 Hello, welcome to this week's edition of This Week in Civil Engineering, also known as TWICE, a weekly news show focused on providing civil engineering professionals with the most important and relevant industry updates. I'm your host for this episode, Danny Lu. I'm a Child to Civil Engineer specialising in Highways and Infrastructure in the UK. I also run Civil Engineering Mental.com supporting graduates and pursuing a professional qualification with the Institution of Civil Engineers. You can find all of the episodes of This Week in Civil Engineering at TWICE.News. That's TWICE, T-W-I-C-E.News. References to all of the stories covered will be in the episode show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to subscribe to the TWICE playlist to receive weekly episodes. Now it's time for What's Happening This Week in Civil Engineering. Now it's time for This Week's News. You are about to hear excerpts from the stories referenced. Links to all of the full articles can be found at TWICE.News. First, let's cover the biggest breaking news stories from this past week. might affect civil engineering companies and professionals. Firstly, traffic signals in Vegas could soon have a mind of their own from skipdiscount at govtech.com. Officials are already able to virtually monitor activity in Las Vegas parks in real time, freeing up staff to handle other needs. But in the future, traffic signals in Sin City could have a mind of their own, predicting when auto volumes will increase and adjusting accordingly. These were some of the smart city initiatives laid out by Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer for Las Vegas, during a virtual public sector panel discussion Wednesday at the Dell Technologies World Conference. The smart parks initiative is an effort to use technology in the form of cameras, sensors and communications devices to glean how parks are being used and when. In areas like transportation, Las Vegas has been on the cutting edge of deploying technology to support connected vehicles and intelligent traffic management. The city is exploring future iterations of traffic management where signal controls are directed by large caches of data related to traffic volume so that the signals could make real-time predictions and modify accordingly to create smoother traffic flows and less congestion. It's great to see technology being tied into infrastructure and transportation in creative ways. Next up, let's look at an interesting story from Arizona. Dish soap helped slide New Fourth Street Bridge into place in Flagstaff from Adrian Skaeberland at azdailysun.com. It took several hydraulic jacks and about 14 gallons of blue dawn dish soap to slide two concrete three and a half million pound bridges into place according to the engineers who designed it and the construction workers who built it. That was the news at a gathering of state and local officials Monday, celebrating the completion of the Full Street Bridge expansion project, which used an innovative technique to complete it in a matter of days instead of months. Performing what is called a bridge slide, construction crews built two sections of bridge just to the east of the old structure. The two sections were then set into place over course about two days, said city project manager Jeremy Degator. That process doesn't use wheels or a crane. Instead, hydraulic jacks slowly pushed the bridge into place on steel runners that run on a temporary rubber and Teflon pads, Degator said. Once it is in place, the Teflon pads are replaced by permanent concrete ones. The project expanded the bridge to accommodate four lanes on the Fourth Street and a potential future widening on Interstate 40, which runs under the bridge. On top of that, the project expanded pedestrian access on the bridge, building in a dedicated sidewall and multimodal path separate from the road. The total cost of the project for the both bridges was $13.9 million, although the city of Flagstaff pitched in some additional money for the cost of the pedestrian paths and to make the bridge more handsome. Another example of creativity being used on a civil project, not everything you need to complete a project is in your textbook. Dish soap certainly wasn't in mine. Next up, US news in civil engineering. First, how we could be saving $4 billion in building energy costs without any renovations from Christine to Saint at FastCompany.com. Our buildings have a big environmental footprint from their construction to their daily operation. In the US, residential and commercial buildings count for about 40% of the country's energy use. A lot of that energy it turns out isn't even necessary, it's just being wasted. By just changing the way buildings control their lighting, heating, cooling and appliances through smart energy analytics, a four-year initiative by a Berkeley lab saved $95 million per year in energy costs across 6,500 buildings. Energy management information systems, EMIS, includes sensors, meters and data analytics software to allow building operators to see exactly when and where energy is being wasted. When Sprint implemented this at its headquarters in Kansas through the Berkeley lab effort, the company saved $400,000 in energy bills and more than 4.7 million kilowatt hours of energy a year. When Stanford University installed EMIS software at 315 housing and food service sites, its electric bills went down 5% and its gas bills by 10%. Saving the university's residential and dining services $451,000. If commercial buildings nationwide adopted these EMIS technologies and best practices, Berkeley lab says the energy cost savings with total $4 billion. This means drastically fewer emissions and fossil fuel use. Along with the monetary savings, the Berkeley lab campaign driving annual energy savings of $4 trillion BTU, a measurement of heat energy. $1 trillion BTU is equivalent to 500 hundred ton railroad cars full of coal. This sounds like an interesting market for civil engineering firms moving forward. Next up, North Carolina, Department of Transport, completes six-year widening project on a major mountain highway. From Stephanie, Stanta Stacey and Brittany Whitehead at WLS.com. North Carolina DOT officials announced a long-awaited completion of a widening project on a stretch of major highway in Mitchell and Yancey counties. The project has taken almost six years to complete. The eight-mile project spans from US-19E from its intersection with NC80 in Yancey County to the multi-lane section of highway just west of Spruce Pine in Mitchell County. The previous two-lane roadway has been turned into a four-lane highway with a grass median that matches the first 21 miles from Yancey State 26 in Madison County. As the only east-west corridor in Yancey County and the major east-west corridor, it would allow people to get to where they go faster, safer, with less commute time. Additional drainage, guard rail, design improvements to the alignment of the roadway, signage and pavement markings bring the highway up to modern safety standards. Wright Brothers Construction completed a roughly $65 million project. Next up, some career inspiration for you. Let's take a quick break