05/04/2022

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Newsdesk

Sweco UK

Connecting and protecting: A47 Tuddenham to Easton set to improve safety as well as links, journey times and climate-friendly travel opportunities.

 

The A47 North Tuddenham to Easton – a National Highways scheme – has now successfully received “Development Consent” under the Planning Act 2008 from the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Schapps. Once in place, the scheme will provide modern, climate-resilient infrastructure with an immediate improvement in safety and journey time reliability.

This project will have a huge impact locally and regionally, this section of the A47 has 41 direct accesses over a short length which contributes to a very poor safety record, with the A47 currently identified as the second worst A road nationally for accidents. The inclusion of 6.5km of new walking and cycling infrastructure will encourage active travel and relink communities previously severed by the existing Strategic Road through the provision of four grade separated WCH crossings.

 

I’m incredibly proud of my entire team. What they have achieved is absolutely incredible given the hurdles we faced along the way. We’ve spent a lot of time on the ground, in the communities that will benefit from this scheme. When you stand at a public consultation, and hear stories of personal tragedy, it hammers home just how important our efforts and skill set are in improving the safety of the strategic road network.”

Barrie Arthur Senior Project Manager

Project challenges & highlights

  1. Challenging Delivery Programme
  2. Scheme delivered on programme and budget
  3. No Junction & Sideroad strategy art end of stage 2, first task at Stage 3 was to develop a coherent Junction & Sideroad Strategy for the project.
  4. Statutory Consultation prepared in a reduced 6-week window through intense collaboration and co-location
  5. Production and Submission of the DCO remotely during the pandemic and working from programme
  6. Fully Digital Issue of a DCO
  7. Entire DCO Examination undertaken remotely via Teams due to the pandemic

 

This is a huge milestone and testament to the team’s technical knowledge and the efforts they put in both for the submission of the Development Consent Orders and the support they gave throughout the examination itself.

 

The process is relentless – the deadlines come thick and fast and consultant, client, legal and delivery team needed to be fully collaborative to react to changing deadlines, public feedback and  of course the huge challenges of delivering DCO’s during a global pandemic.

Barrie Arthur Senior Project Manager at Sweco

Key Sweco value-adds

  1. Our Information Management team have been at the forefront of our delivery and involved with setting up new processes for both Contractor and Client. Their expertise was recognised by the Client wehn they provided expert advice on the implementation of EIR’s which led to a change in approach from the Client
  2. The use of Common Data Environment throughout, for all deliverables, controbuted to not only the possibility but the success of remote working to be a huge success.
  3. MS Teams was, for the first time, adopted and embraced by delivery teams as a central communications channel to deliver the project including multi-organisational collaboration and set-up between Contractor and Client.
  4. Design was developed throughout with PAS 2080 principles at the forefront of our approach
  5. The scheme provides 10km of new Dual 2 Lane All Purpose dual carriageway, 2 fully Grade Separated Junctions, 10km of associated sideroads, 6.5km of new Walking / Cycle routes including 4 grade separated crossing points providing safe movement for all users across the A47

Project contacts:

Barrie Arthur – Senior Project Manager
Michael Robinson – DCO Lead
Gordon Gray – Design Manager
John Meehan – Environment Lead
Duncan Morrison – Highways Lead
Ruairidh Mackay – Structures Lead
Jie Zhu – Traffic Modelling