7 July 2015

Costain came to the rescue of a football club which faced a key match recently.

Grimsby Town had fallen out of the Football League in 2010 and their confenence play-off match against Bristol Rovers offered a much sought-after promotion back into English football’s top tier.

Costain is currently developing a new approach to the Port of Immingham on the A160/A180 on behalf of Highways England. The £50 million contract involves dualling the road, adding several large structures and redeveloping an existing interchange into a gyratory system.

The team had just moved on site in April and their compound was not even operational as planning for the first major operation – cutting a channel across the A180’s westbound carriageway to house a new culvert – got underway.

The road was due to be closed over an entire weekend to enable the work to take place. However, that was before Grimsby Town booked their Wembley play-off spot against Bristol Rovers on that Sunday.

This raised the prospect of unsuspecting fans getting caught in a traffic jam heading out of Grimsby and conceivably missing the kick-off in London.

“On the Friday morning we got a call from the Grimsby Telegraph,” said Community Relations Officer, Stephen Ellis. “We had a fairly rapid meeting and by 11am we had put a plan together to get the road open more quickly.

“The diversion wouldn’t have been huge. It would normally have been 10-15 minutes at that time of day, but with all the buses and coaches involved there would have been quite a few problems. The diversion would also have taken them through a small village, which wasn’t ideal.”

By telescoping sections of the work and through a superhuman effort by team members, the culvert was installed and the road reopened by the small hours of Sunday, in time for the exodus later that morning.

Sadly for Grimsby fans, the match ended with their team being beaten on penalties.

 

Ends

 

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