Latest news

March 2007

M60 gets a CEEQUAL

The Highways Agency's M60 Junction 5-8 widening scheme, completed in 2006 by an AMEC-McAlpine joint venture with Halcrow as designer, has recently received a Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment (CEEQUAL) award. This is the first time a motorway has received recognition under the recently-founded initiative.

The new section of motorway was given a score of 82.4 per cent, equal to an excellent rating. Working with the Highways Agency, the AMEC-Alfred McAlpine joint venture completed the design and construction of the £140 million project two months ahead of schedule. It adopted a number of environmental measures designed by Halcrow and environmental sub-contractor RPS PTE, ranging from innovative design to on-site environmental management. The scheme faced many complex challenges, including having to deal with several former landfill sites.

Among the measures undertaken were adaptation and re-use of existing structures, recycling and reuse of excavated materials, the creation of environmental bunds to reduce noise and visual affect on neighbouring properties, the planting of 126,000 trees, the creation of new wildlife and wetland areas and the relocation of a listed building.

The CEEQUAL awards, which reward projects for high environmental quality, sustainability in design, and for best practice in construction, have been developed by an industry-wide project advisory group led by the Institution of Civil Engineers and supported by the Department of Trade and Industry's Partners in Innovation programme.

Projects are graded with pass, good, very good or excellent, so that the CEEQUAL awards provide a standard to compare and benchmark civil engineering projects and to raise environmental performance across the industry.

"We are delighted with this award", said regional co-ordinator Adela Sadler who prior to joining Halcrow was environmental project manager for the M60 scheme on behalf of RPS PTE. "Environmental issues are increasingly recognised as an important part of project delivery and the M60 scheme has clearly demonstrated Halcrow's high standard of design innovation and environmental management. We hope to reproduce our success on the M60 with the North Middlesbrough accessibility early contractor involvement scheme which we're working on in Tees Valley."