SITE VISIT // CAERNARFON BYPASS
CIRCLING AROUND CAERNARFON CASTLE Paul Argent reports on the construction of the long-awaited Caernarfon bypass, focusing on the fleet of machinery deployed by Jones Bros.
he historic North Wales town of Caernarfon sits on the banks of the picturesque Menai Strait, on the main route from the busy A55 to the popular holiday destinations on the Llyn Peninsula. The A487, which runs through the centre of Caernarfon, can often become gridlocked, to the extent that the carriageway cannot be adequately maintained. For many years there have been calls for a bypass, and the Welsh Assembly undertook an initial appraisal of the viability
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of such a scheme in 2008. With open water of the Menai Strait to the west of the town, circumnavigating Caernarfon’s eastern flank was always going to be problematic. In 2010 a favoured route was chosen, but was later changed due to budgetary constraints. The contract was awarded in the winter of 2014 to a joint venture between Balfour Beatty and the Ruthin-based civil engineering contractor Jones Bros. This partnership has delivered a number of successful projects across Wales, including the Porthmadog bypass, just 20 miles along the coast. Following the next four and a half years spent in consultation with the local community and other stakeholders, work on the much-needed bypass started early in 2019.
PREPARATORY WORKS The enabling phase of the project included large-scale tree clearance works along the route, for which Jones Bros decided to buy a tree shear
“THE UNDULATING NATURE OF THE ROUTE WILL REQUIRE A LARGE AMOUNT OF CUT AND FILL WORKS ACROSS THE PROJECT”
and a mulcher in preference to subbing it to a local specialist contractor. Hefin Lloyd-Davies, Jones Bros’ project director for the bypass, said, “We decided to do this ourselves, as we didn’t have the permission simply to go from one end of the project to the other due to various nesting issues. This meant the machines would have to be transported back and forth to undertake small sections of work. If this was given to an outside contractor, we would have been hit by higher costs, whereas we were able to fit this in with other preparatory works.” The 10km route across wet scrubland and farmland, bridges a number of roads, a railway and a river, and much focus was given to managing watercourses and constructing large structures (see panel overleaf). Hefin added that the early involvement of their structures subcontractor, R. Betts Construction, had helped immensely to keep the project running smoothly.
The northern section of the bypass requires a deep cut through hard rock, for which Jones Bros is using a Hitachi ZX870 excavator to load the freshly-blasted material.
NOVEMBER 2021
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16/09/2021 15:40
