Driving our Monitoring Approach for the Develoment of the A19 / A1058 Coast Road Junction
This Highways England project makes improvements to the existing North Tyneside A19/A1058 coast road junction by lowering the A19 beneath the existing roundabout in a cutting and upgrading it to a three-level interchange.
Summary of works
Client - Sisk-Lagan JV
Location - A19 / A1058
Start Date - June 2016
End Date - Spring 2019
ITM Monitoring, now SOCOTEC Monitoring UK Ltd, has expertise in delivering large-scale remote monitoring systems for highways projects such as these, including the A50 Growth Corridor and A9-A85 Perth Junction Improvements.
Case Study
Project Overview
The A19 is a major road running approximately parallel to, and east of, the A1 between Doncaster and the Tyne Tunnel. Starting in June 2016, this significant highways scheme is expected to be open to traffic in Spring 2019. The improvements brought about will be welcomed by motorists; resulting in reduced congestion, shorter journey times and improved safety for drivers headed for Tyne Tunnel Trading Estate, Silverlink Retail Park, Cobalt Business Park and further afield to south east Northumberland. The new triple-decker roundabout scheme will also improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists by providing two new shared-use bridges over the A1058 slip roads.
Working with Sisk-Lagan JV, the improvement scheme involves placing the A19 in an open cut underpass and replacing the existing embankment and adjacent bridges across the roundabout.
The A19 is a major road running approximately parallel to, and east of, the A1 between Doncaster and the Tyne Tunnel. Starting in June 2016, this significant highways scheme is expected to be open to traffic in Spring 2019. The improvements brought about will be welcomed by motorists; resulting in reduced congestion, shorter journey times and improved safety for drivers headed for Tyne Tunnel Trading Estate, Silverlink Retail Park, Cobalt Business Park and further afield to south east Northumberland. The new triple-decker roundabout scheme will also improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists by providing two new shared-use bridges over the A1058 slip roads.
Working with Sisk-Lagan JV, the improvement scheme involves placing the A19 in an open cut underpass and replacing the existing embankment and adjacent bridges across the roundabout.
The job involves:
Building two bridges to carry the roundabout traffic across the lowered A19
Construction of a replacement bridge to support the A1058 Coast Road across the junction
New slip roads to provide access to the junction to and from the lowered A19
Two footbridges across the A1058 for pedestrians and cyclists
This is part of the Government’s national scheme to cut congestion and journey times for motorists that are planned to be completed by Spring 2020.
The Approach
As is often the case with sites of this remote nature, there was no access to mains power. ITM Monitoring, overcame this by using solar panels for the dataloggers, thus avoiding the difficulties and cost of laying extensive cabling networks. The structural monitoring sensors were cabled to battery powered nodes which relayed continuous data to the gateway, in turn transmitting the data to the online data visualisation platform, Calyx™.
The monitoring system designed by ITM utilises a variety of instruments to achieve the 24/7 remote structural health monitoring required, including:
- Wireless linear potentiometers
- Wireless tilt meters
- Inclinometers
- Piezometers
- Noise and Vibration monitors
- Sound level microphones
- Manual monitoring targets for verification surveys
Monitoring on the project will be maintained throughout the construction period, with ITM providing continual support. All project-wide data is transferred to ITM’s own data visualisation package, Calyx Online Monitoring Software (OMS)TM, which has received extensive praise across the construction industry for its ease of use and ability to manage multiple sites for clients.
ITM introduced a number of wireless monitoring techniques and, as a result, provided key value engineering benefits and improved health, safety and environmental metrics on the project through reducing the number of visits to site by ITM engineers.
Environmental monitoring on the project includes sound levels, vibration and air quality. Surrounding businesses, residential areas and the adjacent crematorium benefitted from the installation of Noise and Vibration Monitors to understand the impact of the works on those nearby. Again, due to the lack of a nearby power-source, the data loggers were powered by solar panels and data transmitted using the internal 3G modems. In addition, ITM also used two static and one peripatetic sound level microphone and tri-axial geophones to record data while in the process of sheet piling, prior to the construction of the new overpass bridge being erected.
