M1 Junction 15A Improvement Scheme
About the Project
Project Information
- Principal designer: Halcrow Group
- Client: Highways Agency
- Principal contractor: Edmund Nuttall Ltd
- Contract value: £6 million (estimated)
Around 112,000 vehicles use this particular section of the M1 each day, and lane closures during work to increase capacity at Junction 15A would have caused serious traffic delays, with no practical alternative route.
While conventional construction methods might have been cheaper, an innovative tunnelling technique was used to install a major underpass under the 'live' motorway that allowed traffic flow to remain unrestricted during the construction work and drivers to be blissfully unaware of the activities beneath the road surface, while the adjacent local road network was not forced to accommodate additional traffic.
The judges said:
"An excellent demonstration of how to create infrastructure whilst avoiding the disruption of millions of journeys."