from the news for this week's civil engineering career inspiration. You will never know everything, therefore make sure you always ask questions. Don't be afraid to admit that you don't know something and always keep learning. Now let's get back to the news. Next, let's move on to some international news in civil engineering from this past week. First up, we're headed to Europe. Femon Belt Tunnel will be the world's longest immersed tunnel from Jacopo Prisco at edition.cnn.com. After more than a decade of planning, work has begun on the world's longest immersed tunnel. Descending up to 40 meters beneath the Baltic Sea, Femon Belt Tunnel will link Denmark and Germany, slashing journey times when it opens in 2029. The tunnel, which will be 18 kilometers long, is one of Europe's largest infrastructure projects, with a construction budget of over 7 billion euros, that's 8.2 billion US dollars. By way of comparison, the 50 kilometer channel tunnel linked in England and France, completing in 1993, costs the equivalent of 12 billion pounds, that's 15.5 billion US dollars in today's money. Although longer than a Femon Belt Tunnel, the channel tunnel was made using ballroom machine, rather than immersed in pre-built tunnel sections. It will be built across the Femon Belt, as straight between the German island of Femon and the Danish island of Lolland, and is designed as an alternative to the current ferry service from Royby and Putt Garden, which carries millions of passengers every year. Where the crossing now takes 45 minutes by ferry, it will take just 7 minutes by train and 10 minutes by car. The tunnel, whose official name is Femon Belt Fix Link, will also be the longest combined road and rail tunnel anywhere in the world. It will comprise two double-lane motorways, separated by a service passageway, and two electrified rail tracks. Besides the benefits of passengers, trains and cars, the tunnel will also have a positive impact on freight trucks and trains, because it creates a land route between Sweden and central Europe, that will be 160 kilometers shorter than today. It's very interesting to see how advancements in technology and construction methods are helping complex projects to build faster and cheaper. Next up, let's head to the UK. High Speed One becomes the country's first renewable powered rail, from Reuters staff at UK.Reuters.com. Britain's HS1 Railway Link to the Channel Tunnel is the country's first train line to run entirely on renewable energy, with wind and solar powering the trains between London and the Kent Coast, the operating company said. Britain has set a target of building a net zero carbon transport system by 2050. HS1 is owned by Infrared Capital Partners and Equitix Investment Management. It's great to hear about projects like this one here at home in the UK. On that note, let's cover a few infrastructure-related stories, starting with some general news about infrastructure project schedules amidst the pandemic. Infrastructure projects speed up amid COVID slowdown from Lisa Brown at Globes.com. Accelerated construction timetables from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York meant major infrastructure projects were completed weeks and months ahead of schedule. The slowdown in the economy was an opportunity too good to miss for many large construction projects. In response, accelerated construction timetables came about with fewer people, planes and cars to work around. While the pandemic was and continued to cause grief for many, it is a positive to see that some much-needed infrastructure works has been able to be completed ahead of schedule due to the circumstances. Next up, Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh signs $1.9 billion public works bill from Jesse Van Burkill at StarTribune.com. Governor Tim Walsh signed a $1.9 billion public works infrastructure private package into law Wednesday touting the jobs it will add. The measure included historic levels of state-backed borrowing for public projects known as bonding. Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development data show the percentage of people participating in the workforce fell to 68.4% in September, the lowest level since 1978. The law includes an element that hasn't been part of past bonding measures. Under equity appropriations, the bill allocates money for communities that have may have been left out of the funding process in the past. That includes $5.6 million for a family and child services facility in the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, $3.8 million for Native American Community Clinic in Minneapolis and $2 million for the Among American Farm Association to Buy Farmland. The bonding package also has provisions aimed at ensuring local governments follow the state's workforce participation goals and equal pay protections for communities of color women as they hire contractors for the publicly backed projects. It's good to see funding like this made available again in the midst of a pandemic that has really devastated the economy worldwide. And last but not least from New York City, Link Slabs used to prevent joint leaks on rehabbed Bronx bridges from Don McLeod at EquipmentWorld.com. A $204 million rehabilitation project recently completed on a major expressway in the Bronx created jointless bridge decks by using Link Slabs of ultra-high performance concrete. The process is designed to prevent water from leaking from the deck to the substructure which deteriorates over the bridge over time. The slabs replace bridge deck joints which are a major source of deterioration. Water leaks through the joints over time corroding bridge girder bearings and supporting structures. Debris also accumulates in the joints which can hinder deck expansion and cause further damage. The slabs of ultra-performance concrete are used to connect the ends of prefabricated deck sections over the pier. It is steel fiber reinforced and includes super-plastic sizes to reduce water content in the mix. It is also stronger and more durable. In 2017, the New York State DOT reported it had retrofitted 15 bridges with Link Slabs. Designed for the ultra-high performance concrete Link Slabs was developed by the New York State Department of Transportation's Office of Structures. Again, an example of how we continue to get smarter rendering design and construction will have emphasis on longer lasting projects. To wrap up, here's an inspiring quote to motivate you for the rest of your day. The Dalai Lama said that if there's no solution to a problem then don't waste time worrying about it. However, if there is a solution to a problem then don't waste time worrying about it. So stop stressing and enjoy your work. There you have it. That's what's happening this week in sub-engineering. You can find references to all the stories mentioned at twice.news and all episodes are also published in video on EMR's YouTube channel at youtube.com slash engineering careers. Remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And of course, YouTube for the video version. This is Danny Loone signing off. See you next week. Now go and be the best civil engineering professional that you can be.