Osprey; supporting projects that deliver immense benefit to not only a local region but also the wider economy – such as Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) expansion plans.

With a forward-thinking plan, JLR is expanding its operations by building a brand new engineering facility next to its headquarters in Whitely. Known as Whitley South, about half of the 60-acre site will become home to JLR’s new works. This £500m expansion will be supported by innovation centres and other automotive suppliers, all of whom will be depending on excellent access to the site. It’s a privilege to be involved in projects like this.

To open up the site, Coventry City Council negotiated a £35m capital plan with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – focusing on the installation of a brand new bridge over the A45. This cable-span bridge will link the road network to the site with major arterial routes in the region, and make sure the site’s new workforce – thousands of employees – can get in and out of their workplaces easily. Our job? To lift, transport, and prepare the installation of that bridge.

The structure 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.

Our planning work began over 12 months, before mobilisation to site, with the installation and move took taking place in the second week in March. We want to be involved in the earlier stages of a project like this whenever we can. It’s the Osprey Way of Working. As a multi-modal logistics provider, we can provide additional value by being involved early. How? Because every site is different, and every piece of critical infrastructure has its own challenges we can bring our
experience of working on a diverse range of projects to the table. Combine this with the learnings from other partners on the project, and we can carry all of this expertise through to completion.

AT THE WHITLEY SITE, THE PROJECT SPLIT INTO THREE PHASES: 

JACKING

Our team used a combination of hydraulic climbing jacks and a JS250 jacking system to raise the new bridge, jacking it up by 5m. This can’t be rushed. Here at Whitley, this part of the process 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. 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 additional SPMTs to upend and install the cable tower, marking our final activity before
handing the project over to our client to complete the installation.