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TECHNOLOGY & LIGHTING PROJECT

A1(M) J9 to 10 Lighting

Sign and lighting renewal on eight slip roads

National Highways selected us to carry out the replacement of the road lighting and signage assets on the slip roads serving the A1(M) in Hertfordshire as part of their East region operations contract. As principal contractor, we managed and delivered the majority of the activities ourselves, working in collaboration with other lot contractors and our own specialist supply-chain to successfully complete the scheme.

We replaced the existing steel lighting columns with new passively safe columns. All were supplied with above ground disconnection systems and associated LED lanterns (supporting the NH corporate LED target). To power the system, cabling was installed in ducts, some of which required road crossings. We installed feeder pillars to segregate highways lighting and power cable circuits from the local authorities to allow safe isolation, some of which had a Distribution Network Operator (DNO) supply. All lighting was installed with a Central Management System (CMS), that allowed National Highways to remotely monitor, control, and manage the road lighting from a single, centralised platform. As well as the road lighting, we replaced the signage (signs and plates) on all of the slip roads.

We self-delivered all sign and lighting installations using five electricians, supported by general civils operatives. This included all column lifting and slinging operations.

Deliverables

  • 38 steel lighting columns replaced with new passively safe columns.
  • 28 signs installed (lit and unlit).
  • 5500 metres of new cabling.
  • 2500 metres of ducting.
  • 10 feeder pillars installed.
  • BS7671 Installation Certificate and a commissioning certificate for the CMS installation.

Delivery Partners

Traffic Management

Site Clearance

Maintenance & Response

NRTS

Delivering Efficiencies

Site surveys

Following lessons learned from an earlier lighting scheme, the A1(M) J6 to 8 Lighting, we engaged in ECI. This included site work, vegetation clearance, High Density Array Ground Penetrating Radar (HDAGPR) surveys to accurately locate utilities, trial holes and proving of existing lighting ducts. We also enabled waste acceptance criteria (WAC) testing of the life expired lighting and signing.

Engineering solutions

One of the risks we identified was the ‘head wall type’ concrete forms to house lighting columns on embankments which were a complex build because of space constraints. The outputs were low and would have impacted timescales and budget. We overcame this by proposing the use of off-the-shelf paving slabs as an alternative retaining wall design. This was accepted by the Designer and subsequently delivered, producing a cost saving and a programme reduction of 2 weeks.

Network occupancy

Throughout the scheme we held weekly calls with the local highway authorities, Hertfordshire and Essex, National Highways and Chevron TM to provide confidence in roadspace availability. Network occupancy at J10 had an additional challenge due to the Baldock Service Station. Collaborating in advance with the stakeholder, we were able to develop a solution that maintained access and egress to the Services during the work to ensure minimal disruption.

Benefits

Safety
  • Zero Accident Frequency Rate and Lost Time Incident Frequency Rate (LTIFR).
  • No RIDDORs during 10,300 labour hours.
  • Use of HDAGPR together with vac-ex ensured zero service strikes in the highway verges which were heavily congested with utilities.
Customer
  • Our lane closures were used 4 times by the Area 6&8 M&R contractor Ringway to conduct routine maintenance. This roadspace sharing reduced the need for further lane closures and further customer disruption.
  • Standing down the workforce following the local authority network clashes reduced reducing road user experience of roadworks by 10 shifts.
Delivery
  • The change to the headwall detail, saved 12-shifts in the programme, an estimated cost efficiency of £30k.
  • When TM resource was required, we enabled capacity via our own supply chain, to maintain projects milestones and outputs.