Herring Bridge success for Capital Concrete

Capital Concrete supply specialist heavyweight concrete for Herring Bridge project in Norfolk

SEVENTEEN Capital Concrete trucks recently made their way from London to Norfolk to supply 245m³ of specialist heavyweight concrete for a prestigious bridge project in Great Yarmouth.

The project by the BAM Farrans joint venture for Norfolk County Council – the Great Yarmouth Third River Crossing, Herring Bridge – is one of Norfolk’s most significant infrastructure schemes in recent years and will connect the A47, which links Birmingham to Lowestoft, to the port and enterprise zone on the other side of the river Yare.

The ‘bascule’ bridge design – a bridge that can open and close – uses a large concrete counterweight to lift each side of the bridge upwards, allowing large ships and other vessels to pass through, making the heavyweight concrete material an important part of its construction.

When supplying the material Capital Concrete faced several key challenges – the logistics of moving the concrete to the site’s location next to a major traffic route meant that pours could only start at 6pm each day and had to finish in the early hours of the morning to avoid congestion.

Additionally, to meet the project specification requirements, Capital Concrete’s expert technical team successfully developed and tested a concrete mix that delivered the required workability of the concrete with four hours open life from the time of batching.

Jack Sindhu, technical manager at Capital Concrete, said: ‘We appreciate that our customers rely on us to deliver on time, and we worked closely with Brett Concrete, who batched our heavyweight mix at their nearby Ipswich Plant, to deliver the material from a closer location. Even though Capital Concrete currently operate within the M25, this teamwork with sister company Brett Concrete, allowed the specialist concrete to be delivered seamlessly.

‘The time frame provided some difficult challenges, as each pour required multiple vehicles because each truck had limited carrying capacity due to the concrete’s high density, which meant that the job had to be completed in two large pours in excess of 105m³ each and one small pour to finish.

‘The whole team did a great job and worked incredibly hard throughout the night, and a special thank you goes to Brett Concrete’s batcher, Scott McLellan, who was essential to the success of the job.’

The plan is for the Herring Bridge to open to the public this summer, easing traffic congestion on the town’s roads, shortening journey times and improving journey reliability.

Councillor Graham Plant, Norfolk County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways, Infrastructure and Transport, said: ‘I’m confident the completion of this long-awaited new bridge and further planned investments will bring much prosperity to the town and our region.’