ICE Local - January 2012 by ICE Yorkshire & Humber

The members’ newsletter of ICE Yorkshire and Humber January 2012

ice | yorkshireandhumber

ICE Local

ice.org.uk/yorkshireandhumber

In this issue Think you know about Renewables? Find out more at the Renewables Expo in Sheffield on Thursday 23 February.

Humber Package

Regional Achiever

ICE Yorkshire and Humber Award Winner 2011

This month - Simon Rawlins from Amey.

Bringing you news and views on civil engineering in your Region.

Awards and Gala Dinner

We welcome your comments, letters and articles.

Friday 16 March is looming fast, will you be attending?

Please contact us at: iceyandh@ice.org.uk Follow us on twitter: I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the current and upcoming work of our Regional Advisory Board (RAB) and the forthcoming President’s visit. The RAB is currently responding to consultations on Renewable Energy and Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs), the Reservoir Act, and Sustainable Drainage. I would urge anyone with a view on these topics to get in touch with the RAB and contribute to the consultations. The Board are also discussing how we provide input into future consultations and how Expert Panels utilise this information and feed back to the Region. Following the success last March of the RAB’s meeting with Sheffield LEP’s and Chamber of Commerce representatives during the ICE President’s visit, we have arranged a similar meeting of the ‘Great and Good’ during this year’s visit. Richard Coackley, our current President, will be in the region on Friday 16 March

@ICEYorksHumber

and his day will include attending the ‘Great and Good’ meeting at Leeds Metropolitan University with representatives from the Leeds area, the aim being to raise the profile of civil engineering in the region. Also on the 16th Richard will be hosting a round table debate with university and civil engineering leaders to discuss the potential impact of higher tuition fees on civil engineering graduates in the Region, and attending talks to Leeds Metropolitan and other students.

Spotlight on the RST

The day will finish with our Gala Dinner Dance and Awards Ceremony (see page 3). This year promises to be a great event with a range of exciting projects entered into the awards, and live music and a charity casino guaranteed to entertain.

Regional Education Team

Membership Development Officers and Public Voice.

ICE Member Benefits Bernard Marsden highlights how ICE’s Benevolent Fund can help you.

Encouraging a new generation that can create, design and build for the future.

Project Focus Rhianna Rose

MEng CEng MICE ICE Y&H Chair 2011-12

Catherine Adkroyd on how Neptune Renewable Energy is benefiting one of Hull’s most famous attractions.

So you think you know about Renewables? The renewables sector is undoubtedly gaining momentum in the quest to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Whilst it is unlikely that renewables will ever provide for all our energy needs, it is absolutely essential that they play a substantial part in our future energy strategy. The Yorkshire and Humber Region is in an enviable position with high moorland, tidal estuaries and a substantial coastline where many of the renewables can and have been implemented. Key facts: The UK has obligations to reduce carbon emissions by at least 34% and produce 15% of UK energy through renewable sources by 2020. The cumulative installed solar electricity capacity in the UK reached 22.5 MWp in 2008. With current levels of investment, the Humber area alone will be producing 50% of the UK’s biofuel within the next five years. The UK is currently a world leader in offshore renewables development. The UK’s Round 3 offshore wind farms (Dogger Bank, Hornsea and Norfolk Bank) will be the biggest and most ambitious developments of their kind worldwide.

The wind and marine energy industry is set to invest £100bn in the next 5-10 years. The industry has the potential to create an estimated 115,000 full time jobs.

Renewables Expo and Mini Conference Thursday 23 February 2012, Expo from 3pm, Mini Conference from 6:30pm, The Blue Shed, Sheffield. Exhibitors from industry and regional universities provide the latest information in this fast moving sector - Hydro, Solar, Tidal, Wind, Ground Source Heat and Biofuel initiatives. Chair: Dr Jean Venables. Confirmed speakers: Dr Alastair Buckley (University of Sheffield), Dr Glyn Hughes (Chief Executive, Humber Chemical Focus), Professor Andy Gouldson (University of Leeds).

