Crossrail was a railway construction project centred around London. It aimed to provide a high-frequency hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system crossing the capital from suburbs on the west to east, by connecting two major railway lines terminating in London: the Great Western Main Line and the Great Eastern Main Line. The project was approved in 2007, and construction began in 2009 on the central section and connections to existing lines that became part of the route, which has been named the Elizabeth line in honour of Queen Elizabeth II who opened the line on 17 May 2022 during her Platinum Jubilee. The central section of the line between Paddington and Abbey Wood opened on 24 May 2022, with 12 trains per hour running in each direction through the core section in Central London.
Heathrow Airport Holdings is the United Kingdom-based operator of Heathrow Airport. The company also operated Gatwick Airport, Stansted Airport, Edinburgh Airport and several other UK airports, but was forced by the Competition Commission to sell them in order to break up a monopoly. It was formed by the privatisation of the British Airports Authority as BAA plc as part of Margaret Thatcher's moves to privatise government-owned assets, and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Arup is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London that provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services across every aspect of the built environment. It employs about 17,000 people in over 90 offices across 35 countries, and has participated in projects in over 160 countries.
Costain Group plc is a British construction and engineering company headquartered in Maidenhead, England. Founded in 1865, its history includes extensive housebuilding and mining activities, but it later focused on civil engineering and commercial construction projects. It was part of the British/French consortium which constructed the Channel Tunnel at the end of the 1980s, and has been involved in Private Finance Initiative projects.
The Heathrow Airside Road Tunnel (ART) is a tunnel at Heathrow Airport. It connects the airside roads around Terminals 1, 2 and 3 to those around Terminal 5. The tunnel was opened to traffic in March 2005 and is used only by vehicles with security clearance to drive airside.
Laing O'Rourke is a multinational construction company headquartered in Dartford, England. It was founded in 1978 by Ray O'Rourke. It is the largest privately owned construction company in the United Kingdom.
Ferrovial S.E., previously Grupo Ferrovial, is a Dutch-headquartered Spanish multinational company that operates in the infrastructure sector for transportation and mobility with four divisions: Highways, Airports, Construction, and Mobility and Energy Infrastructure. The Highway sector develops, finances, and operates tolls on highways such as the 407 ETR, the North Tarrant Express, the LBJ Express, Euroscut Azores, I-66, I-77, NTE35W, and Ausol I. The company holds a 25% interest in the operator of Heathrow Airport. The Construction business designs and carries out public and private works such as roads, highways, airports, and buildings. The Mobility and Energy Infrastructure Department is responsible for managing renewable energy, sustainable mobility, and circular economy projects. Ferrovial is present in more than 20 countries where its business lines operate.
Kier Group plc is a British construction, services and property group active in building and civil engineering, support services, and the Private Finance Initiative.
Taylor Woodrow Construction, branded as Taylor Woodrow, is a UK-based civil engineering contractor and one of four operating divisions of Vinci Construction UK. The business was launched in 2011, combining civil engineering operations from the former Taylor Woodrow group and from Vinci UK - formerly Norwest Holst.
Heathrow Terminal 5 is an airport terminal at Heathrow Airport, the main airport serving London. Opened in 2008, the main building in the complex is the largest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom. Until 2012 the terminal was used solely by British Airways. It was then exclusively used as one of the three global hubs of IAG, served by British Airways and Iberia until 12 July 2022, when Iberia moved all flights to Terminal 3, leaving British Airways as sole user again.
Robert James Mair, Baron Mair, is a geotechnical engineer and Emeritus Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering and director of research at the University of Cambridge. He is Head of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 2001 to 2011 and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2001. In 2014 he was elected a vice president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and on 1 November 2017 became the Institution's president for 2017–18, its 200th anniversary year. He was appointed an independent crossbencher in the House of Lords in 2015 and is currently a member of its Select Committee on Science and Technology.
David Michael Gann CBE is a British academic administrator and civil engineer. He is Vice-President (Innovation) at Imperial College London and a member of the College's Executive Board. His academic research spans strategy, management science and systems engineering.
Heathrow Hub railway station was a proposed interchange that would serve – mainly – a now disbanded potential alignment of High Speed 2 (HS2) services that would adjoin the expanded part of Heathrow Airport, England. It was a cornerstone part of an expansion plan put forward in 2008, by engineering firm Arup, to set up the UK's first high-speed rail network north-west of London.
The Consulting Association (TCA) was a controversial UK business, based in Droitwich, which, from 1993 to 2009, maintained a database of British construction workers and became implicated in a "blacklisting" scandal, which is ongoing. Revelations about the database resulted in the business being shut down, the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010, a Parliamentary enquiry, High Court actions leading to compensation payouts valued at between £50m and £250m in total, and a series of cases being brought to the European Court of Human Rights.
Birmingham Interchange is a planned High Speed 2 railway station in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, West Midlands, England, expected to open in 2026.
Tony Douglas is a British businessman. He serves as the CEO of Riyadh Air, a Saudi Public Investment Fund subsidiary. He previously served as the CEO of Etihad Airways from January 2018 to October 2022. He also previously served as chief executive of Abu Dhabi Airports Company (2013–2015), and as chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support department in the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (2015–2017). He has also held senior positions with airport operator BAA, and as Chief Operating Officer of Laing O'Rourke.
The Elizabeth line is a high-frequency hybrid urban–suburban rail service in London and its suburbs. It runs services on dedicated infrastructure in central London from the Great Western Main Line west of Paddington station to Abbey Wood and via Whitechapel to the Great Eastern Main Line near Stratford; along the Great Western Main Line to Reading and Heathrow Airport in the west; and along the Great Eastern Main Line to Shenfield in the east. The service is named after Queen Elizabeth II, who officially opened the line on 17 May 2022 during her Platinum Jubilee year; passenger services started on 24 May 2022. Despite being named under the same system as London Underground lines, and having sections which are underground, the Elizabeth line is not classified as a London Underground line.
In 2016 the Women's Engineering Society (WES), in collaboration with the Daily Telegraph, produced an inaugural list of the United Kingdom's Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering, which was published on National Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2016. The event was so successful it became an annual celebration. The list was instigated by Dawn Bonfield MBE, then Chief Executive of the Women's Engineering Society. In 2019, WES ended its collaboration with the Daily Telegraph and started a new collaboration with The Guardian newspaper.
Michael Martin OBE is a British bridge engineer. He grew up in Carlisle and studied at the Carlisle Technical College before achieving a degree in civil engineering from the University of Leeds. Martin began his career as a design engineer at Ove Arup & Partners and served as their representative during the construction of the Kessock Bridge. He thereafter joined the contractor Morrison and was their chief engineer for the construction of the Dornoch Firth and Kylesku Bridges. Under Martin's direction the company won some of the first Private Finance Initiative infrastructure contracts in the UK. He transferred to Anglian Water after that company purchased Morrison in 2000 and became their head of health and safety. After a brief early retirement he returned as a consultant for WS Atkins and to lead a £2.2 billion water infrastructure partnership programme. He returned from retirement for a second time to act as Galliford Try representative on the board of the company constructing the £1.4 billion Queensferry Crossing. In 2014 he was appointed project director for all companies in the contracting joint venture and oversaw the project's completion in 2017.
Over the years, a number of transport proposals have been made to improve public access to Heathrow Airport, near London in the United Kingdom.
