Balfour wins £75m motorway widening

The Highways Agency is understood to have picked Balfour Beatty to carry out a key part of the congestion-busting managed motorways programme near Bristol.

The contract is the last of the three big road jobs earmarked to start this financial year.

Highways understands Balfour Beatty will start work early next year on the £75m scheme to allow hard should running around the motorway interchange from junctions 19-20 on the M4 and junctions 15-17 on the M5.

Once the job is finished the Highways Agency will use variable mandatory speed limits and opening up the hard shoulder to reduce congestion during peak times.

The project scope also includes building emergency stopping points along the route.

A joint venture consisting of the contractors BAM Nuttall and Morgan Sindall won the £150m job to convert 24km stretch of the M62 in West Yorkshire to a managed motorway with hard shoulder running in July.

Work on this scheme will start between October and December of this year.

The third major road job in the pipeline  is the £40m widening of the A23 between Handcross to Warninglid in West Sussex, where Carillion is due to start construction in the autumn.

The Government has committed to start work on 11 managed motorway schemes by 2015.

And last February the Highways Agency named ts four delivery partners for the managed motorway network. These are: Balfour Beatty; BAM Nuttall/Morgan Sindall; Carillion; and Costain/Serco.