For further information, to book a place or take an exhibition stand, visit: ice.org.uk/yorkshireandhumber/renewables2012

Regional Achiever Simon Rawlins was recently highly commended in the NCE Graduate of the Year Awards. Simon currently works as a Graduate civil engineer for Amey and obtained a first class MEng from Newcastle University. As a teenager growing up in Yorkshire, he marvelled at the county’s array of grand Victorian viaducts. “I was drawn to the appeal of a career that offers the potential to create such tangible and enduring structures,” he says. Little did he realise that, almost a decade later, during his first week as a graduate engineer with Amey, he would be dangling from a rope 30m down the side of one of those very structures inspecting the vast 150 year old, 20 span Congleton Viaduct. To do this work he had to pass a fistful of specialised rope access and bridge assessment exams. Competing with his attraction to bridges, is a passion to develop his final year university project - low cost water purification equipment for developing countries. He has produced a prototype of a reflective foil mirror to concentrate sunlight on rainwater, heating it sufficiently to turn it into clean drinking water. Next year he plans to return to Kenya where he trialed it while at university, to convert his ideas into a cheap, working model able to be built and operated by the local inhabitants. “Innovative, very committed and an engineer who creates his own opportunities,” said the judges.1 1

nce.co.uk/precocious-talent/8623612.article

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2012 Awards Entries

ICE Yorkshire and Humber Awards Gala Dinner Dance 2012

The prestigious ICE Yorkshire and Humber Awards showcase the collective achievements of Civil Engineers and civil engineering in the Yorkshire and Humber region. Each year two awards are presented; the Annual Award for Excellence (presented to a project constructed in the Region), and the Smeaton Award (presented to a project with input from the Region, but not constructed in the Region).

Previous winners have included the Humber Package scheme, A6102 Storm Damage Sites and Sheffield Inner Relief Road. This year 23 projects have been entered into the awards involving over 65 companies and organisations. The winners will be announced at our annual glittering awards ceremony and black-tie dinner with ICE President Richard Coackley as guest of honour.

A58M Woodhouse Tunnel Essential Maintenance Automatic Queue & Congestion Sign Legends at Barnsley Urban Traffic Control System Bents Green School Brickyard Cottages, North Ferriby Caythorpe Gas Storage Enabling Works Cleggford Bridge Strengthening & Widening Scheme, Dewsbury Heslington East Cluster 1 Sustainable Drainage HJB-12 Bentley Railway Intersection Bridge Reconstruction Kings Cross Redevelopment Programme Design Works Kirk Balk Community College Lancaster Park Road Leeds Street Lighting PFI – Lighting Improvement for the Community Leeds West Academy Lower Laithe Spillway Improvement Works Outwood School Footbridge Refurbishment Pinfold Public Open Space Project - Barnsley Product Test Rig for the Property Level Flood Protection and Resillience Scheme Inmans Estate, Hedon Raywell Valley Flood Attenuation Scheme Ripon Flood Alleviation Scheme SMJ2-20 Knottingley Road Bridge Replacement The City Park, Bradford Union Bridge Replacement & Fish Pass, Marsden Windleden Upper Reservoir - Spillway Improvements

Entertainment includes a Jazz trio to welcome you to the event, with after-dinner music courtesy of versatile live band Boogie Express. If you fancy a little flutter - why not try your hand at the Fun Casino? Players make a donation in exchange for “fun money”, and all proceeds raised will go to RedR, with prizes at the end for the highest rollers.

MDOs and Public Voice

ICE Member Benefits Bank crisis, debt crisis, financial meltdown... the world is in a financial mess. Credit card debt is rife and sadly civil engineers are not immune. But fear not, help is at hand. Your Benevolent Fund continues to meet every fresh challenge and has now extended the scope of its 24-hour help line to include specialist financial advice.

