The APEC and ESG Fora jointly announce a one-day trip to Norfolk to visit an innovative new showcase footbridge, the world’s first structure to use 3D printed concrete beams, currently being built by minimass at the Norfolk site of Constructionarium, a not-for-profit educational centre providing immersive experiential learning for built environment students & professionals.

minimass is a design & engineering climate tech startup, a family of patented low carbon & low cost structural elements, starting with beams, for construction of bridges and large buildings. These are fabricated using 3D concrete printing technology in an innovative way to use far less material, vastly reducing both carbon and cost.

The bridge is being fully instrumented with state-of-the-art fibre optic sensors to allow monitoring of the forces and temperature over the 6 month testing period. It is being designed for easy disassembly so it can then join Constructionarium’s project roster, helping educate industry professionals of the future about sustainable and innovative construction solutions.

This project is being partly funded by an Innovate UK Net Zero pre-commercialisation grant.

The co-founders of minimass, Andy Coward and Sarah Blake, are both Queens’ College alumni.

Andy is a structural engineer with 20 years’ industry experience including most recently as Head of Engineering at BIG, as well as 7 years spent at Foster + Partners and 7 years at AECOM. Sarah spent 11 years at British Land and is a former strategy consultant.