Infrastructure

A 50-acre Strategic Rail Freight Interchange

Rob Cook, Winvic’s Civils and Infrastructure Director, speaks about the most recent project to start on site – SEGRO Logistics Park Northampton Gateway (SLPNG)

SEGRO knows they are in safe hands with Winvic on this Northamptonshire project as we’ve exceeded their expectations at every step of the way at the extraordinarily complex SEGRO Logistics Park East Midlands Gateway (SLPEMG). Here, we successfully delivered a substantial civils and infrastructure programme, a 50-acre Strategic Rail Freight Interchange (SRFI), seven kilometres rail, highways works, including construction of a skew bridge, major service diversions and multiple modern industrial units.

Both SLPEMG in Leicestershire and SEGRO Logistics Park Northampton Gateway (SLPNG) are located in the UK’s logistics’ golden triangle and are designated as Nationally Significant Infrastructure

Projects (NSIP). The Northampton multimodal logistics hub, or inland port, is adjacent to junction 15 of the M1 and spans 450 acres. It includes a 35-acre SRFI and, when complete, will also comprise five million square feet of industrial facilities.

Our three-year contract, valued at £107.5 million, also comprises the delivery of major upgrades to Junctions 15 and 15a on the M1, a new bridge over the West Coast Mainline, the construction of a bypass around the village of Roade, improvements to the A45 and safer junctions along the A508.

We got started on site after the Christmas break and the civils and infrastructure works started with a number of preparatory activities such demolishing a number of unsafe barns and clearing a lot of vegetation. However, we were involved in pre-construction too, conducting important ecology, archaeology and geotechnical enabling works. Avoiding underground service strikes is always high on our safety agenda so this rigorous process also commences early. Explorations have taken place in areas where services should or even could be present – often by hand or

through vacuum extraction – and physical markers are set in the ground. After service diversions and ecological measures – such as the relocation of badger setts and 1,300 metres of hedge translocation – have been completed at the end of February, activity will centre on the initial groundworks.

We’ve worked on larger areas and cut deeper into existing ground levels, but we will certainly have shifted a lot of muck by the time we’re finished with these earthworks. These works involve stripping the topsoil and executing almost 4.5 million m3 of cut and fill to facilitate the development plateaus, M1 J15 works and the rail terminal infrastructure. Our policy is to always transport as little excavated material away from a site as possible – to reduce HGV movements on local roads and to minimise the impact on the environment – and with this project all material will be used to create screening bunds around the site perimeter.

The stress resistant, fibre reinforced concrete terminal slab at SLPNG is 409,000 square feet and is made up of two distinct areas; the intermodal sections that are and run either side of the siding have been designed to withstand significantly greater weights than the aggregate terminal, or HGV only area. This is primarily to accommodate extensive reach stacker operations, with vehicles that are 108 tonnes gross weight, but also to withstand the weight of containers stacked 15 metres high and loaded to 25 tonnes each. It may appear to be ‘just a concrete slab’, albeit made up of 14,000 m3 of concrete, but the engineering principals are very complex. We have to take into account material costs of course, but it’s finding the balance for durability and length of life. What

are the ongoing maintenance requirements and the associated costs and to what extent the surface could degrade tyres? There’s no point in using a robust concrete mix if it results in reach stackers having to replace their tyres very quickly.

The Winvic team has plenty of experience with concrete mix design and the pouring of rail terminal slabs, but the twelve-week construction programme starting in spring 2022 will not be without its challenges and there is no margin for error. For example, potential hot weather could prove problematic, but this is where our project management expertise of multifaceted schemes comes in to its own. Whether it’s being confronted by the British weather, aligning numerous temporary works schedules, coordinating specialist subcontractors, working closely with stakeholders like Network Rail to meet third-party requirements or bringing added value to local communities, we’ve almost certainly managed a similar challenge and provided an effective solution to ensure we stick to the schedule.

The terminal siding itself has five tracks and is 800 metres in length, and this new track that we will be installing extends over six kilometres to the Northampton loop of the West Coast Mainline. Something a little different on this scheme is we will be constructing a 170-metre-long reinforced concrete tunnel, which will house the rail lines from the northern connection to the Hanslope Northampton and Rugby line and it will be covered and landscaped. Simply put, trains will exit the terminal and almost immediately enter the tunnel, which will help to ensure local communities are not affected by light and noise pollution. Such mitigation has been carefully considered and the whole site is extensively landscaped and sensitively screened; embankments have been designed around three sides of the development up to 15 metres tall. It’s also quite unusual to be working with as much as 80 acres of parkland and amenity grassland, and it reminds me of the broad work Winvic delivered at the Nene Valley Nature Reserves surrounding Rushden Lakes retail and leisure park. Here we are constructing 18km of footpaths and cycleways, planting 20 kilometres of hedgerows and establishing a massive 60,000 new trees.

While the last twelve months have been challenging for construction, it’s been great to see that projects up and down the country have been largely uninterrupted and we have been able to continue at pace. Indeed, the pandemic’s upsurge in online consumer sales has resulted in more demand for warehouse space and on logistics, and it has meant some industrial schemes are now being delivered with greater urgency. This need to generate productivity for the UK economy, a sprinkling of Brexit and a heightened global commitment to reducing environmental impacts, makes is easy to see why rail freight is one of the big areas of focus for developers like our long-standing client SEGRO. From an eco-point of view, the rail interchange at SLPNG will be capable of handling 16, 775-metre long trains a day and each one of these results in 70 plus lorries being taken away from the highway network, cities and towns. The five million square feet of modern industrial facilities that will rise out of the ground at SLPNG will also be highly sustainable.

We’re very much committed to reducing carbon output – as a business and in delivering environmentally sensitive or net zero schemes for clients – so being part of any wider story where there is a positive impact for our planet resonates with our vision. As green credentials become the norm and as the government intensify the country’s investment and infrastructure spending, the movement of construction materials via rail is something that will no doubt continue to increase too. Perhaps one day in the future we’ll find our materials being unloaded at one of the rail freight terminals we created!