Civcon worked with Carnell on behalf of National Highways to replace a failed surface water drain under the A64 carriageway. The A64 is a busy trunk road and the only way to do the work safely was under a full road closure — 24 hours to excavate, replace the drain, backfill, and hand over for resurfacing. After that the road reopens, regardless of where things stand.
The programme was built around that window. Subcontractors came in first to plane and saw-cut the carriageway. Once the surface was open, the failed drain was excavated and removed, a new 225mm diameter pipe installed with a concrete bed and surround to National Highways specification, and the trench backfilled and compacted. Site was then handed over to the surfacing team.
During excavation the team hit a water main that hadn’t appeared in the pre-works utility information. It was sitting in the excavation zone and needed working around carefully — the approach was adjusted on site to avoid any risk to the main while keeping the job progressing.
Civcon completed their scope in 14 hours. That left 10 hours of the closure window still available, which gave the concrete backfill significantly more curing time before the carriageway surface went back down. On a road with that volume of traffic, that’s not a minor detail.
The road reopened on schedule.
