Birse Water - Birse Civils Ltd

BIRSENEWS 11
Keen to be green
A series of ‘green’ challenges, together with the need to protect two pipelines and to build a
bridge over a railway, have been keeping our team at Ridgmont, Bedfordshire, on their toes.
The £12.5m project, to build a bypass diverting the A507
past the village, began in December 2006 and is due to be
completed early in 2008.
One of the issues facing the team, led by Project Manager,
Mushtaq Ahmed, was to relocate a colony of great crested
newts. Specialist ecologists were brought in to move the
newts to a newly created habitat in May 2007. Only then
could work begin on one of two embankments to be built
on either side of the railway line between Bedford and
Milton Keynes.
Mushtaq takes up the story. “We no sooner solved one
green issue than we had to deal with another – the
material to be chosen for the embankments.
“Together with our customer, Bedfordshire County Council,
we agreed on using 130,000 cubic metres of pulverised fuel
ash, a recycled product from Didcot Power Station.”
Elsewhere on the site another green issue arose – how to
dispose of pernicious Japanese Knotweed that had been
discovered next to some watercourses.
Again, ecologists were brought in to prepare a
method statement for its disposal and to monitor the
removal process.
“Resources were brought in to remove and transport the
Knotweed to a licensed facility. The Knotweed was then
buried 5 metres deep,” recalled Mushtaq.
To prevent the knotweed from spreading, the area where it
had been dug up was treated with a specialist membrane to
give it full protection.
Other protective measures - of a different type - were required
to avoid damaging two pipelines that run across the site. One
pumps cement, in slurry form, from Dunstable to Rugby
Cement’s plant in Rugby, one of the main suppliers to the
concrete trade. The second is a GPSS pipeline that provides
fuel to the military and airports. No work could be done within
twelve metres of the latter pipeline until the protection work
had been completed.
A further environmental complication arose with the
discovery of remains from both the Roman era and the Middle
Ages. Archaeologists documented the finds before they were
covered with sand and construction work could continue.
A final difficulty came with constructing a road bridge to
carry the bypass over the railway. Work to the wing walls
and abutments could be done during the day, but in the
interests of safety - the team have so far worked 200,000
hours without a reportable accident - work on the parapets
and the deck could only be done at night, following
procedures agreed with Network Rail.
The five-kilometre bypass runs close to Junction 13 of the
M1. Next time you are speeding along that stretch of
motorway, spare a thought for the painstakingly careful
progress we’ve been making just over the fields.
One of the issues
facing the team,
led by Project
Manager,
Mushtaq Ahmed,
was to relocate a
colony of great
crested newts.