A 60-tonne pressure vessel has been delivered to Cambridge’s new National Centre for Propulsion and Power (NCPP), located within the New Whittle Laboratory, at the heart of the Cambridge West Innovation District. The facility represents a genuinely new kind of engineering capability that will transform how the UK develops aerospace, energy, and defence technologies.
The facility, funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), Innovate UK, and the Department for Business and Trade, needed four lorries, a journey from Spain, and the planned temporary removal of a section of the building to get it here.
The delivery and installation operation was led by the project's main contractors, SDC, who demonstrated precision engineering.
Luke Norris, Project Director at SDC, the main building contractor on the project said, “Lifting such large and heavy pieces of equipment through the window required precision handling within a confined environment with limited clearance.
“I’m proud of all the team who completed the work successfully and safely through close teamwork with every movement meticulously calculated and controlled.”
But what the NCPP will unlock is far more significant than the logistics:
A faster journey to hardware technologies
Formula 1 teams dominate the grid by fusing design, manufacture, and testing into a single, continuous loop – iterating at the speed of human creativity. The NCPP’s new 4MW rapid test facility brings that same philosophy to aerospace, energy, and defence – compressing the journey from concept to physical test, from years to weeks.
Embodied AI that learns from the physical world
Most AI learns from the internet – ours will learn from reality. The NCPP will provide the unparalleled volumes of aerothermal data needed to train an aerothermal world model, closing the gap between digital simulation and reality.
By giving the UK unparalleled speed in taking hardware technologies to demonstration, Cambridge is creating a compelling reason for startups, scaleups, and global firms to develop their most critical technologies here, not overseas — generating new industries, high-value jobs, and long-term economic growth. Built in the UK, for the UK.
If the hardware industries of the future are to be built in the UK, we must be capable of taking technologies to demonstration at unprecedented speed.
The facility also took delivery of a Rolls-Royce Trent XWB – the world’s most fuel-efficient large aero engine. On loan from Rolls-Royce, it will be visible through the feature viewing window at the gateway to the Cambridge West Innovation District – a symbol of what decades of partnership between UK academia and industry can achieve.
Building work on the New Whittle Laboratory will be completed in 2026. The world-leading facility will be home to the UK's next generation of clean-energy and aviation innovation, bringing researchers and industry engineers together under one roof to tackle some of the toughest challenges in aviation, energy, and defence.
Thanks to the project partners: SDC, Grimshaw, AECOM, Max Fordham, Smith and Wallwork, CB3 Consulting, Hickton Quality Control.
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