Highways

M54 Bay Replacements

Kier Highways contracted TAG to replace bays on the M54 between Junctions 3 and 2 eastbound, originally scoped as 30 bays across four weeks of weeknight closures. TAG's early contractor involvement changed the shape of the job entirely: with the team's input on planning and risk during the build-up, the scope grew to 40 bays delivered across just two 48-hour weekend possessions, for nearly half the original cost.

That shift mattered well beyond the price. Compressing the work into two weekends instead of a month of weeknights cut the impact on the local area, reduced overheads on traffic management and supervision, and removed the risk of an overrun bleeding into rush-hour traffic. TAG supplied and managed every resource the closure required: supervision, labour, plant, floor saws and coring rigs, specialist sub-contractors, waste disposal, welfare and lighting, volumetric fast-setting concrete trucks, and on- and off-site testing.

Two concrete mixes did the heavy lifting. 140m³ of C32/40 36-hour concrete went in on the Saturday daytime shift, cheap and strong enough to have the road ready to open Sunday night, while 150m³ of PQX went in on Sunday daytime, curing to 25N/mm² in just four hours so the road was handed back by midnight, at 25% of the cost of using PQX throughout. Across the two weekends, 950 dowel bars and 1,100 tie bars were drilled and installed in just 12 hours.

On the second weekend alone, 23 bays were removed and replaced inside the 48-hour window, and 24 defective bays in total were vacuum-lifted out for recycling. Every tonne of material removed from site was recycled, and the motorway was handed back to traffic on schedule both weekends.

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