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Here’s a summary of projects on which I have been engaged within the past five years. In addition I have designed or advised on a number of lesser projects, for the same consultants as appear below, and also directly for local clients or consultants. Project Outline: Kildonan Sand Pit, Isle of South Uist Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Statement. Design of access works and ultimate restoration. Project Outline: Eoligarry wind farm Access routes and on-site roads for delivery, construction and service life for a small wind energy development in the Outer Hebrides Isle of Barra. Preliminary design and optioneering, planning application documentation, detailed design and contract documentation. Project Outline: A1 Gateshead-Newcastle Western Bypass Preliminary design and optioneering for upgrade of existing 2-lane dual carriageway, covering about 26km and 16 grade-separated junctions. Project Outline: Dublin Tram - Luas Line B1 Technical Review of D&B contractor’s concept and detailed designs for track geometry (team leader) and highway geometry and layout. Project Outline: A1D2B - A1, Dishforth to Scotch Corner, upgrade to Motorway Detailed design of grade separated junction with the A61 at Baldersby; Local access road and roundabouts at Sinderby, Gatenby and Leeming Bar; Detailed design of various local access routes, side roads, accesses etc. Project Outline: Dublin Tram - Luas Line C1 Final detailed layout design; Review of other design elements. Project Outline: Edinburgh Tram Preliminary, then detailed design of roadworks and the overall street layout for Line1, Section 1, ie from Newhaven (west of Leith docks) via Leith Walk and Princes Street to Haymarket. Project Outline: N9/N10 - Carlow Bypass Detailed design for almost all National, Regional and Local side roads (that’s all the difficult bits with not enough land acquired!) on this greenfield/upgrade project in the Republic of Ireland. Project Profile: M80 to Kirkintilloch Link Road Initially, my contribution was to develop a specimen design for the D&B tender documents, based on a preliminary design by Dougall Bailie Associates. However after carrying out a detailed review, this was changed to a fully detailed design for conventional procurement. I have throughout this project had exclusive responsibility for the design and modelling of road geometry and layout for the entire 9 kilometre route from the M80 Junction to Townhead in the centre of Kirkintilloch, together with all side roads, river diversions etc. To date this remains the most extensive project for which I have had complete and exclusive responsibility for the geometry and layout design - both organizational and in its execution. Project Profile: MerseyTram Line1 Line 1 was proposed to run from the Mersey at King’s Waterfront to Kirby Town Centre via Lime Street, East Derby Road, Queen’s Avenue, and the East Lancashire Road (A580). I was responsible for detailed model design for most of the works east of Liverpool city centre. There were severe constraints on the track geometry and layout (which was designed by a permanent way specialist), but it was the highways and miscellaneous street works that made up the vast majority of the work in this project. The geometry of level crossings was extremely variable, requiring a wide range of techniques to be used in achieving a satisfactory result. Likewise, considerable pragmatism was required in the adaptation of the street layout around the trampath. Sadly this extensive and exciting project was abandoned at the end of 2005 when the government withdrew funding - by which time I had in four months completed detailed design of sections totalling about 10km.
This is a project to upgrade the Fosse Way to dual carriageway with grade separated junctions. Most of the 29km mainline is an on-line improvement, but the final 7km to Newark is off-line: apparently a greenfield site, but busy with Roman and even rare Palaeolithic archaeology. As well as designing all the highway geometry and layout for this Northern Section - and writing up Options Reports, I’ve reviewed the designs for all the crossings and junctions on the 22km on-line section. Project Profile: A66 Cargo Fleet Interchange Just east of Middlesbrough town centre, the A66 passes through an an extensive tract of cleared industrial and residential land. To facilitate redevelopment, North Ormesby Roundabout - at the east end of All Saints Viaduct - will be converted to a grade separated interchange, with other improvements to adjoining roads and extending eastwards along the A66 to include Cargo Fleet Roundabout. The project also includes development access roads and roundabouts. The site for the new interchange is very cramped, and it is simply not feasible to fit in a fully DMRB-compliant layout. Finding a compromise between layout, design standards and cost that would be acceptable to all development partners has proved exceptionally difficult: the project passed through the hands of a number of major consultants, but ultimately was put out to tender for a design-and-build contract, with quality to be the primary element in tender assessment. My involvement with the project began early in the tender preparation. Within half an hour of receiving the previous consultant’s design models on CD, I was able to show that shifting the overbridge 10m or so up-chainage would bring extensive benefits, with significantly improved compliance with DMRB topping the bill. Other benefits included reduced earthworks generally - but particularly excavation in contaminated ground), eliminated alterations to the adjacent viaduct, reduced land-take, and slashing costs. But moving the overbridge was just the start: every element of the design was assessed for opportunities to add value - improving quality, reducing cost. There were equally bold changes too by other disciplines - in the concepts for structures and for phasing of the works and its impact on traffic. Balfour Beatty’s tender was not the lowest price, but it was successful on quality. What a difference a change in perspective makes! With so much done at tender stage, the detailed design would be a stroll, right? Wrong! Working with the same passion for quality as at tender stage delivered yet more improvements in geometry, further reductions to earthworks, and other significant changes. These often start with seemingly innocent questions: questioning the illustrative design: “Why a new roundabout there? Isn’t the existing one big enough? or “What are these retaining walls holding up?”. Although I have made other contributions to tender and detailed designs (eg Designer’s Risk Assessments, Specification Appendices ...), my primary role in this project has been as layout design specialist, working with Halcrow’s highways design team at Darlington and Gateshead. For the tender stage I worked in Gateshead, but after a re-familiarisation visit to site, all of the detailed design has been carried out remotely. The principle tool has been Bentley System’s MX software (still familiarly known to many as MOSS), generating 3-d models (plus geometric annotation) for Halcrow’s AutoCAD technician to use as X-refs in plan drawings. Long- and cross-sections are delivered as complete drawings, requiring only the Halcrow title blocks to be added. [In future, using MicroStation and/or AutoCAD I will be able to provide fully-finished drawings, both plans and sections.] And Excel has been useful for analytical work - finding and demonstrating solutions, with AutoCAD as a common platform for data transfer or for sharing information. |
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Project Profile: A46 Widmerpool to Newark