Nigerian developer Mercury Maritime Concession Company (MMCC) is planning to build a $2.9bn port and industrial zone in the Niger Delta.
The 20,000ha Escravos Seaport Industrial Complex (ESIC) will include a deepwater port, an international airport, and a free trade zone containing an oil refinery as well as residential and
retail units.
Andrews Okoja, the Chair of MMCC, told a recent meeting in Lagos that the public–private partnership scheme had obtained provisional approval, and he was assembling a team of consultant, financiers and partners. He said the Port of Antwerp would handle the maritime infrastructure and UK engineer James Cubitt would oversee work on land.
The start of construction works on its futuristic Woven City project was marked by Toyota Motor Corporation with a ground breaking ceremony, just one year after the project was first announced.
Designed as a prototype for a fully connected environment, the experimental city is being built next to Toyota’s Higashi-Fuji production site at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan.
Woven City will become a working community that will “bring new technology to life in a real-world environment across a wide range of areas”, including automated driving, personal mobility, robotics and artificial intelligence.
“The unwavering themes of the Woven City are ‘human-centred,”a ‘living laboratory’ and ‘ever-evolving.” said Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota.
Specialist groundworks and concrete contractor Mitchellson has secured a $23m (£17m) contract from main contractor Sir Robert McAlpine for the £350m ($485m) Morello II twin tower residential scheme located next to East Croydon station in the UK.
Under the terms of the contract, Mitchellson will deliver foundations and concrete frame for the two 25-storey residential towers.
Mitchellson will commence groundwork at the site in March.
The Morello estate will feature 20,000ft2 of retail and commercial floor space, in addition to new public space and a link bridge to the train station.
The project will be funded by Mitsubishi Estate London and Menta. The MEP contract for the project has been bagged by independent building services contractor, Briggs and Forrester
Veidekke has announced its plans to commence construction of a new residential project in Cederhusen, which is claimed to be Stockholm’s first massive wood residential area.
It is the last of a two-part design-and-build contract for Folkhem and carries a contract value of approximately $12.9m.
The building will have ten storeys above-ground, out of which the top eight will be constructed from massive wood, while two at the bottom will be built with concrete and feature cedar siding.
Wooden buildings weigh less and are claimed to bind CO2, make less noise during construction and are quieter to live in.
The project is expected to be ready for occupancy from autumn of next year.
Tech giant Oracle has launched a range of solutions for the construction industry, using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse project data.
The suite of solutions is designed to help users detect risks and make more informed project decisions and the first application within the range, Oracle Construction Intelligence Cloud Service, is now generally available.
Oracle says the software uses “re-trainable machine learning models” which learn from an organisation’s experiences, as well as predictive intelligence, to anticipate what is likely to happen next on a given project.
Using data pulled from Oracle’s Primavera scheduling solution, the application is able to predict potential project delays and offer corrective actions, potentially increasing productivity.