For some time, we have been short of a dedicated Public Voice (External Relations) employee in the Region. The retirement of Peter Shapland in June gave us the opportunity to combine his role as a Membership Development Office (MDO) with this role. Elizabeth Thompson and Robin Bailey were appointed on a job-sharing arrangement and they each spend a weekly average of 1½ days as an MDO and one day on Public Voice. The latter involves, primarily, liaising with the business community (LEPs, Chambers of Commerce) and also the media when there are opportuniies for this.

The new service has already been well-used and, although the Fund will not normally settle a member’s debts our specialist adviser has been instrumental in helping a number of members to reorganise their financial commitments, get on top of their situation and steer themselves into calmer waters. And of course we continue to run our welldeveloped programmes helping disadvantaged students by means of small grants, helping, through our outplacement service, members made redundant and helping many other engineers and their dependants in need of help in other ways.

In both MDO and Public Voice roles, Elizabeth looks after the Hull and Humber area and most of North Yorkshire whilst Robin covers mainly north Leeds. As a consequence of this (and of where they live), MDO Bob Bennett now covers South and most of West Yorkshire (except north Leeds) and he and Regional Director, David Tattersall, oversee Public Voice in South Yorkshire and the Region generally.

The Benevolent Fund 24/7 Helpline

01444 417 979 0800 587 3428

ICE Local - January 2012

Regional Education Team (RET) ICE Yorkshire and Humber’s Regional Education Team works with young people throughout the Region to promote the crucial role that civil engineering has in the built environment. We want to show that intelligent, talented people are needed who are able to use their initiative and creative skills in their everyday working lives, and we want to encourage a new generation that can create, design and build for the future.

Olympic Stadium Otley Science Fair

Our recent events have included: Building an Olympic Stadium at Otley Science Fair This annual free public fair held at Otley Courthouse forms part of a week-long festival of events which aims to get people of all ages interested in science.

Careers Fairs in Wakefield We have attended three events in the Wakefield area for over one hundred 16-18 year olds, providing them with an insight into careers in civil engineering and encouraging them to find out more about the routes into the profession.

The Regional Education Team returned for the third time, this year challenging the 500+ attendees to help to build a model of the stadium for the 2012 Olympic Games using only paper, some masking tape, and nuts and bolts! Other activities at the fair included liquid nitrogen ice cream, programmable robots and element-themed cupcakes.

Thanks to Ian Andrew, Simon Diggle, Balaji Angamuthu, Ben Mansell, Matthew Brayfield, Josie Chandler, Kate Watson, Matt Millward, Michael Chung and Andrew Bartle for helping make these events a success, and to: WYG,Highways Agency, JBA Consulting, James Lupton Consulting, Balfour Beatty, Jackson Civil Engineering, and A-one+ for their support.

Regional Project Focus - Project Neptune Neptune Renewable Energy Ltd (NREL) has started a three-month commissioning period of the Neptune Proteus, a tidal stream power device that will provide electricity to Hull’s visitor attraction, The Deep. Following deployment of the device, which is a one-off, designed and manufactured for experimental, demonstration and research purposes, NREL is to progress its plans for commercial arrays of devices. These will be engineered to enable tidal stream power to make a significant contribution in meeting demands for energy from renewable sources. The Department of Energy and Climate Change issued a Transport and Works Act Order during the summer giving parliamentary approval for deployment of the Neptune Proteus in the Humber. NREL performs the dual role of site and technology developer to offer a low risk, attractive investment proposition. The company is identifying suitable high-flow estuarine sites to reduce costs through ease of deployment and maintenance. Chairman of NREL Nigel Petrie said: “Tidal stream power is a totally predictable and continuous form of clean energy, whilst wind power is intermittent, thereby requiring significant back-up plant to be available at short notice, with associated costs. “The predictability of tides allows power companies to schedule the use of tidal energy in a way that is not possible with wind and, in terms of building up generating capacity this is clearly a key consideration.” For further information visit: neptunerenewableenergy.org.uk

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