WS Atkins PLC : Atkins named as official engineering services provider to the National Composites Centre - 15 November 2011

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Andy Winstanley Head of Group PR  Joanna Thornton Marketing communications manager, Aerospace	[phone] / [phone] [e-mail] [phone] / [phone] [e-mail]

Notes to editors:

About Composite Materials (Composites):

Composites are made from at least two materials that together deliver engineering properties that are superior to those of the materials on their own. In practice, most composites consist of a weaker bulk material and a reinforcement of some kind, added primarily to increase the strength and stiffness of the material.

About Atkins:

Atkins (www.atkinsglobal.com) is one of the world's leading engineering and design consultancies*, employing some 17,700 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. It has the breadth and depth of expertise to plan, design and enable some of the world's most technically challenging and time critical infrastructure projects.

*It is the largest engineering consultancy in the UK (New Civil Engineer Consultants File 2011) and the 13th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2011).

Recent projects include:

• Major infrastructure works, such as the design and programme management of the civil works for the Dubai Metro red and green lines in the UAE;

• Key rail projects - providing architectural and engineering design services on Crossrail, Europe's biggest civil engineering project in London, UK, and designing stations, tunnelling and track systems for Gautrain, South Africa's first high speed line;

• Renewable energy schemes - transformer platform design for the Thanet offshore wind park in the UK's North Sea;

• Multi-year architecture-engineering construction management services for the US National Park Service, including projects such as rehabilitation of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center and Administrative Complex at California's Death Valley to meet the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification standards;

• High profile transport planning and urban design - our innovative scheme to deliver a diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus in London, UK, has helped tackle the problem of pedestrian crowding;

• Water and environmental projects - critical programme management of storm protection works in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana in North America, providing expertise in coastal restoration, engineering, environmental and GIS support to rebuild defenses and protect habitats;

• Multidisciplinary building design - Northwood Primary School in Darlington, UK, is an exemplar project which raises standards for environmental design and community engagement.

Atkins was named among The Sunday Times 25 Best Big Companies to Work For 2011, won Consultancy of the Year in the CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards 2010, received the first ever certification of the Carbon Trust Standard awarded to an engineering consultancy in the construction sector, and was included in The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2011 and The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers 2010. Atkins was also construction and civil engineering sector winner for the fifth consecutive year in the Target National Graduate Recruitment Awards 2010 and was awarded a RoSPA Gold Award 2011 for excellence in control of health and safety in the workplace.

Atkins is the official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

About the UK National Composites Centre (NCC):

The NCC is located on Bristol & Bath Science Park, UK, and is owned and operated by the University of Bristol, and draws on established links to world class composites research at Bristol and other UK Universities.

The NCC is part of the first Technology and Innovation Centre - for High Value Manufacturing (HVM TIC). The HVM TIC will provide an integrated capability and embrace all forms of manufacture using metals and composites, in addition to process manufacturing technologies and bio-processing.

It will draw on excellent university research to accelerate the commercialisation of new and emerging manufacturing technologies. This was the first of an elite network of Technology and Innovation Centres that are being established by the UK's Technology Strategy Board with over £200m of UK Government investment overall.

The NCC's mission is 'To be an independent, open-access national centre that delivers world-class innovation in the design and rapid manufacture of composites and facilitates their widespread industrial exploitation.'

In November 2009 the UK Government launched the UK Composites Strategy. This highlighted the importance of composites to the future of UK manufacturing and the Government's plans for ensuring that the UK has the means to succeed in intensely competitive global markets.

A key part of this strategy was the establishment of the National Composites Centre (NCC), which brings together dynamic companies and enterprising academics to develop new technologies for the design and rapid manufacture of high-quality composite products. The combination of academic and business strengths will speed progress from laboratory to design to factory and into products.

The NCC is a £25m investment supported by: the UK Government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (£12m); the UK's South West RDA (Regional Development Agency) (£4m); and £9m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).