Cheshire: Crewe Green Link Road

Crewe Green Link Road is a £16.4 million project to construct a 1.1km long dual-carriageway link road between the A500 Hough-Shavington bypass and the roundabout at the A502 / A532.

The major obstacle in the construction of the new road scheme, for customer Cheshire East Council, was the presence of the existing Crewe to Derby railway line. The solution was to pass beneath the railway line by installing a new rail bridge and under pass. 

DAWSON-WAM were contracted by Morgan Sindall to complete all the sheet piling for the works. In total over 9,000m2 of permanent sheet piles were installed and 1,500m2 of temporary sheet piles were installed and extracted again. 

Sheet piles were installed times included Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, as well as various weekend and nighttime shifts, due to the stringent Network Rail restrictions.

Piles ranged in length up to 21m in length and were AZ50 pairs, the heaviest section available on the market. Piles were installed with our ABI TM22 piling rigs and 30VV vibro hammers which are the largest sheet piling rigs currently available in the UK. In some instances due to timings sheet piles were driven to level using rig mounted impact hammers and crane suspended impact hammers.

As part of a value engineering exercise DAWSON-WAM proposed a ‘jagged wall’ configuration as opposed to the more common ‘Z wall’. This offered savings in the region of 50t of steel sheet piles, equivalent to £40,000, and this proposal was adopted by the client to great success.

When complete in November 2015, the project will create an alternative bypass for Crewe, reducing traffic passing through the town and providing easier access to the A500 and M6. The whole scheme is part of “All Change for Crewe” which is an ambitious strategy to support Crewe’s economic development over the next 20 years.