Transport for New South Wales has appointed Turner & Townsend to provide cost planning services for the development of the Sydney Light Rail strategic plan.

The light rail strategic plan will assess the benefits and costs of expanding the existing light rail network along three key corridors, through the central business district, to the University of New South Wales and to the University of Sydney. It will provide the basis for decisions about the future of light rail in the city.

The scope of the 12-month work is to assess and prioritise multiple options for possible routes leading to the identification of preferred routes within the three corridors.

Project development will involve detailed scoping and project definition, assessment of benefits and cost and validation of the business case sufficiently to enable a decision to be made to proceed to project delivery.

Turner & Townsend’s cost projections will be used to underpin the work. The projections will include a quantitative risk assessment, cash flow forecasts and an assessment of escalation over the expected duration of the project.

Former UK prime minister Sir John Major is to lead an Aecom advisory board focused on high-growth markets.

Aecom has established the new  global advisory board with the intention of supporting the company’s efforts to enter and grow in new geographic areas, business lines and high-growth service areas. Other members of the board include former prime minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong, chairman of India-based Housing Development Finance Corporation Deepak Parekh and president of Vienna-based DT-Global Business Consulting Dr Daniel Thorniley.

“I am pleased to announce the formation of the  Aecom Global Advisory Board,” said John M. Dionisio,  Aecom chairman and chief executive officer. “The global insight and marketplace visibility of our advisory board members, led by Sir John Major, will provide a valuable business perspective as we advance  Aecom’s diversified global growth strategy. In addition, our advisory board members offer expert knowledge for issues at the intersection of global business operations and society at large, including humanitarian affairs, socially responsible business practices and sustainability.”

He said that the advisory board will be especially valuable in offering guidance as  Aecom increases its participation in geographic areas of focus such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, India and Latin America as well as high-growth businesses such as oil and gas, energy, mining, and national security.

"I am delighted to chair such a distinguished advisory board of members prepared to offer their experience and expertise in support of one of the world’s most ethical companies,” said Sir John.

NCC Construction Norway has signed a contract worth SEK475m (£45m) for foundation engineering and concrete work at Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport.

The work for client Oslo Lufthavn is scheduled to take three years and is a phase in the expansion of the Gardermoen Airport.

Gardermoen is beginning to reach its capacity ceiling and will be expanded with a new pier to  expand the arrival and departure facilities to increase capacity. NCC’s contract is for the to the expansion of the Sentralbygning Vest, or Central Building West.

NCC said that it secured the construction contract on the basis of several criteria including a new environmental focus at all its construction sites in Norway. All sites have been designated green construction sites since the start of this year, with workplaces subject to rigorous environmental demands, including the use of energy-efficient solutions and efficient waste management.

Work will start in April and is scheduled to continue until February 2015.

Strabag has exceeded its output forecast for 2011, posting an output of €14.3bn (£11.9bn) against an estimate of $euro;14bn.

But the company’s order book at the end of 2011 was €13.4bn, which was down 9% on the 2010 level. For the most part, this was due to workloads in Poland as the preparations for the 2012 European Football Championship had triggered major infrastructure investments. Strabag had won several of the resulting contracts and finished these in the 2011 financial year. This transformed an order book of about €1.4bn into output, so that the order backlog in Poland alone sank from €2.3bn to around €900 million.

It is targetting a largely stable output for 2012 and earnings before interest and tax of more than €300m.

For the 2011 financial year, the company had expected an increase from €12.8bn to €14bn but achieved a rise of 12 %. The growth was due to strong demand in the German building construction and civil engineering segment, the booming Polish construction sector above all in the field of transportation infrastructures and the expansion in northern Europe. Additionally, Strabag acquired two construction businesses in Switzerland in the first quarter of 2011.

For 2012, Strabag continues to see an output of approximately €14.3bn. The forecast by segment is: building construction and civil engineering €5.5bn (2011: €5.1bn), transportation infrastructure €6.1bn (€6.7bn), special division and concessions €2.6bn (€2.3bn) and other €100 million. The company said that its assumes that it will be able to compensate for the expected declines in Poland through output growth in several other countries.

Habtoor Leighton Group (HLG) has been awarded a US$515m (£325m) contract as part of the US$1.33bn Habtoor Palace hotels development in Dubai.

Under the agreement with the Al Habtoor Group, HLG will be responsible for the construction of what is set to become the largest integrated hotel complex in the Middle East. The development comprises a five-level podium, a 36-storey tower and a 25-storey tower within a total gross floor area of 350,000m².

There will be 1,600 hotel rooms, spread between three hotels, a Las Vegas-style ‘aqua theatre’, a French provincial-inspired garden, restuarants and cafes.

The new development will be located on the site of the existing Metropolitan Hotel - Dubai’s oldest hotel – on Sheikh Zayed Road at the southernmost point of the Old Town development, which includes the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall.

