New Civil Engineer

Overview

New Civil Engineer (NCE) is the magazine and news website of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE): a monthly print title, a daily-news website and an events business that has reported on British civil engineering since May 1972 (emap media pack). It is the ICE’s official magazine, yet it has spent most of its life owned by someone else.

It was sold by the ICE to the publisher Emap in 1995, passed through the Ascential clear-out of heritage magazine brands, and sold to Metropolis International in 2017 for £23.5 million as part of an eleven-brand deal (New Civil Engineer; Ascential regulatory news). Its own media pack puts its total magazine circulation at 45,000, with 9,000 of those readers international, and its website at more than 78,000 registered users (emap media pack).

NCE matters to FactsLedger for a specific reason: it is the trade press that covered the Barrow upon Soar disaster twice — on the day it happened in 2008, and again at the sentencing in 2011 — and those two reports are among the primary contemporary accounts of the crash and its legal aftermath (New Civil Engineer; New Civil Engineer). Understanding NCE means understanding a particular kind of journalism: a title owned by commercial publishers, written for a professional audience that builds the things it reports on, and formally independent of the institution whose members read it.

The 1972 launch and the 1995 Emap sale

The ICE launched New Civil Engineer in May 1972 as a monthly companion to its learned Proceedings title, with a deliberately different brief: to be readable and provocative, and to appeal equally to the academic and the muddy-booted contractor (New Civil Engineer). The goal was to convey the excitement of an idea rather than the mathematical detail of technicalities, and to be read rather than merely received — not a mouthpiece for the ICE Council or secretariat, but a communication tool and forum for the profession (New Civil Engineer). Launch editor Sydney Lenssen defined the brief as reporting, interpreting and commenting on matters affecting the professional civil engineer, relating the industry to the Institution rather than the other way round (New Civil Engineer). The formula worked fast: after five issues the magazine went weekly, and it stayed weekly for decades (New Civil Engineer).

In 1995 the ICE sold the title to the publishing house Emap, along with its other business magazine interests. Emap acquired the ICE’s publishing portfolio — the weekly New Civil Engineer plus six other titles — under a long-term agreement to keep publishing NCE and Civil Engineer International as the magazines of the ICE’s members (The Media Leader). The ICE’s portfolio at the time also included Offshore Engineer, Ground Engineering and New Builder (The Media Leader). The sale set the pattern for the next thirty years: NCE would remain the ICE’s exclusive magazine while answering, in its own 2012 telling, to its readers rather than to the institution’s headquarters — a “fiercely independent” title inside a commercial publishing group (New Civil Engineer). By its 40th anniversary in 2012 it had added a daily news service, a mobile-friendly online presence and an iPad app to the weekly print core, and was planning a year of retrospectives including a series on forty memorable moments, starting with the Channel Tunnel (New Civil Engineer).

The Ascential clear-out and the 2017 Metropolis sale

NCE’s ownership changed again through the slow unwinding of Emap. In 2008, Emap itself was bought by Eden Bidco, a joint venture between Apax Partners and Guardian Media Group, for £1.1 billion (Press Gazette). The company renamed itself Top Right Group but kept the Emap name for its business-to-business magazine titles; in 2015 the Emap name was retired and the titles were placed in a unit called Plexus, and in December 2015 Top Right Group changed its name to Ascential (Press Gazette). By January 2017 Ascential had decided that its heritage magazine brands no longer fitted a strategy focused on its largest, highest-growth brands, and it put them up for sale — a stable that included the Health Service Journal, Drapers, Nursing Times, Local Government Chronicle, Construction News, New Civil Engineer, Ground Engineering and the architecture titles, with a combined reported turnover of £63 million in 2015 (Press Gazette).

The sale closed in two steps. Ascential first separated thirteen heritage brands into a new operating entity in January 2017 to develop an independent strategy while buyers were sought, then sold the Health Service Journal to Wilmington for £19 million (Ascential regulatory news). On 1 June 2017 it sold the remaining eleven UK-based heritage brands to Metropolis International Limited for £23.5 million in cash, with the sale completed and the proceeds used to reduce Ascential’s net debt (Ascential regulatory news). The eleven included Drapers, Nursing Times, Local Government Chronicle, Construction News, New Civil Engineer, Ground Engineering, H&V News, Retail Jeweller, Materials Recycling World and the architecture titles, which together had generated revenue of £32.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of £6.9 million in 2016 (Ascential regulatory news). The price — £23.5 million for eleven titles that had once sat inside a £1.1 billion group — measures how far trade publishing’s economics had fallen in nine years.

