EE&HL Newsletter
The EE&HL Newsletter
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16 issues published⚖️ Design-Build Pricing
The bid that was a method
New NY Bridge: three teams priced a new Hudson River crossing in 2012, and the lowest came in $848 million below the next, with less dredging, fewer piles and a shorter programme. What a design-build price contains, and what has to be proven when part of it is disputed.
🌊 Offshore Installation Sequence
Four installation sequences, one jack-up
Saint-Nazaire: 80 monopiles on a calcarenite bank that varies from 0 to more than 30 metres, installed by four sequences selected position by position, with a borehole at every location to establish the base of the rock.
🛢️ Erection-Phase Design Constraint
The platform sized by someone else’s crane
Perdido spar: a hard-tank diameter limited to 118 feet so that SSCV Thialf could set the 9,773-short-ton topsides in a single lift — a design constraint fixed years before the hull left the yard.
⛰️ Bespoke Cable-Crane Arch Erection
The bridge that had no ground to build from
Chenab Rail Bridge: a 915-metre cable crane on two guyed pylons, rigged before the arch it would erect, to place steel across a gorge with no practical access from below.
🌉 Offsite Assembly & Single-Lift Placement
The bridge that was finished before it ever crossed the river
Gateshead Millennium Bridge: an 800-tonne steel superstructure assembled complete six miles downstream, carried up the Tyne as one unit by floating crane, and set on its piers with a reported 2mm to spare.
🌉 Controlled Marine Access & Erection Risk
The lift that could not own its channel
Stonecutters Bridge: every main-span steel segment lifted by barge inside a 900-metre live shipping channel — access controlled by marine-traffic arrangements outside the contractor–client pair, on every lift, for the length of the programme.
🌉 Public-Private Risk Allocation & Marine Erection
Canada's First P3 Made Completion Risk Collateral, Not Clause
Confederation Bridge: a $200M performance bond and a $73M letter of credit posted before construction — while a single floating crane placed 7,500-tonne components through ice.
🏗️ Temporary Works & Erection Plant Risk
The Cableway Crane That Collapsed, and the Arch That Still Closed
Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge: a 42-year-old leased cableway crane collapsed in high winds, costing two years — while the twin-rib arch it served still closed to within 9.5mm.
🏗️ Erection Engineering & Temporary Works Dependency
The Tower That Needed a Schedule and Got a Dependency
Millau Viaduct: seven temporary steel towers, the tallest 173 metres, and a release condition controlled by a specialist subcontractor's own schedule.
🔨 Material Constraint & Programme Risk
The structure that needed 14 hours to close and got a 3-hour window
Bird's Nest, Beijing: 42,000 tonnes of steel, 128 closure joints, and a final structural closure that required 14 hours of welding inside a daily temperature window of under 3 hours.
⚓ Decommissioning & Vessel Procurement
The contract that finished building the ship
Shell awarded the Brent decommissioning contract to Allseas in 2013 — while the Pioneering Spirit hull was still under construction. Four single-lifts followed, 2017 to 2024.
⚓ Marine Salvage & Wreck Removal
The wreck that could not be priced
The engineering calculation couldn't be checked before it started. Neither could the price. Costa Concordia, the commercial twin.
🏗️ Offshore Installation & Weather Window
The platform that could not miss its window
A 656,000-tonne concrete base, ten tugs, one summer window — and the standby exposure that runs when the North Sea does not cooperate
🌉 Interface Condition Risk
The crossing that could not share a method boundary
Three contracts, three methods, one artificial island that had to be exactly right before either side could finish
⚓ Decommissioning & Sequence
The campaign that had to come back
Two lifts. Twenty months apart. One sequencing dependency that still shapes £44 billion of North Sea decommissioning.
🔩 Launch Edition
The bridge that couldn't wait for its piers
Sequence intelligence, commercial visibility, and a 210-metre gantry that could not lie