Demolition of the existing Metropolitan is scheduled to start at the end of March with early construction works likely to begin in June. The development is due for completion in the second half of 2016.

The HLG team has spent the some six months working with the team from the Al Habtoor Group to finalise the contract for the project. HLG CEO and managing director Laurie Voyer that said he was delighted to have reached agreement. “We have successfully completed a number of projects for the Al Habtoor Group in the past – including the Habtoor Grand Beach Resort & Spa and Metropolitan Palace Hotel - and have always maintained a good working relationship with them,” he said. “We look forward to working with them again to create a development that will be a landmark for not only Dubai, but the entire Middle East.

He added that HLG continues to pursue its strategy of diversification. “We are continuing our push into new geographies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” he said. “While the Habtoor Palace is a Dubai building project, our future growth will come from major infrastructure projects in markets outside the UAE, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

A joint venture of Theiss and two Vinci subsidiaries has won a contract worth €400m (£332m) for liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage tanks in Australia.

Entrepose Projets, Vinci Construction Grands Projets and Leighton subsidiary Thiess will carry out the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the two full-containment tanks of 150,000m³ each as well as two condensate storage tanks with a capacity of 120,000m³ each.

The contract is forecast to create about 475 jobs in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. It is for the Chevron-operated Wheatstone project, a domestic gas and LNG project managed by Bechtel Australia.

Work will start immediately with construction taking place from 2013 to 2016. 

Keller has won a £30m contract to build the foundations for a major iron ore distribution facility in Lumut, Malaysia.

The contract is for Brazilian mining company Vale. The new facility will be able to receive Valemax vessels - the world's largest dry bulk carriers - and will have an annual throughput capacity of 60 million tons when operations commence in 2014, eventually handling up to 200 million tons annually.

Keller will treat an area of nearly 200,000m² with a system of vibro stone columns and bored piles. The company said that environmental sensitivity was a key influence on the choice of technology for the project. Keller's dry bottom-feed method for installing vibro stone columns was chosen as a 'green technology' as it protects natural water resources and farmland and has a lower carbon footprint than many traditional foundation solutions.

Work is expected to start in March and to be completed in the second quarter of next year.

Hochtief has set up a joint venture for offshore wind farms with Ventizz as its investment partner.

The aim is to acquire concessions and develop and sell farms. Hochtief Solutions and Ventizz Capital Partners each hold a 50% interest in Hochtief Offshore Development Solutions. Their plans include the acquisition and development of wind farm concessions and capitalising on the resulting value growth by selling them on before construction begins. The new company said that it will focus on readying the subsequent construction of the wind farms in a way that significantly reduces the risk of cost overruns and delays. This will benefit the companies that later go on to construct and operate the wind parks at the sites concerned, according to Hochtief, avoiding risks seen on projects currently in progress. 

The company does not aim to build and operate wind farms itself. Instead, it plans to sell concessions to the future operators such as energy suppliers and public utilities, financial investors and large industrial companies.

Head of energy and infrastructure solutions at Hochtief Solutions Ullrich Reinke said: "Offshore wind farms offer enormous growth potential. With the new company, we also want to contribute our know-how during the early development phases of offshore projects and thus augment value creation in this future market. Everything taken together will make for a continuous project pipeline for the group, with high earnings potential."

Hochtief already carries put construction and logistics services for a number of German wind farms as well as operating in port construction, maritime civil engineering and offshore logistics. It operates its own jack-up platforms and is currently building an vessels, the Innovation, together with a partner. Ventizz Capital Partners is a private equity investor in the German-speaking regions for technology-oriented growth companies. 

New measurements that take account of the earth’s ‘geoid’ could show Mount Everest to be a little higher than everyone thinks, according to Cowi.

An aircraft has been flying back and forth over the mountain in a series of parallel lines taking measurements to measure how much gravity pulls down on its peak. Even though the result is not expected to be ready until this summer, Cowi said that everything is pointing to a gravity measurement that puts Everest’s peak a few paces further up into the clouds.

Meaurements have been taken from on board Cowi’s King Air turboprop aircraft. Earlier efforts using lasers, GPS equipment and satellites have all confirmed the mountain's height as 8,848m, but the scientists are now employing a third method for determining heights. They are using gravity measurements to determine the earth’s so-called geoid, a  scientific term for sea level. This can be the actual sea level or what the sea level would be if the ocean extended to a point inland such as the Himalayas.

The sea level varies depending on how the ocean is affected by the earth. In the case of Mount Everest, its enormous mass influences the geoid, and this is where the gravity part comes in, said Cowi chief specialist Kristian Keller, who made Cowi’s aircraft available for the mission.

“It is what is inside the earth that determines how much gravity pulls on it. The gravitational pull on a mountain is greater than it is on a valley. The actual effect of gravity is different depending on what the geological layers are made of.”