Year	Owner	What happened
1972–1995	Institution of Civil Engineers	NCE launched; weekly after five issues
1995	Emap	ICE sells its magazine publishing interests to Emap
2008	Eden Bidco (Apax / Guardian Media Group)	Emap bought for £1.1 billion
2015	Top Right Group → Ascential	Emap name retired; titles placed in Plexus
2017	Metropolis International	Eleven heritage brands, including NCE, sold for £23.5 million

Sources: New Civil Engineer; The Media Leader; Press Gazette; Ascential regulatory news.

What NCE is today: magazine, awards and the Barrow upon Soar record

Today NCE describes itself as the official magazine and news website of the ICE, offering insight, inspiration and education for global infrastructure professionals through an award-winning monthly print magazine, an extensive website, daily e-newsletters and industry events (emap media pack). Its 2022 media pack names Claire Smith, a qualified geotechnical engineer, as editor, and gives the title a total magazine circulation of 45,000 — 9,000 of it international, with subscribers in 77 countries — plus more than 78,000 registered website users (emap media pack). The title marked its 50th anniversary on 10 May 2022 with a celebration at the ICE in Westminster, attended by more than 200 current and former team members, industry supporters and ICE members, with a special gold supplement and speeches by current and past editors and the ICE president (emap).

Beyond publishing, NCE runs the British Construction Industry Awards: the 28th awards were presented at a gala dinner at Grosvenor House Hotel in London on 14 October 2015, with more than 1,200 attendees, judging panels, site visits to shortlisted projects and categories spanning project delivery, international work, product design innovation and temporary works (New Civil Engineer). The 25th-anniversary awards in 2012 were chaired by the chief executive of Network Rail, Sir David Higgins — a reminder of how closely the awards world and the infrastructure industry interlock (New Civil Engineer).

NCE’s two Barrow upon Soar reports show the title doing what trade journalism does best: fast, technically literate, on-site reporting. On the day of the crash, 1 February 2008, NCE reported that the 06:13 Nottingham to Norwich service had struck the collapsed footbridge at 06:32, that the injured driver had been taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary, and that a Network Rail spokesperson at the scene had described the delivery as a normal ballast run and the collapse as an ordinary bridge bash (New Civil Engineer). The same report recorded that a banksman had tried to stop the train by waving his lamp, that the bridge was a listed structure whose most recent structural check in November 2007 had found no issues, and that the lorry belonged to an unnamed Network Rail subcontractor (New Civil Engineer). Three and a half years later, NCE reported the sentencing: an £80,000 fine with £32,000 in costs after the Office of Rail Regulation investigation, a collision speed of 104 km/h, and Network Rail’s failure to plan, manage and supervise bulk-material deliveries (New Civil Engineer). One caution: the 2011 NCE report says seven people were injured, a figure that differs from the official RAIB hospital record, which records the driver, the guard and one passenger taken to hospital; this profile follows the RAIB record and flags the difference rather than repeating NCE’s figure as fact (New Civil Engineer).

Frequently asked questions

What is New Civil Engineer? It is the monthly magazine and news website of the Institution of Civil Engineers, aimed at civil engineering professionals worldwide. It publishes industry news and analysis, runs events and the British Construction Industry Awards, and is owned by Metropolis International following the 2017 sale (emap media pack; Ascential regulatory news).

When was New Civil Engineer founded? In May 1972, when the Institution of Civil Engineers launched it as a monthly companion to its Proceedings. After five issues it went weekly, and it remained a weekly for decades before returning to a monthly format (New Civil Engineer; emap media pack).

Who owns New Civil Engineer? Metropolis International bought it in June 2017 as part of an eleven-brand, £23.5 million purchase from Ascential. Before that it was owned by Emap (from 1995) and then by Ascential under the Top Right Group lineage. It remains the ICE’s official magazine (Ascential regulatory news; Press Gazette).

How did NCE cover the Barrow upon Soar crash? NCE reported the derailment on the day it happened, with on-site detail from Network Rail, and reported the 2011 sentencing, including the £80,000 fine and £32,000 costs. Its 2011 report’s seven-injured figure differs from the RAIB hospital record, which this profile follows instead (New Civil Engineer; New Civil Engineer).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not claim NCE co-founded the British Construction Industry Awards in 1998; that appears only in tertiary sources, and this profile states only that NCE runs the awards.
• It does not give the exact date of the weekly-to-monthly switch, which no fully-read source verified.
• It does not present the media pack’s circulation and audience figures as independently audited; they are the publisher’s own advertising figures.
• It does not repeat NCE’s 2011 seven-injured figure as fact; it flags the difference from the RAIB record.
• It does not fully document the corporate relationship between the emap brand and Metropolis International after 2017.