Osprey Transports and Places Bridge over A45 at Jaguar Land Rover Junction

Osprey takes pride in helping local companies and companies with importance to the national economy. One such project was where Osprey moved and installed a bridge as part of a new junction on the A45 at Whitley South to enable the workforce at Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR’s) new expanded works – thousands of employees – to get in and out of their workplaces easily. The £500m JLR expansion will be supported by innovation centres and other automotive suppliers, all of whom will be depending on excellent access to the site. The cable-span bridge will link the road network to the site with major arterial routes in the region.

The structure is a cable-stayed deck, a common enough configuration today, but on this occasion, Osprey had the advantage of being able to offer a full range of the services needed – bringing several parts of the project into one scope of work. This let Osprey deliver a very efficient contracting model, which saves time and money for their clients – it’s a joined-up approach to planning and implementation.

The planning work began over 12 months before mobilisation to site. Osprey wants to be involved in the earlier stages of a project like this whenever possible. It’s the ‘Osprey Way of Working’. As a multi-modal logistics provider, they can provide additional value by being involved early. Every site is different, and every piece of critical infrastructure has its own challenges, and this is where Osprey can bring their experience of working on a diverse range of projects to the table to combine with the experience from other partners on the project.

Their project at Whitley South was split into three phases with jacking coming first. The Osprey team used a combination of hydraulic climbing jacks and a JS250 jacking system to raise the new bridge, jacking it up by 5m. This could not be rushed at Whitley and took just under 5 days and nights to complete.

The second phase was to move the bridge deck from the assembly site 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 provides total control over a move, enabling Osprey to manoeuvre critical assets, such as the bridge deck, by the smallest increments in any direction placing the asset with millimetre accuracy.

The final stage was installing the bridge with their LG1550 mobile crane, used alongside additional SPMTs to upend and install the cable tower, marking the final activity before handing the project over to the client to complete the installation.

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Source Osprey