By flying back and forth over Mount Everest, the team is seeking to measure the gravitational pull. One of the instruments they are using is a mechanical device known as a gravimeter, which can measure the gravitational pull at Everest’s peak. “Our method returns a far more precise reference point than we have been able to calculate before, and that means it is likely we will come up with a different geoid than the current old one,” said Keller. “The height difference in Everest’s case could be up to several metres.”

The aircraft flies back and forth over the mountain in a series of parallel lines to measure how much gravity is pulls down on its peak. The measurements will be used together with GPS readings from satellites to calculate both the geoid and Everest’s height. The project was developed in cooperation between Cowi, DTU Space and Survey Department, The Ministry of Land Reform, Nepal. DTU Space, with geodesist Rene Forsberg in charge, is working on the final calculations in the study and expects the results to be ready in summer.

A crane dropped a 20m-load of steel beams 40 storeys at New York's World Trade Center site yesterday.

The beams crashed onto a truck below but there were no injuries.

Cause of the accident is reported to be a cable breakage in the crane. Part of the site has been closed while the accident is investigated.

The accident occured during construction of the 288m-tall Four World Trade Center, which is one of the new towers being built at the site of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Contractor Tishman is working with the authorities to investigate the accident. Client for the scheme is the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

Building permit authorisations for privately-owned housing units in the USA in January rose seasonally adjusted annual rate of 676,000, a 0.7% rise on December’s figures.

The figures from the US Census Bureau and the Department of Housing & Urban Development show a 19% rise from the January 2011 estimate.

Authorisations for single-family homes in January were at a rate of 445,000; this is 0.9% above the revised December figure of 441,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 208,000 in January.

Privately-owned housing starts in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 699,000. This is 1.5% above the revised December estimate of 689,000 and 9.9% above the January 2011 rate of 636,000. Single-family housing starts in January were at a rate of 508,000, represneting a 1% fall from the revised December figure of 513,000. The January rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 175,000.

Privately-owned housing completions in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 530,000, which is 12.0% below the revised December estimate of 602,000, but 4.1% above the January 2011 rate of 509,000. Single-family housing completions in January were at a rate of 389,000, which represents a fall of 14.9% from the revised December rate of 457,000. The January rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 136,000.

BAM’s German facilities management business has acquired 75% of MR Facility Services, based in Hallbergmoos near Munich.

MR Facility Services has an annual turnover of approximately €4m (£3.3m) and employs 40 people. The company offers services relating to technical installations, domestic services and estate management for retail, office and residential properties.

BAM Deutschland is expanding its capacity in the sector to enable it to continue to respond to increasing demand, including schemes in relation to its own portfolio of PPP projects.

MR Facility Services was founded by its owners Thomas Merkl and Jürgen Rixner, who will be joined on the board by a representative of BAM Deutschland.

Peru’s president Ollanta Humala has announced that a concession will be awarded to build Lima Metro’s second line.

The new line will connect the Callao to the west of Lima with Ate Vitarte to the east. Building the underground metro will require an estimated investment of some US$2bn (£1.27bn) though the amount will not be confirmed until after further studies.

The area’s population is predicted to reach 12 million within five to 10 years and so the government is seeking options to solve transportation problem, said Humala.

Minister of transport and communications Carlos Paredes has coordinated with investment promotion agency Proinversión and the Ministry of Economy & Finance to ensure that the project can start as soon as possible.

The work will involve expanding the network by more than 30km. The next state is to carry out technical studies, which will take about two years. The construction period is put at about three years and Humala said that operation of the line could start in five or six years.

Bouygues Construction has signed a €575m (£480m) contract to design, build and finance the new Paris Law Court complex.

The contract also covers the provision of maintenance and upkeep services for a period of 27 years. Under the contract, Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France will be responsible for design and construction, for a total of €575m. Exprimm, a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction’s energy and services division ETDE, will provide facilities management services for the complex for an annual sum of €12.8m.

The contract is between the governing body of the Paris law courts, the Etablissement Public du Palais de Justice de Paris, and the Arelia consortium. The shareholders in the Arelia consortium are the financial investors Lloyds, DIF and SEIEF, as well as Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France and Exprimm,. Design is by Renzo Piano of Renzo Piano Building Workshop and consulting engineers Setec Bâtiment, Setec TPI, RFR and Berim.

The project will unite five facilities currently spread all around Paris. Its location will be in the Batignolles urban development zone and it will house the Paris regional court, the police court and the public prosecution service. It will also include the district courts attached to each of the capital's arrondissements. In all, the new complex will have the capacity to accommodate more than 8,000 people per day.

It involves the construction of a 160m-tall building composed of separate elements which allow for more than 1 hectare of open-air terraces planted with trees. There will be a podium housing more than 90 courtrooms. 

