Basements & underground structures best practices

It was a pleasure to sponsor and have a member of our team speak at the Ground Engineering Basements & Underground Structures event, with over 200 attendees there the event also ran adjacent to ‘Smart Geotechnics’.

Project highlights

One of the most interesting sessions was Jacobs, which presented their work with Balfour Beatty on the complex Marine Works section of work at Hinkley Point C. TBM Tunnelling took place 2019 to 2021 with two intake tunnels and an outfall tunnel to support the subsequent sub-sea shaft connections. Conquip has been privileged to work at Hinkley Point C since 2019 so it was fascinating to see and hear about the temporary and permanent works carried out at another part of this vast mega energy infrastructure project.

We then went on to hear about the modular construction approach at the Carnwath Road shaft on London’s Tideway super sewer project – another complex energy project that Conquip worked on recently (at the Greenwich Pumping Station).

Conquip featured in the conference programme

At the last session of the day, Adam Hicks, our Director – Strategic Partnerships and Major Projects, participated in a panel session with Helen Gregory, Head of Proposals at Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering, Martin Feakes, Head of Engineering at Mace and Christos Christou, Project Technical Director at Skanska. Focusing on enhancing supply chain synergies, the panellists gave their perspectives on how best to introduce more innovation with early collaboration on projects, to enhance viability and efficiency.

The panel touched on the risk-reward dynamic, how Tier 1 contractors can best work with larger suppliers, holistic planning, project viability and programming.

Across these topics, here are the comments that really stuck with us:

On innovation and design standards…

Martin said: “Good innovation is about assessing risk and reward, then achieving both scale and speed – following the ideas up, making them business as usual.”

Helen said: “[Success] starts with the contract and it’s having the right people involved.”

“Project based innovation is about problem-solving and brining delivery integration partners and suppliers in earlier on, mitigating risk. It’s hard to innovate if a contractor is on board late in the day. I’m a great believer of the right people at the right time – and sharing successes.” said Christos.

Adam was asked about pre-construction phases and whether standardised design can hinder innovation. “What is innovation? To us it’s coming up with ideas and collaboration to make, what can be highly technical projects, better at an earlier stage. We can’t do it on our own, and lack of collaboration can hold back innovation. Contractors hold back for fear of losing competitive edge.”

Christos said: “Innovation doesn’t sit within certain industry standards. To innovate you need to go outside of these, using standard design as a starting point. Innovation is outside of established standard practice. The UK has become very risk adverse when it comes to design. Standards are constraining innovation.”

On risk-reward…

Helen said: “Target-based contracts place responsibility and benefits with the main contractor – it’s far more positive than cost-based contracts.”

Adam commented: “We are seeing a change in the industry. Geotechnical, piling, propping and other temporary works specialists working together. It’s a trend towards a JV type model perhaps – taking shared responsibilities in tender stage and delivering value engineering to the client.”

Helen said: “Risk principal is a challenge. The attention should be on speeding up innovation on site, therefore allocating appropriate risk to parties involved.”

Martin queried: “Do contractors get an appropriate share in the benefits of innovations? Turn the question on its head, it’s not just about whether there are enough benefits for contractors, but perhaps looking at reducing the disbenefits. i.e. equability of risk.”

Helen added: “When looking at the lump sum, the risk to the contractor is to NOT innovate or they won’t get awarded the job/win the contract.”

On partnerships

Martin said: “The environment for the best innovation is partnership and longevity and creating pseudo frameworks. The industry sees projects coming down the pipeline, so we can therefore start to think early on about how to tackle challenges. Build up long-term partnerships to work together to tackle these.”

Christos continued: “Behaviours, mindsets and transparency are key to fostering trust in the supply chain. For example, with National Highways, we have an open book approach. It built collaboration and trust.”

Young engineers

Towards the end of the day, the Mott McDonald team presented the Early Careers Challenge output. It was a three-month project with a constrained ‘similar to real-life’ scenario, tasking teams to create a concept basement design guided by industry mentors. It was encouraging to see high profile investment in the next generation of engineers who will be designing and problem-solving for structures and infrastructure to come.

Interested to work with Conquip in the pre-construction phase of projects? Contact us at twengineering@cqegroup.com.

Closed: We reopen Monday 5 January. If you have an urgent query before we reopen, please email sales@cqegroup.com.

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Basements and Underground Structures – best practices event report

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Closed: We reopen Monday 5 January. If you have an urgent query before we reopen, please email sales@cqegroup.com.

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Basements and Underground Structures – best practices event report

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Business Focus: Issue 141 - January 2026

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