Local authorities have approved the University’s plans for a new, three-storey Civil Engineering building on the West Cambridge site.

The building will house the Department of Engineering’s Division of Civil Engineering and the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing, run by the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC). Construction is expected to begin in the coming months, and finish in early 2019.

Designed by Grimshaw Architects with partial funding from the UKCRIC, it is part of a longer-term plan to relocate the entire Department of Engineering to the University’s West Cambridge site, which already houses the Department’s Whittle Laboratory and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

In addition to accommodating the UKCRIC’s research into sensor technologies, the building will also house workshops, laboratories, seminar halls, informal social spaces.

Responding to the announcement, Philip Guildford, the Department’s Director of Research and Finance, noted that “the work of our civil engineers is of national importance”, and stressed its potential to “open careers for young engineers, address challenges in our own cities, and create export opportunities”.

On the Department’s long-term development plans, Guildford said that “ultimately, we hope to move all of our activities from the cramped central site on Trumpington Street to West Cambridge, so that all of our engineering disciplines can be together and work together in this expanding part of the City”. The move, he explained, “is essential for modern engineering” and would allow better “collaboration” between the Department’s divisions.

The University also plans to relocate all physical science and technology departments to the West Cambridge site over the course of the next twenty years, and has submitted further outline planning applications to the local authorities for consideration and approval