Thermal inertia of the complex, use of natural ventilation, tree-planted terraces, incorporation of photovoltaic panels on the facade and recovery of rainwater are among the environmental solutions employed.

Work will begin in summer 2013 and will last three and a half years.

Hyder has acquired a 70% interest in the Jeddah-based consulting engineering firm SAK Engineering Consultants, which has 40 professional staff.

Its new partner, Sheikh Solaiman El Khereiji, will retain 30% and operations will be conducted through a newly registered company, Hyder & Solaiman Elkhereiji Engineering Consulting Company.

The acquisition is designed to provide Hyder with an increased footprint in Saudi Arabia, enabling it to respond to the anticipated increase in infrastructure spend in the country.

Atkins has been appointed by the South Australian government to undertake detailed modelling for a new footbridge to be built during the redevelopment of the Adelaide Oval.

The Riverbank Bridge is an integral element in the masterplan and will cross the River Torrens, connecting the city side of the river with the Adelaide Oval precinct on the northern bank.

Atkins’ project director Cameron MacDonald, based in the company’s Hong Kong office, said: “The new bridge will form a vital part of the plans that will support the new Adelaide Oval project and the redevelopment of the Riverbank precinct. The key issue will be to work out what the design needs to respond to in terms of pedestrian loading and how people will use the bridge and onward public transport when major sporting events are held at this historic stadium.”

Atkins will provide pedestrian modelling analysis and planning to guide the designers on requirements for the bridge’s width and alignment. The team will also consult with a number of Riverbank stakeholders such as the Festival Centre and Adelaide Oval about their needs.

State minister for transport and infrastructure, Patrick Conlon, said: “The international experience Atkins brings to the project will be a real asset to the designers and project team alike. The bridge will assist in the revitalisation of this important part of the city and will play a major role in the movement strategy for the new 50,000-seat stadium.”

Construction of the bridge is expected to commence towards the end of this year and be finished by the end of 2013 to coincide with the completion of the Adelaide Oval redevelopment.

The price index for non-residential building construction in Canada increased 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Statistics Canada said that the rise compared with the previous quarter was mainly a result of continued strength in the market.

All of the seven census metropolitan areas surveyed reported quarterly increases, varying from 0.3% to 0.8%. Calgary and Edmonton (both +0.8%) and Toronto (+0.7%) recorded the largest gains.

Year over year, the composite price index for non-residential building construction was up 4.1%. Of the areas surveyed, Ottawa–Gatineau, Ontario (+5.4%) and Toronto (+4.7%) recorded the largest year-on-year increases, while Halifax (+2.8%) recorded the smallest gain.

The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) is to spend R136bn (£11bn) to acquire about 7,000 new trains and upgrade and modernise stations.

Of the total amount, R13bn will be spent on infrastructure development and about R3bn will be spent on the construction of new depots in Cape Town and Gauteng.

Prasa Group chief executive officer, Lucky Montana said that the first new trains are expected as early as in 2015. He said that Prasa will be receiving about 500 to 600 coaches a year until 2032. "The people of South Africa must have a mode of transport that they will be proud of," he said.

Montana said that with the current fleet, the level of reliability was deteriorating. "We also need to reduce travel times as part of improving on our service," Montana said, adding that travel time from Pretoria to Johannesburg needed to be reduced.

Italy's health minister has welcomed an Italian court's decision to sentence two key former shareholders of Eternit to jail in relation to a case involving more than 2,000 asbestos-related deaths.

Renato Balduzzi called the judgement "without exaggeration, truly historic" but said that the worldwide battle against asbestos is not over.

The prosecutors had said that thousands of people had died following contact with asbestos fibres coming from four of the company's plants. Eternit had stopped the operations there in the 1980s, some years before Italy banned asbestos, and the company has since changed hands.

Stephan Schidheiny of Switzerland and Jean-Louis de Cartier of Belgium, who were key shareholders of Eternit, were each given 16-year terms for failing to stop fibres arising from the operations from spreading over the region.

Atkins has won a series of design contracts for the upgrade of the Oslo Metro rapid transit system in Norway.

The work includes a section upgrade on the Lambertseterbanen, which is one of the eastern lines, as well as the modernisation of Brattelikollen and Karlsrud stations and the redesign of two depots and workshops for the tram and metro in Oslo.

Atkins’ director in Norway Håkon Dragsund said: “We are heavily involved in a number of major tramway projects across Norway and this latest work complements other upgrade and expansion projects we are working on, including the Stavanger and Bergen light rail systems. Our consultancy offering in this sector has been growing over the past few years and this is evidence that our move to boost our expertise and capabilities is paying dividends by giving us the opportunity to work on the country’s most complex engineering challenges.”

The Oslo Metro consists of six lines that run through the city centre, with a total length of 84.2km.  It accommodates 268,000 passengers a day and incorporates 105 stations.