Woolsington Grange 278 Works, Kenton Bank Hall, Newcastle Upon Tyne

We rescheduled the project to complete additional utility diversion works to allow a subsequent Council project to commence on time.

The project scope

The scheme involved the creation of 2 new road entrances into the new housing estate at Kenton Bank Hall, Newcastle Upon Tyne. Work included the realignment of the approach roads, repositioning and installation of underground services and construction of the new road entrances including:

• Site boundary and traffic management
• Public liaison
• Site clearance
• Drainage and utilities installation
• Earthworks
• Carriageway construction
• Surfacing
• New kerbing
• Footways, and paved areas
• General landscaping

Key quantities:

• Excavated: 3,000 m3
• Overlay: 1,800 m²
• Ducting: 1,000 m

Challenges & successes

The project was in a residential area with access always required for residents and passing traffic. To ensure that we took resident’s needs into account during the planning and construction phase and to ensure good communications, we deployed our Public Liaison Officer to act as a single point of contact for all issues relating to the project.

The site contained a wide variety of old and poor condition, uncharted buried services, plus the main air traffic control fibre optic cable serving Newcastle Airport. To ensure we did not damage any services, we carried out extensive surveys and hand excavated trial holes through the entire site to expose all buried services. This included exposing the entire airport fibre optic cable within our site boundary prior to the main construction phase.

Our client had been let down by other utilities contractors, so we carried out this additional work and then rescheduled our project and worked flexibly to ensure that a subsequent council project could be started on time.

During the project, materials prices varied widely, with an average 40% increase. To maintain the project budget, we rescheduled and accelerated the works by working extended hours and deploying additional labour and equipment to offset material price increases.