A14 road improvemnets scheme

The ongoing A14 Road Improvements Schem e was the largest road project in the UK in 2018. The scheme is being delivered by a joint venture between Costain, Skanska, Balfour Beatty and Atkins-CH2M, working on behalf of Highways England. The project involves upgrading 21 miles of the A14 to improve road travel conditions. Works include the widening of the existing road to three lanes in each direction, and the construction of a new 17-mile bypass south of Huntingdon, running four lanes in each direction..

A key feature of this project was the need for a series of borrow pits, from which shallow sand, gravel and clay could be extracted to be used in the construction. Creation of these huge pits required dewatering of the shallow groundwater, which then had to be returned to the ground via a series of recharge lagoons into various points including the River Great Ouse, brooks, ditches and fishing lakes. The main challenge was finding a solution in which direct water and egressed water from the borrow pits could be pumped over 1km, in order to keep the pits constantly dry.This was to enable the various materials to be extracted easily.

Selwood’s teams had a long involvement in the A14 upgrade, having worked closely with the project’s senior engineers in its early stages. They also had valuable knowledge of the ground conditions in the area. Selwood was appointed as pumps supplier to the project following a tender process, during which site trials were conducted to test the proposed solution. The end result involved the use of Selwood’s D150 Super Silent pumps. Likely compensation flows were carefully calculated to ensure that water levels in the nearby brooks and fishing lakes could be maintained
throughout the period of dewatering works.