A190 Foam Mix resurfacing, Seghill

Working at night on a congested site, we safely managed the removal and reinstatement of 3,700 Tonnes of material.

The project scope

The scheme involved the cold milling and resurfacing of 11,000m² of the A190 through Seghill and involved the recycling of a significant amount of tar bound road planings from across Northumberland using an off-site foamed bitumen process (Foambase) provided by our partner, OCL Regeneration Ltd. This is part of a series of projects to recycle historic stockpiles of tar bound road planings for Northumberland County Council.

The work was completed using our 2m wide planer over 9 night shifts and involved:

• Cold milling and removal of 150mm depth of existing road surface
• Off-site production of recycled tar bound planings to produce a foam mix binder course at the OCL recycling facility at Bedlington
• Reinstatement of 100mm depth using the foam mix binder course
• Laying of 50mm depth Armaflex surface course.

The Foambase cold-lay surfacing material incorporated 94% recycled tar planings which was bound with foamed bitumen and other hydraulic binders, using 80% less energy and 50% less CO₂ than traditional materials.

Key quantities:

• Road surface replaced: 11,000 m²
• Recycled planings foam mix binder course: 2,500 t
• 10mm Armaflex surface course: 1,200 t

Challenges & successes

The project posed a number of challenges, including delivering all works at night whilst safely reopening the road each morning at 6am; planing out and re-laying significant quantities of material each night before the reopening deadline; laying new products at significant depth to the required specification while working to tight deadlines; coordinating mixing operations and Foambase deliveries from the mixing plant 10 miles away and managing a very busy and constrained site at night whilst coordinating planing operations, surfacing, material removal and multiple Foambase binder and Armaflex material deliveries from different suppliers in the required sequence through a narrow site. The work was delivered safely to a very high quality and the road was reopened on time each day.