Balfour Beatty’s Middlehaven Dock Bridge and Road project set to reach new heights

Balfour Beatty is making strong progress on its £7.1million Middlehaven Dock Bridge and Road project, which forms part of Middlesbrough Council’s £68 million regeneration programme. The new 30m ‘lifting’ bridge and 750m long link road is set to support development at Middlehaven Dock, bringing extensive benefits to the local community.

Today sees Balfour Beatty’s expert team  install the second of two 84 tonne, 13.5m long by  3.4m precast concrete units.

The concrete unit will be manoeuvred into position by a 1,000 tonne crane and will rest on piles in the dock, which were recently installed by Balfour Beatty using a barge as a working platform. A further 34 precast concrete units will then be lifted into position over the coming months.

Stephen Semple, Balfour Beatty Managing Director for North & Midlands East Delivery Unit, said: “We’re making strong progress on the Middlehaven Dock Bridge and Road project. We’ve drawn on our experience to overcome numerous challenges including the need to work with the changing tides. We used precast concrete units to avoid the need to construct the bridge in situ which speeded up delivery and was the safest way to deliver the project.

“We look forward to further collaboration with the Council to deliver a project to the benefit of the local community and support the regeneration of Middlesbrough.”

Councillor Charlie Rooney, Middlesbrough Deputy Mayor and Executive Member for City Centre Strategy, said: “This is a really significant civil engineering project for Middlesbrough, and it’s great to see the rapid progress being made.

“The Dock Bridge and link road are key to the regeneration of this hugely important area and will help to unlock a new phase of inward investment.

“This latest milestone means we are another step closer to realising our ambition for Middlesbrough as the city heart of the Tees Valley.”

The project is set to complete in Summer 2018. Upon completion it expects to have spent £3.7m with local, specialist contractors, whilst providing job opportunities to the local community (49% of the workforce lives within 10 miles of the scheme) and investing 87% of project spend with local SMEs.