Project Medius Highways & Public Realm
Danaher & Walsh was appointed by Morgan Sindall to carry out major highway improvements to Leicester's inner ring road as part of the landmark Project Medius development.
£4.44m
Key aims and challenges
Project Medius is an exciting development by Charles Street Buildings Group to regenerate a long-dormant and neglected area of Leicester's city centre. The project includes the construction of two new hotels plus office space and retail units, and incorporates the former Leicester Central railway station, which will become the focal point of a new public square.
In order to facilitate this development, major highway and public realm works were required. These works are jointly funded by CSB Group and Leicester City Council - as part of their wider Connecting Leicester strategy. Morgan Sindall, as main contractor for the overall scheme, appointed Danaher & Walsh to carry out these works.
The works involved the construction of a new 'super-crossing' over Vaughan Way, in order to provide a quick, safe link to the new development from the city centre.
A new traffic-signalised was constructed to the entrance of Great Central Street. The junctions with Highcross Street and Causeway Lane were also altered. Vaughan Way itself was reconfigured to improve traffic flows and improvements were made to the central reserves.
The second phase involved major public realm works, including the pedestrianisation of Great Central Street and the creation of new pedestrianised areas adjacent to the development. The works involved the installation of high-quality granite paving, resin-bound golden gravel surfacing, feature lighting, access control bollards and contemporary street furniture.
Danaher & Walsh worked closely with Morgan Sindall, CSB Group, Leicester City Council and other stakeholders to develop a works programme that allowed the works to progress quickly, safely and with minimal disruption. Night working was used to enable this to happen.
A comprehensive traffic management strategy was developed in conjunction with Leicester City Council in order to minimise the impact of the works on this extremely busy part of Leicester's city centre. The revolutionary Urban 64 temporary traffic signal system was deployed, which mimics the programming of the existing traffic signals, leading to minimal disruption to traffic flows.
The presence of a large number of underground services with the works area meant that coordination with statutory undertakers was of critical importance.
The most important factor to the success of this contract was early engagement between Morgan Sindall, Danaher & Walsh and all stakeholders. Danaher & Walsh worked with Morgan Sindall at tender stage in order to offer the client a comprehensive, unified solution to both the wider scheme and the critically important highway works.
Danaher & Walsh carried out value engineering exercises at various stages of the project in order to deliver significant quantifiable savings.
This partnering strategy continued throughout the execution of the contract, leading to successful delivery on time and on budget, with little disruption to Leicester's busy highway network.
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In Civil Engineering