Maintenance work to the High Street in Newington had been planned by the client for completion by another contractor under the Road Asset Renewal Contract. SGN already had a road closure planned to conduct their own works, and KCC were keen to utilise this closure to minimise the disruption to residents. With the planned works postponed by the existing contractor, KCC approached us to complete the project.
Our agile management ensured our teams were able to continue working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional measures were put in place to protect our teams and ensure we could work within the government guidelines. We worked in conjunction with the SGN team, utilising the existing road closure to lay 3000m² of binder surface course and 400m² of specialist high friction surface. We replaced the ironworks and completed the white lining. Work was originally planned to be conducted at night however, our client was keen to minimise the disruption to the public, so we conducted the works during the day.
A successful project, resulting in significant savings for our client as only one road closure was required. Daytime completion offered further savings, and with less traffic on the road due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the disruption to both residents and the travelling public was minimal. The use of the high friction surface treatment has further enhanced the safety of the road.
A car fire on the busy A229 dual carriageway had caused significant damage to the road surface. KCC had deployed their HSR traffic management team to close the affected lane and contacted us to assist with the repair. Owing to our central location in Kent, our Operations Director was on site within an hour, (our targeted call to action is three hours). Inspection of the site highlighted major defects not only to the area damaged by the car fire, but in the immediate vicinity.
Road closures and diversions are disruptive for the travelling public and expensive to implement; with the whole country in lock down due to the COVID-19 pandemic the road was quieter than usual. This gave us the opportunity to delay the repair by four days, enabling the increased scope of work to be completed at the same time under a full road closure.
Utilisation of resources maximised the road space booking and in turn generated greater whole life value for the client without the need for an additional road closure. We were able to make cost savings for the client by combining the works. Planings were returned to the asphalt plant for use as RAP in future projects generating sustainability through recycling.
The Broadway Sheerness was a 1km stretch of concrete road with varying thickness of asphalt which had failed significantly. Following a ground radar survey, original plan for maintenance was to complete a full depth reconstruction (FDR) to a depth of 900mm. This would mean a costly and disruptive repair, likely to impact on existing SU apparatus. The Isle of Sheppey is renowned for poor ground conditions so an innovative solution was sought.
Working in conjunction with KCC and Tensar we were able to offer a solution using the TriAx 160 stabilisation geogrid. This meant excavation was reduced to 420mm, rather than the original planned depth, resulting in minimal disruption to existing services, and a reduction in the disposal of waste and imported granular fill. The project was fully managed and delivered by DJG Management Services and CW Surfacing working on behalf of the main contractor.
This innovative solution offered significant economic and environmental savings. The associated acceleration in site programme, reduced inconvenience to residents in terms of the duration of traffic management and road closures, along with the reduced site risks, noise, dust and visual impact provided a very positive outcome for our client. A customer satisfaction survey recorded 97.5% of responses as very satisfied with the result. Since this reconstruction we have continued to develop innovative solutions with KCC on their concrete road network.