The inaugural RedR 5-A-Side Football Tournament kicked off at midday on Sunday 16th June at the Goals Soccer Centre in Tolworth. Sponsored by NCEjobs.co.uk and Jelf, and attracting teams from across the engineering and construction industries, the event raised over £2,000 for disaster relief charity RedR UK.
 
The tournament was a Tony Gee initiative, and Gareth Drought, part of Tony Gee’s fundraising team said: “It was great to see so many people to give up their Father’s Day celebrations to raise so much money for RedR. The quality of the play was excellent from all teams and it made for a fierce competition. We want the tournament to be bigger next year and we will continue to work alongside Katie and the fantastic team at RedR to raise even more.”
 
You can read the full story on the RedR website.

June 2013

The post Disaster Relief Kicks Off appeared first on Tony Gee.

The replacement Loughor Viaduct is now open to rail traffic, having been slid successfully into position over the Easter weekend as planned. The scheme is a key part of a £48m major investment to redouble the Gowerton to Llanelli line near Swansea in South Wales.

Tony Gee was appointed by Carillion Civil Engineering, on behalf of Network Rail, to undertake the design of the replacement structure; a scheme that involved an innovative approach to articulation and track structure interaction. One of the most challenging aspects was to produce a design that could be built in advance of the main rail blockade. The new deck, which has been incrementally launched in stages over the past few months, alongside its Victorian predecessor, was used as the demolition platform to remove the existing structure.

The temporary cross heads and piles which supported the bridge in its pre-slide position will now be removed but, as part of the Listed Building Consent for the scheme, four of the original timber trestles will remain. Two spans of the original Grade II listed bridge will be rebuilt as a separate monument structure on land adjacent to the railway.

April 2013

The post Loughor Viaduct Replacement appeared first on Tony Gee.

Two of Tony Gee’s projects have achieved top honours from CEEQUAL, the civil engineering industry’s assessment and awards scheme for high environmental and social performance.

Network Rail’s Blackfriars Bridge and Station Refurbishment secured an Excellent rating Whole Project Award, as well as winning the Energy and Carbon category prize at the 2013 CEEQUAL Outstanding Achievement Awards.

Tony Gee’s CEEQUAL Assessor, Natalie Cropp also collected a further Excellent rating Interim Client and Outline Design Award, this time for Network Rail’s Approach Viaduct & Joiner Street Bridge, part of the Thameslink scheme.

Natalie (pictured third from the right) said, ‘Both of these awards are recognition of Tony Gee’s continuing commitment to improving the sustainability of engineering projects.’

March 2013

The post Sustainability success appeared first on Tony Gee.

Tony Gee is set to design the world’s tallest Buddhist shrine. The classic Buddhist stupa, 108 m high, will be uniquely combined with a 54 m bronze statue of the Maitreya Buddha and stand at the head of the new Grand Maitreya Buddhist complex.

As Mongolia rapidly progresses as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it faces the challenge of balancing traditional values with contemporary development. The complex, with its stunning symbolic 21st century monument, will be a centre of Mongolian cultural heritage. It will combine the valuable Buddhist traditions of the country with modern art, design and engineering advancements.

The design had been started previously by others and the foundations partly built. The stupa design was then changed.

Having been represented in Mongolia by Achbayar Luvsansharav since February 2012, Tony Gee was selected by the Grand Maitreya Foundation because state-of-the-art levels of design were required, built to international standards.

The new design will incorporate as much of the existing foundation as possible.

December 2012

The post Grand design appeared first on Tony Gee.

The seaside town of Dawlish, on the south coast of Devon, hosted a landmark event in the history of UK railway infrastructure during the weekend of 13 and 14 October 2012. The coastal railway line, part of Network Rail’s mainline network is noted for its particularly scenic qualities and for being one of the most exposed in the country, constantly battling the effects of coastal erosion and salt spray induced corrosion.

The station was originally designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1830 and is grade II listed. Unfortunately the station’s 17.5 metre long covered steel footbridge, reconstructed in 1937, had deteriorated beyond repair and any similar form of replacement would probably meet the same fate in due course.

