Barrett Byrd Associates

Most motorway resurfacing projects take months to plan so completing the process in just a few hours is quite a challenge. RMC rose to the occasion recently in Manchester. Claire Symes reports.

Manchester’s link road between junction 12 on the M60 and M62 is probably one of the Highways Agency’s (HA) busiest motorway junctions in the UK and even short term closure could cause major congestion. Overnight resurfacing would normally be planned months in advance to minimise disruption but an accident earlier this summer meant condensing planning and laying into less than 12 hours.

Term maintenance contractor AmeyMouchel called on RMC Surfacing’s help at 1.30pm on 28 July after a tanker carrying 20,000 litres of diesel overturned and shed its load onto the westbound slip road. Initial clean up attempts showed the diesel to have damaged the asphalt surface to the extent of replacement being needed before the slip lane could be reopened. Long term closure was not an option so the site teams worked through the night to ensure the link was repaired in time for the following day’s rush hour traffic.

RMC is subcontracted to AmeyMouchel to carry out planned resurfacing work for its Area 10 contract with the HA, for which Atkins is the managing agent. But RMC is also committed to respond to emergencies such as the incident at Manchester as quickly as possible.

“Most accident related work generally involves relatively small areas of resurfacing, usually over just one lane of carriageway, and are not as time critical as the Manchester job,” says RMC Surfacing contracts manager Mike Hanrahan. “We generally operate a four week turnaround for emergency resurfacing work which allows it to be planned over a few days or weeks depending on the urgency. It is unusual for large areas – as was the case at Manchester – to be affected and at 3,500m2, the M60 slip lane project is probably one of the largest resurfacing projects we have ever planned and carried out in such a short period of time.”

The accident happened at around 7am on Monday 28 July and blocked the westbound slip between the M60 and M62 plus diesel spillage forced closure of the adjacent eastbound slip soon after. The closures caused serious tailbacks during the morning peak and both the Highways Agency and Atkins were keen to see early reopening of the vital link roads. Up until lunchtime Atkins hoped that the asphalt could be cleaned rather than replaced.

“After inspecting the asphalt it was obvious that we could not safely reopen the carriageway without undertaking extensive resurfacing works,” says Atkins minor works manager Jason Dickinson.

AmeyMouchel scheme manager Chris Rogers says: “The tanker ended up on its side on the hard shoulder of the westbound slip road but the fuel ran across both westbound lanes and over the central reservation and partly onto the eastbound slip.

“One of the first priorities was to limit the environmental impact of the incident so we sealed off drains and ditches in the surrounding area using a number of different techniques. While these measures where being put into place, the carriageway cleaning process was started and the police began assessing to options for recovery of the tanker.”

The fuel had caused significant softening of the asphalt’s bitumen binder by the time cleaning and recovery operations were in full force which meant that resurfacing was the only option. Atkins initially thought that a 800m section of the westbound dual carriageway link was affected but later inspections enabled engineers to scale down the estimate to 400m. Flow of diesel onto the eastbound carriageway and subsequent trafficking meant that this slip road also needed to be repaired.

“AmeyMouchel first called us at around lunchtime to explain the situation and get mobilisation under way to allow the work to be carried out that night,” says Hanrahan. “It was quite a daunting task to organise full width planing out and laying of a new surface course in just a couple of hours but failure was not an option. We did not have any resurfacing worked planned in that vicinity that night from which we could divert to the site, so the work had to be planned from scratch.”

According to Hanrahan, his phone line that afternoon was red hot with telephone calls to mobilise RMC’s planing and laying teams as well as organise low loaders to get the necessary plant onto site. The plan was to plane out a 30mm thick layer of the HRA surface across the hard shoulder and both lanes of the westbound slip lane and replace it with a new 30mm layer of RMC’s Viatex surface course. Final decision on the length of the westbound slip lane to be resurfaced was not made until 5pm, so Hanrahan briefed RMC’s coating plant at Hope Street in Salford to mix sufficient Viatex to surface up to 800m.

To speed up the work, the HA diverted one of its construction management surfacing contractors from a project planned for that evening on a nearby section of the M6 to carry out the work on the eastbound slip lane.

“Normally it takes around two weeks to mobilise plant and operatives, but our planing team was on site and had started work by 7pm – less than six hours after we first received the call from AmeyMouchel,” says Hanrahan. “Planing of the whole 3500m2 area on the westbound link road took around two and a half hours and went very smoothly. By carefully sequencing the work, our 12 strong paving team was able to move in and start laying the Viatex thin surfacing soon after the planing had got under way.”

Atkins’ site team carried out visual inspections throughout the planing work to ensure that the diesel damage was confined within the top 30mm of asphalt.

Resurfacing on both the east and westbound slip roads was completed by 1.30am allowing the links to be fully reopened to traffic in time for the tuesday morning rush hour.

“Having the slip road closed for any longer than 24 hours would have had a serious effect on the local road network,” says Highways Agency project sponsor Andrew Winstanley. “Projects such as this would normally take several months to plan so getting the work done so efficiently in such a short space of time is a real credit to all of the Area 10 contract partners.”

Resurfacing work on the link roads was swiftly progressed to minimise congestion but environmental clean up operations at the site continued after reopening. “Use of booms in drainage ditches surrounding the incident site helped to contain the diesel and prevent it spreading immediately after the accident,” says Rogers. “But once the resurfacing phase was complete we had to start working to remove the diesel from the area by pumping out the fuel contained within the booms and excavating contaminated soil.”

AmeyMouchel’s work on the M60 slip lane site may be continuing but RMC’s focus has moved onto other projects and has just completed another emergency contract. The contractor was called in to resurface part of a roundabout at the M60/M67 junction after a burst fuel tank on an overturned articulated lorry spilt diesel on the road.

“Compared to resurfacing the M60 slip road, the roundabout project was relatively small scale and straightforward,” says Hanrahan. “It also helped that we already had materials and resources mobilised for work elsewhere in the region that night. We were able to divert the teams to the accident site and, unlike the M60 job, we didn’t have to plan the work from scratch.”

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