Features

Rapid urban growth is resulting in massive mega cities with major transport needs and Mexico City is one of the world’s largest – Mike Woof reports Mexico City is a vast, sprawling metropolis and one of the world’s largest cities, resulting in huge problems for its inhabitants, particularly with regard to infrastructure. Measuring population size is an inexact science for large cities as suburban areas can add to the figures considerably, especially in developing nations where unplanned expansion is as comm

New and highly regarded existing formwork systems have been used in major recent transport-related construction projects across the globe. Guy Woodford looks at some of their applications The multi-million dollar Mississippi River Bridge project in the United State is creating a vital new gateway between Illinois and Missouri. Central to the project is the realignment and reconstruction of Interstate 70 and a new landmark bridge, featuring two pylons projecting vertically from the Mississippi river bed w

Australia's increasingly popular 12D Model software package for road design, terrain modelling, surveying and drainage has been selected as the main design and survey tool for the coordinated earthquake rebuild of Christchurch in New Zealand The 12D Model software will be the common platform for a group of consultants and contractors making up the recently formed SCIRT, standing for "Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team". They will use it for survey, repair and rebuild of both the road netwo

Transport and traffic analysis nowadays tends to switch between static analysis modelling for large scale studies and microsimulation for finer grain work, with perhaps the mesoscopic model also finding a place for mid-level. Most producers make software tools at all three levels and increasingly package them together. Spanish firm TSS (Transport Simulation Systems) has gone one better with its latest release Aimsum 7, by giving it the capacity to "zoom in" from a larger scale mesoscopic model to a smaller

In the fast moving world of construction software, major innovations are happening on a continuous basis. All the leading players are making notable contributions to the sector. A new strategic alliance just announced between the management and data handling software giant Pitney Bowes, and design and construction software producer Autodesk, will help create an end to end range of products and tools for rapidly evolving BIM strategies in the industry. In particular in should help develop an integrated suite

Lower temperature mixes – a key advance in bitumen technology - Kristina Smith reports Warm and cold mix asphalts were not on the original agenda for this year’s Eurasphalt & Eurobitume Congress, being held in Istanbul in June. But when the organisers took a look through the papers submitted for their sustainability-themed event, they realised that this is one of the industry’s hottest topics. “We hadn’t quite anticipated the high level of research in this area,” says E&E’s technical programme committee c

One of the largest construction programmes in Europe is being carried out to get a Russian resort ready for the Winter Olympics. Patrick Smith reports. Daytime temperatures top 30°C in September, and with hundreds of shops and hotels, it is not difficult to see why Sochi has become Russia's premier holiday playground. The city, on the east coast of the Black Sea, near the border with Georgia, bustles with tourists, and this is boosted with delegates at the 9th International Investment Forum Sochi 2010.

IRF will host the Third Latin America Regional Congress at the Crowne Plaza Tequendama Hotel in Bogotá, Colombia, from 8-11 November 2010 with the support of Colombia's Highway Safety Prevention Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Colombian Ministry of Transport, the National Institute of Concessions, the National Highway Institute, and the Mobility Department of the City of Bogotá. The Congress will feature direct participation by leading local and regional decision-makers, including notably Ger

Italian firm Marcegaglia has developed a new range of steel road safety barriers that is said to be versatile and cost effective. The units meet containment levels N2 to H4 and can be specified for different options in terms of working width levels (W). The line-up includes a dedicated system for motorcyclist protection designed to be fitted to all existing guardrails, a new P4 energy absorbing terminal system for barriers and a renewed range of steel New Jersey barriers, with optional integrated noise prot

Hanson UK’s Ingleton Quarry is improving screening efficiency by employing new ceramic lining technology. The facility has taken advantage of the latest developments from Sandvik to improve performance with the replacement of existing quenched steel liners with ceramic inserts. The quarry, located in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, had wear problems with the steel wear protection plates used in the screening process. This cut efficiency while the plates were also noisy. In order to address the problem th

An Interview with PRS-Med’s VP of Business Development and Marketing Hadas Levin by Chris Kelsey The year 1977 has become a watershed year for polymeric construction materials. Dr. J.P. Giroud coined the terms ‘geotextile’ and ‘geomembrane’ in a key paper at the First International Conference on Geosynthetics; and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) published a report on its testing of cellular confinement systems (first undertaken in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1975). The investigations in Mis