Its replacement is a lightweight structure weighing only five tonnes, approximately one third that of the current bridge. Designed by Tony Gee and Partners and subconsultant Optima Projects, it has been constructed using modern advanced materials technology and is the first Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite bridge installed at a mainline station in the UK and notably the first Grade II listed FRP bridge. The structure aesthetically replicates the character of the original steel structure, but provides a much lighter and more durable solution and is expected to result in considerable through-life cost savings due to reduced maintenance expenditure.

The structure was installed by main contractor BAM Nuttall and fabricated by Pipex Structural Composites. It mainly utilises standard FRP structural profiles, produced by a process known as pultrusion, combined with parapet sandwich panels moulded by film infusion. The stairs at each end of the bridge are also moulded FRP units.

October 2012

The post UK’s first Grade II Listed Polymer Composite Bridge appeared first on Tony Gee.

Tony Gee staff witnessed cyclist Bradley Wiggins on his way to winning his latest Olympic gold medal.

Cheering crowds lined the High Street as the cycling time trial passed right outside the doors of Hardy House, Esher Head Office.

Not only did Team GB have two medal winners in the race, with Christopher Froome taking the bronze, but Bradley also became Britain’s most decorated Olympian, this being his seventh medal.

August 2012

The post Golden Boy Wiggins cheered on by Tony Gee appeared first on Tony Gee.

Working for Network Rail’s contractor HOCHTIEF (UK) Construction as part of an alliance team, Tony Gee is carrying out the detailed design for the new 850m grade-separated junction.The new elevated route will carry trains over the main line, improving performance and capacity on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) by relieving the main bottleneck at the Junction where the trains between London and Cambridge currently have to cut across three of its lines.

The project involves the construction of a 29 span viaduct comprising steel girders and concrete deck, an accommodation overbridge, approach embankments, associated earthworks and drainage.

The site is bounded by a number of local nature reserves, so mitigating the environmental impact of the scheme and enhancing biodiversity are key considerations. Measures include the provision of beetle banks, hibernacula, secondary ponds and extensive landscaping and planting.

July 2012

Timelapse video of the lift reproduced by kind permission of Network Rail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOlveuZFfs8

The post Hitchin lift in appeared first on Tony Gee.

Our stand at the UK’s largest renewable energy event featured the DTI-50 deep water turbine installation – an innovative approach to the construction of offshore wind farms which identifies the major challenges and offers a practical, lower cost, fully integrated design solution. The concept provides a unique opportunity to develop innovative technology, designed to simplify the construction of offshore wind farms and create a much safer working environment.

Key features of the concept are; reduced land and port infrastructure, bespoke installation pontoon to deliver and install complete WTG without offshore cranes, self-levelling foundation system and the ability to raise the turbine to the operational height without cranes or winches.

May 2012

The post Tony Gee at the All Energy Conference appeared first on Tony Gee.

They embraced the spirit of the occasion by wearing items of red clothing, and sampling the array of creative cakes in the Great RedR Bake Off; a new initiative this year from Tony Gee’s fundraising team, where staff members were challenged to design and bake a cake on an engineering theme. Natalie Cropp’s ingenious depiction of the top-hatted legend of civil engineering, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was a chocoholic’s dream and won her first prize.Director of Fundraising and Communications at RedR, Anne Durrant, thanked Tony Gee for the team’s continued efforts and showed a thought provoking video outlining the importance of RedR’s work supporting other organisations re-building lives after the immediate effects of natural and man-made disasters.

Executive Managing Director Graham Nicholson said, “Friday was fun packed but with a serious purpose of helping those who are far worse off than ourselves. We’d like to thank the Mayor and Mayoress for helping support the fund raising activities which helped raise over £300 towards our target for this year of £3,000.”

Feb 2012

The post Mayor Wears Red for RedR appeared first on Tony Gee.

The event provides a forum for civil engineers to explore the latest innovations and discuss and debate the challenges of delivering major infrastructure projects.

Executive Managing Director and Chairman of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering, Graham Nicholson presented a seminar on Wednesday 19 October entitled “Where are the areas of opportunity for UK infrastructure? Where will investments be made to support transport and energy generation in the coming years?”

The winner of our stand competition was Jeff Jones of Radflex Contract Services, shown here collecting his prize from Graham Nicholson. The challenge was to estimate the number of piles that formed the cofferdam at Canary Wharf Station; one of many projects demonstrating how we can solve complex engineering challenges through innovation.

October 2011

The post Tony Gee at the Infrastructure Show appeared first on Tony Gee.