The University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, this year invites entries for the eleventh international Josef Umdasch Research Prize, which is endowed with 30,000 euros in prize money. Instituted in memory of the founder of the Umdasch Group, this prize is one of Europe’s premier awards for research in the field of forestry and timber science, a fact which is underlined by the high quality of the research papers submitted over the years. The deadline for the submission of entries for the 2012 Josef Umdasch Research Prize is 31st July 2012.

A 26 km long 4-lane motorway, the M51, is being built to link Kliplev and Sønderborg in southern Jutland, around 15 km away from the border between Denmark and Germany.

La Défense is a modernistic high-rise commercial district in Paris. With over three million square metres of floorspace, this is the biggest office location in Europe, accommodating more than 150,000 office staff. 1600 firms – among them some of the biggest corporations in both France and the world – are represented in La Défense. A new prestige project is the 166 m ‘Tour Carpe Diem’ tower being built for the insurance group Aviva. Designed to Green Building Standards, it is scheduled for completion in 2012. The ‘Doka automatic climbing formwork SKE50 plus’ system is keeping operations moving ahead very fast on this project, despite the cramped conditions on the site. Used here as a protection screen, the Doka ‘Automatic climbing formwork Xclimb 60’ system is ensuring high workplace safety on this build.

The McCarran International Airport is the primary commercial airport serving Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada. In 2010, the airport recorded an estimated 39 million passengers passing through the terminal. With the growing need for expansion, the McCarran Airport Authority devised a plan for a new air traffic control tower to accommodate a terminal radar approach control (TRACON).

Doka's recently created Highrise Centre in Singapore brings together and focuses its automatic-climbing capabilities in the East Asia & Pacific Region. Thousands of miles away from the Group’s HQ in Austria, its building-construction clients can benefit from the concentrated expert knowledge and service offerings of one of the global formwork-technology sector’s leading players.

The Mississippi River Bridge project will create a new gateway between Illinois and Missouri to provide better connections to and through St. Louis. The project includes a landmark bridge structure, and the realignment and reconstruction of Interstate 70 and numerous local roads on both sides of the state line.

In September 2012, Vladivostok will host a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum (APEC). The region’s infrastructure has to be uprated for an event of this magnitude, and one of the projects now being implemented is the building of a hotel complex on the Russkiy Island. A for-lane motorway bridge is also being erected to link the island to the mainland. With a suspension tower height of 320 metres (20 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower’s steel construction) and a free span of 1104 metres, this bridge breaks two world records at once. Construction company Mostovik is responsible for on-time completion of the mainland tower.

In Zaporozhye, the industrial metropolis in Ukraine’s southeast, a multi-lane cable-stayed bridge is being built alongside an older viaduct. On completion, this large-scale infrastructure project will massively reduce the traffic burden on the existing bridge and significantly improve the daily traffic situation at this major river crossing.

The commercial and economic centre town of Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv will soon boast a new landmark structure. Set to top out at 167 m, the Champion Tower will be one of the tallest office buildings in Israel’s metropolitan region of Gusch Dan. Doka Israel is supplying this complex development with a comprehensive formwork solution consisting of Automatic climbing formwork SKE50 plus and Xclimb 60, Load-bearing tower Staxo and other items from the Doka ‘construction kit’.

Two Doka cantilever forming travellers (CFTs) have been fielded for building a new bridge over the Rhine in Basle. The piers are set at a slight angle to the river, necessitating oblique construction joints in the transverse direction of the bridge. Despite this challenge, fast forming-times are being achieved.