Rain

Wet weather always makes work on a construction site far trickier, even simple operations like digging trenches for the electrical supply to the lighting columns become harder and take longer.

On the southern half of the scheme the ground is mostly clay – when it gets wet it tends to stick to the buckets of the excavators and if the excavated soil gets wet it doesn’t compact very well when it is placed back in the trench.

The rain since Christmas has made the clay in the verges very soft and sticky which then gets carried onto the road surface, and makes regular scrapping and cleaning of the surface necessary to minimise the build up of mud on the carriageway.

To minimise the risk of the finished surface being damaged, the final top layer of the road surfacing is left until as much of the work as possible is complete.

Before laying the top layer of surfacing, the road needs to be thoroughly cleaned to ensure that it bonds well to the lower layers. 

Once a section of the project is prepared for surfacing it has to be closed to site traffic to ensure it remains clean, this creates logistical problems in moving plant and materials around site.

September focus

This month the focus in the south of the scheme is to complete chalk stabilisation (which forms the base of the road) and start surfacing.

Work will also continue on drainage for the links between the relief road, Manor Roundabout and Mercery Road. 

On Lodmoor, the drainage basin and most of the final top-soiling will be finished and the foundation layers of the new park and ride will continue to be laid. 

In the north section tarmac has now been placed from the Ridgeway to Icen Lane, and work is continuning to complete all the kerbs and road drainage. 

Surfacing of footpaths and bridleways in this area will be almost complete by the end of the month. 

For Littlemoor Road and the area by the Littlemoor roundabouts work will be focussed on completing the drainage.

Work in August

August is a key month for the project – final drainage is being put in, and we aim to have the tarmac in place from the Ridgeway to Littlemoor bridge by the end of the month.

We will have finished Chapel Lane bridge, Southdown Ridge bridge and Lorton Lane bridge (apart from the final planting of trees and shrubs, which will all start in early winter). We’ll also have finished all the work that can currently be done on the Ridgeway bridge.

Work is well underway on the remaining four roundabouts for the scheme, and the picture shows the smallest of these – the roundabout leading to the Park and Ride.

We’re also finishing major earth moving for the project. ‘Mount Lodmoor’, the large pile of earth you can see in this picture, is the final cover layer for Lodmoor landfill and the Park and Ride site.

Marsh Harrier success

The Marsh Harriers nesting on the Lodmoor Nature Reserve, close to the relief road works, have successfully bred two fledglings.

Dorset County Council Natural Environment Manager Dr Phil Sterling said:

“This is an excellent outcome, with two young birds fledging the nest last Thursday.

“It is a remarkable event for Dorset, with this being only the second record of successful breeding in the past 50 years, and is all the more notable given the works going on nearby.

Lodmoor update

The park and ride car park at Lodmoor is starting to take shape - on the left you can see the bund (earth wall) around the park and ride site and membrane that covers the old landfill site.

The view on the right-hand photo is of the earthworks that will form the road from the park and ride to the new Manor railway bridge, in the foreground you can just make out the start of the park and ride roundabout.

July

June was a good month for the project, with fine weather meaning the bulk earth moving for the project has been finished.

During July the earthworks will be ‘trimmed’ to get the final levels for embankments and roundabouts correct. The main areas for this are Ridgeway, the balancing ponds at Littlemoor and the southern part of the scheme by Manor Railway bridge, Two Mile Coppice and Lodmoor.

What’s happening in June?

This photo shows construction of the reinforced earth wall that leads up to the Two Mile Coppice underpass. The wall is being seeded as it is built, and over time it will look like a tall grass bank.

Elsewhere, there’s a lot of work between Littlemoor and Ridgeway to complete cable trenches and drainage.

Earthworks to form the road, footpaths and roadside bunds will also continue from Chalbury Basin to the Littlemoor ponds. There’s also a lot of drainage being put in along this section this month.

The Lodmoor Park and Ride is starting to take shape, with the bunds of earth that go around the site currently being constructed.

Work will continue on the bridges this month; some will be surfaced and waterproofed, others will have rails and vehicle restraints installed.

Chalk stabilisation, to form the first layer of the road, also starts this month.

Sub of the day

As you can see from the photo above, the new Manor Subway is now mostly built.

The subway gives pedestrians a safe route under the relief road near Manor Roundabout to get to schools to the north and the supermarket to the south.

Of course there is still a lot of work to do before the subway will be opened, including putting in the footpath and landscaping the area.

Before and after

The last of the arches for the Two Mile Coppice underpass were put up today, so the area looks quite different from ten days ago.

The new underpass provides a route for the bridleway underneath the new road and into Two Mile Coppice, where the existing bridleway is being resurfaced as part of the overall relief road works.

The current railway underpass can be seen on the left in both photos, and the new underpass structure will take a further ten weeks to complete.

Latest aerial images

Aerial images taken in January are now available to view on our Flickr account.

In this one, you can see the progress of: Two Mile Coppice underpass, Manor railway bridge, Manor subway and Manor Roundabout.