation, the construction industry lags dramatically behind those in other classically undigitalised sectors and in fact ranks only above farming and agriculture. Having been heavily involved in promoting digital construction across the region and beyond we felt that in light of this statistic it was important to explore our impression of where the industry is and specifically where Yorkshire and Humber currently places in order to meet the demands of the future.

Screen shot from MyConsole presentation at Constructing Excellence breakfast event on 26th April 2017.

We at Constructing Excellence Yorkshire and Humber (CEYH), part of the Leeds Beckett University School of Built Environment and Engineering have been running digitally focussed events through our thinkBIM network for over five years now and have overseen a massive growth in digital uptake across the region. Originally set up as a network to promote the advancement of BIM (Building Information Modelling) our remit has broadened to highlight new technologies and digital processes and their current and future uses.

When we started, the events were definitely for the innovators and early adopters, particularly in larger companies with SMEs being a little unsure of dipping their toe in the water; early problems being the choices of software available, balancing the cost of adoption with business needs and lack of clarity in contractual BIM requirements – all issues which we have had to address through events and targeted 1:1 support. As the network has expanded though, so has the industry’s understanding of the benefits of digital adoption, and this along with the publishing of the Digital Built Britain strategy in 2015 has helped to demystify some of the processes and improved knowledge and uptake of digital tools and processes across the region.

Even in these early days of digital adoption we saw how local organisations were at the cutting edge of the technological innovation that was unfolding. Not always on the large and prestigious projects but on smaller schemes like the laser scanning of the Orangery in Wakefield by DLA Design which showed what was possible already. We also witnessed the great work done by BAM at First Direct Arena working with their designers, structural steelworkers and precast concrete manufacturers who collaborated together using coordinated models form each organisation to resolve issues with the design, create and more effective design and improve the outcomes for the site team. By working together the team delivered an innovative and award winning venue for the city of Leeds.

Federated model image submitted by A1L2B, a Carillion Morgan Sindall Joint Venture, as part of their winning entry in CEYH Awards 2015

The region has also seen the digitisation of infrastructure schemes too. The award winning A1 Improvement scheme from Leeming to Barton, a Carillion Morgan Sindall Joint Venture demonstrated many new and innovative ways to use digital data to assist with stakeholder engagement as well as collecting real time digital quality records during the course of the works too. Over at Immingham, Costain used the combined, federated, model of their scheme to accurately and successfully plan a 76 hour possession over Christmas 2015 where the team jacked a 5000 tonne bridge into place under the busiest freight railway line in the UK. All this was achieved by creating a digital programme that was meticulously planned, checked and reviewed by the project team, Highways England and Network Rail.

Solius Group virtual reality demonstration at thinkBIM conference in April 2017

More recently the thinkBIM network has been able to lift the lid on the future with demonstrations of Augmented Realities and Virtual Realities. These technologies are actually starting to become widespread too as more and more businesses start to see ways to use gaming technology for customer engagement, construction rehearsals and health and safety briefings as well as for operations teams to better understand the assets that they are maintaining with a level of efficiency previously unheard of. #itsBIMupNorth not just a hashtag but proof that Yorkshire really is a centre of excellence for the digital delivery of projects.

But the key thing here is not the technology, but the people behind it. As Steve Jobs once said “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them”. From a niche group of technically minded people the thinkBIM network has grown to reflect and support a much wider community focussed on working more efficiently and who adopt a whole lifecycle approach not just procuring data for the physical asset alone. And here-in lies the challenge going forward, ensuring the industry is constantly recruiting and upskilling the individuals and teams who are able to exploit the opportunity technology offers.

Let us know your thoughts of where the industry is and where it needs to be and where you see the future of digital technologies for construction.

 

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