JLR CABLE-SPAN BRIDGE

OUR JOINED-UP APPROACH MEANS EFFICIENT LIFTING AND INSTALLATION

Jaguar Land Rover is expanding its operations with a brand new engineering facility next to its headquarters in Whitely. About half of the 60-acre site at Whitely South will be home to JLR’s new works. We were asked to lift, transport, and prepare the installation of a brand-new bridge over the A45, connecting the new works to the factory’s current footprint.

EARLY PLANNING

Coventry City Council had negotiated a £35m capital plan with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that focused on the installation of a new bridge. This cable-span bridge over the A45 links the road network to the site with major arterial routes in the region.

Every site is different, and every piece of critical infrastructure has its challenges. We get involved in the earlier stages of a project like this whenever we can. It’s the Osprey Way of Working. Planning began 12 months before mobilisation, while the installation and move took taking place in the second week in March 2022.

JACKING, MOVING, INSTALLING

The bridge itself is a cable-stayed deck, a common enough configuration these days. But on this occasion, we had the advantage of being able to offer the full range of the services needed – bringing several parts of the project into one scope of work. This lets us deliver a very efficient contracting model, which in itself saves our clients time and money – it’s a joined-up approach to planning and implementation.

• JACKING: We used a combination of hydraulic climbing jacks and a JS250 jacking system to raise the new bridge, jacking it up by 5m. This took just under 5 days and nights to complete.
• MOVING: We used 96 axle lines of Self Propelled Modular Trailers (SPMTs) to manoeuvre the bridge from the assembly area to its final position. Our SPMTs can be connected side-by-side and/or head-to-tail, so that they provide a ‘platform on wheels’. They have full rotation steering, which gives us total control over a move – we can manoeuvre critical assets by the smallest increments in any direction allowing us to place the asset with millimetre accuracy.
• INSTALLING: Finally, our LG1550 mobile crane was used alongside extra SPMTs to upend and install the cable tower, marking our final activity before handing the project over to our client to complete the installation.

We learned a lot in this project, but were delighted we could show a completely ‘joined-up’ approach that delivered efficiencies throughout.