John
Wainwright & Company Ltd recently completed a resurfacing job on one of the
steepest roads in the country.
The
A39 at Porlock Hill in West Somerset has a gradient of 1 in 4 (25 per cent).
When Somerset County Council sought a contractor to resurface it, Wainwright
leapt at the chance to test its mettle in a challenging environment.
“There’s
routine road maintenance and then there’s routine maintenance on a hill with a
1 in 4 gradient,” said Councillor David Fothergill, Somerset County Council’s
cabinet member for highways. “Clearly, this was no ordinary resurfacing job,
and required specialist equipment as well as harnessing the expertise of our
team.”
The
specialist equipment in question included an integrated paver and an all-terrain
forklift truck that came all the way from Germany.
Because
of the steepness of the hill, which is on the edge of Exmoor National Park,
safety barriers were erected to protect the workforce and nearby properties.
“Porlock
Hill was certainly a challenging job for our team,” remarked Lee Seviour,
Wainwright’s general manager, surfacing. “It involved two weeks of concerted
effort, including one week of 24/7 closure to the road. The fact we finished on
time and on budget is testament to a lot of hard work, careful organisation and
forward planning.”
The material for the job was supplied from Wainwright’s
Avonmouth asphalt production facility. It included Wainwright’s proprietary
14mm Elastermat PSV 68 Heavy Duty Dense Asphalt Surface Course, utilising a
rubberised binder that was especially well-suited to the steep gradient on
Porlock Hill.
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