Balfour Beatty Jones Bros Civil Engineering UK joint venture recognised for environmental excellence on £35m Porthmadog bypass6th Nov 2012

The joint venture partnership of Balfour Beatty and Jones Bros Civil Engineering UK has been acclaimed in an important environmental quality assessment by a top industry body for its work on the A487 Porthmadog, Minffordd and Tremadog bypass project.

The £35m construction project was awarded a remarkable 87.9 per cent score in the prestigious Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Award Scheme (CEEQUAL).

The award scheme, backed by the Institution of Civil Engineers, aims to improve sustainability of civil engineering and public realm projects.

The joint venture partnership was assessed on many aspects of its environmental and social performance on the bypass project. These included use of materials, waste minimisation, reduction of carbon emissions, community relations, land use and ecology.

Earlier this year, the joint venture partners also took top prize in the Construction News environmental project category for the bypass project.

Partnership project manager, Wyn Daniels said: “I am extremely proud that our joint venture has won another prestigious award. All of the partners in the project worked hard to minimise environmental impact despite working in an environmentally sensitive area.”

The new section of the A487 carriageway was constructed for the Welsh Government. It has improved journey times, eased congestion and significantly improved environmental conditions by enabling through traffic to bypass three towns.

The single carriageway is 7.3m wide, plus hard shoulder and verges, and its construction involved three roundabouts, three junctions and eight bridges, including a landmark three-span viaduct over the environmentally-sensitive Glaslyn estuary.

There was constant liaison with wildlife experts and environmentalists after an ecological assessment identified a range of key habitats and species of nature conservation within the vicinity of the scheme.

In addition, the construction team’s carbon footprint was cut significantly by sourcing aggregate from nearby Minffordd Quarry, which abuts the bypass route. This substantially reduced the need for heavy wagons to transport in stone along local road networks.
The partnership’s health, safety, environment and quality manager, Dave Gibson, of Jones Bros, officially accepted the CEEQUAL award at an event in Cardiff marking the launch of the CEEQUAL 8 scheme. At the event he also spoke to an audience of civil engineering professionals about the bypass project.

Other partners in the project included Halcrow, Corderoy, Gwynedd Council and Hyder.
CEEQUAL chief executive, Professor Roger Venables said: “I was delighted to be able to present the ‘excellent’ CEEQUAL award for A487 Porthmadog, Minffordd and Tremadog Bypass. David Gibson’s presentation about the project at our seminar highlighted the many challenges that the project team had to tackle and, to secure a high ‘Excellent’ score in those circumstances was obviously the result of a great deal of carefully planned and executed work. Congratulations to the whole team, and especially to Balfour Beatty and Jones Bros for encouraging – successfully – all parties to join in a Whole Project Assessment.”