Highways

A120 Wix Bypass Bay Replacements

Graham called on TAG to replace 14 defective concrete bays on the A120 Wix Bypass as part of the Highways England Concrete Road Innovations Project, working overnight possessions between 20:00 and 06:00 across what was planned as a seven-night programme. Graham handled the traffic management; TAG supplied all labour, plant and materials for the concrete works.

The scheme used PQX concrete from Accumix, mixed on site in volumetric trucks, and it performed well beyond expectations. TAG's single gang replaced four bays a night rather than the usual two, with the PQX 450 mix reaching strengths of up to 36N/mm² in just three hours, letting the team remove, prepare and pour each bay by midnight and open the road by 05:00 on most nights.

Two results stood out: a bay poured at 23:45 on 25 September tested at 36N/mm² by 2:40am, handed back to traffic at 3:30am, and another poured at 23:15 the following night reached 34N/mm² by 3:00am, opened at 3:50am, both comfortably clear of the 25N/mm² threshold needed to reopen. Saw cutting and coring each bay the night before the pour shaved another hour off every removal, cutting bay-out time to just 20 minutes.

Between the faster gang output and the concrete's early strength gain, the programme ran two nights ahead of plan, finishing in five nights instead of seven. Nearly 80m³ of PQX concrete went into the scheme, and every cubic metre removed was recycled locally.

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