Projects
New Vehicle Crossover, Kettering
Objective
We were approached by a regular customer of ours, Astar Living, to install a new vehicle crossover on Windmill Avenue in Kettering. The customer had already approached North Northants County Council and had got permission for a new Vehicle Crossover.
About the project
On our initial site visit we noticed a manhole cover in the middle of where the vehicle crossover was to go, and upon further inspection we found this to be the property of City Fibre. The manhole cover had to be lowered as part of the vehicle crossover works, we also needed to know whether or not the manhole cover was suitable for vehicular traffic, as some of them are not.
We made contact with City Fibre, and unfortunately we were bounced from department to department, and each time we were told that ‘somebody would get back to us’. We had to do a lot of chasing, and the whole process was very frustrating, and it took over 5 weeks to get an agreement from them that they would come and lower the manhole cover.
They agreed to do the work at no extra cost to us or our customer, but it had to be done under our traffic management, and under our Section 184 licence.
It only took us two weeks to get our Section 184 licence – which we need to ‘dig up the pavement’ and install a vehicle crossover. Our next step was to give notice to Highways and book ‘roadspace’. We have to give three weeks’ notice ordinarily for minor works such as this in Northamptonshire, but we also had to co-ordinate with City Fibre to make sure that they were able to come on the dates that we wanted to book roadspace for. Eventually a date was decided on and we applied to Highways for roadspace and were allocated our preferred dates.
The crossover was on Windmill Avenue in Kettering, a very busy road. We were unable to close the footpath and divert pedestrians onto the other side of the road, and so we had to put up a temporary pedestrian walkway in the road, so pedestrians could safely go around our works.
The excavation of the existing path, putting in new sub-base and new kerbs both at the road and at the boundary with the customer’s private property, took two days. City Fibre came the next day as promised, and the tarmac was laid for the new crossover on day 4.
Timeline
Time taken to quote for the works: 1 week
Time taken to obtain Section 184 Licence: 2 weeks
Time take to liaise with City Fibre: 5 weeks
Leadtime to use Licence: 3 weeks
Time taken to do the work: 4 days
Total time: 3 months
Want to know more about the ins and outs of vehicle crossovers? See here and click on the ‘Vehicle Crossovers’ tab for more information. If you want us to quote for a new vehicle crossover, click here, choose ‘Dropped Kerbs/Vehicle Crossovers’ in the drop-down box at the top and upload all the relevant information.