A-one+
Remote Control Grass Cutting
As part of routine maintenance of highways we need to cut extensive amounts of grass along the highway verges including on uneven ground and up and down embankments. We know that slips, trips and falls are some of our bigger risks, and that alternative plant to carry out these tasks can include use of vibrating tools (e.g. strimmers) with associated...
Accommodating Local Businesses During Works
During a three week surfacing scheme, planned road closures would result in restricted access to and from a local business. With the A64 comprising two lanes with no hard-shoulder at this location, essential surfacing maintenance work required full road closures of the westbound carriageway, and Paradise Lane directly accesses the A64 in the closed length. The works were programmed over...
Renovating Safety Barrier Beams for Reuse
We aim to develop products and techniques which not only increase cost savings, but that benefit the environment, working towards reducing our carbon footprint and providing more sustainable delivery. Safety barriers are damaged all over the road network every day as a result of road traffic collisions, and need to be repaired. In partnership with our supply chain, we developed...
Fuel Resistant Material in Laybys
On the A64 dual carriageway around the southern side of York, there are a number of laybys for use by road users. By the location and nature of use, the surfacing material in laybys can suffer early deterioration through oil spills from heavy vehicles, deformation from concentrated use by heavy vehicles, and turning stresses as heavy vehicles look to rejoin...
Verge Hardening Reduces Maintenance Burden
The A64 Whitwell dual carriageway trunk road suffers from sub-standard horizontal and vertical geometry, leading to increased maintenance such as grass cutting being required each year, some years more than others depending on weather patterns. With designing for maintenance principles in mind, we developed a permeable verge hardening solution which removed the grass and topsoil from visibility splays and replaced...
Managed Staff Recognition at Awards Ceremonies
We know the importance of valuing our workforce and are always looking for ways to recognise and reward staff for good performance, going above and beyond what their job role requires or helping and inspiring colleagues to reach their potential. This aligns with our business value of ‘developing, valuing and respecting our people’ and ‘enjoying what we do’. One way...
Helping New Starters Integrate into the Business
We realise how daunting it can be to be a new starter within an established business or team. So we decided to put a new initiative in place to help new staff embed quickly into the business. We ask each new starter to prepare a short biography about themselves in their first week. This might include what their professional experience...
Sharing our Work using Interesting Facts
We have recently trail-blazed a new way of communicating with customers when we’ve finished a scheme. Our Customer Hub draws together Highways England, A-one+ and Transport Focus to provide a customer focus across the services we deliver. One opportunity we identified was to better share with our customers when we’ve completed a scheme. With 81% of our highway maintenance work...
Green Hard Hat Challenge
We have recently issued new improved protection hard hats to all employees. With an abundance of old style hard hats, we collected these from our staff and looked for new ways of using these to promote the image and appearance of construction. We developed this into the ‘Green Hard Hat Challenge’ with a school local to our project work. Our...
Rescue Day STEM Activity
We attended a local event called Rescue Day to share with visitors the work we do and why we do it. The purpose of Rescue Day is to bring together as many rescue services as possible in one place to demonstrate what they do and how they do it. Raising public awareness of safety issues such as the dangers of...
Inspiring Women in our Industry
To celebrate International Women in Engineering Day, we developed a series of short bios of women in our business. Drawing from a broad cross section of disciplines and experience from within the project, our leadership team worked with women to capture and celebrate their own journey in engineering and construction. As well as capturing their stories, we encouraged our women...
Inventions Week: Water Travel
During Inventions Week in March, we teamed up our STEM Ambassadors with a local school to explore the theme of ‘Water Travel’ with Year 5 and 6 students. The students were challenged to plan, design and construct a pair of shoes which had the capacity to walk on water. Prior to our visit, the students designed their shoes and were...
Minimising Customer Disruption Through Pavement Design
We recently had to undertake overnight resurfacing work on the westbound slip roads of the A64 trunk road and the A1237 York outer ring road. This key junction has a heavy commuter and leisure traffic flow, so works had to be planned overnight under full slip road closures to minimise disruption. The overnight traffic management included diversions for the road...
LED Lighting installed on a motorway
We completed £1.1m of lighting improvement work on the M62 over a 19km length between J22 Saddleworth Moor and Kirklees Viaduct, west of Junction 25. We replaced over 1,000 high pressure sodium lanterns with new LED lighting units; this solution was devised by the contractor to suit the client specification. These require no routine maintenance, eliminating the need for cyclic...
Apprentices Learning about Construction
A visit to a major construction site on the A160 was arranged for our Civil Engineer Apprentices and developing Technicians and Engineers. This was a good opportunity to see the development of major works within the local area. This visit was arranged as part of the ongoing development of staff within the organisation. It was a good opportunity to gain...
