Case study Ely Southern Bypass

Our team at Bison Precast helped design, manufacture and deliver two runs of precast concrete box culverts to Volker Fitzpatrick as part of major work on the new Ely southern bypass to ease congestion in and around the city. The bypass opened in the spring of 2018.

The £36m work on the A142, which now connects Angel Drove and Stuntney Causeway in Cambridgeshire, includes sections spanning a railway line and the River Great Ouse and its floodplains.

This fenland and its vast system of waterways and ditches presented issues to the project which had to be swiftly resolved using a bespoke drainage system.

A main internal drainage board ditch, located alongside the road, was diverted using Bison Precasts’s box culvert system. The system was made up of 83 separate precast concrete units, some weighing as much as 22 tonnes, created at Bison Precast’s Somercotes Facility in Derbyshire.

Neil Scarboro, Site Agent for Volker Fitzpatrick, said, “I hadn’t worked with Bison Precast before, but having installed similar large-scale drainage systems on other projects I knew we needed providers who would be cost effective, efficient and organised in their delivery. Bison Precast were all three, so I would certainly work with them again on similar jobs.

“Their design team provided the detailed structural design of the box culvert system, working closely with our own in-house team. It took less than a month between the sign-off of the design and the delivery of the precast units, so we were impressed by the speed with which the box culverts, some of which were very large, made it to the site.

“Even more importantly however was the accuracy of their delivery schedule, which was precise down to the hour, as we were on a tight schedule due to the logistics of operating a large crane on site to lift and move the precast units into position.

“This helped ensure the installation took place quickly and smoothly, and the fact that they provided such a service at the most competitive cost, compared to other firms we looked at, meant the system was very good value for money.”

Martin Bolton, National Sales Manager for Bison Precast, said, “At around four metres in height, this was the first time we’d made wingwalls of this size for controlling water flow, so we were glad the finished project turned out well. We delivered the units over 50 separate loads and visited several times to understand the site and help ensure our hauliers arrived when needed.”