Balfour Beatty this week welcomed the Roads Minister, Robert Goodwill, to the launch of the South West's first smart motorway scheme.

The infrastructure company completed the £88.6 million scheme to improve traffic flows on budget and two months ahead of schedule for its customer the Highways Agency.

The scheme, which covers seven miles of the M4 and M5 motorways around the Almondsbury Interchange in Bristol, will help reduce congestion and improve safety through variable speed limits and the opening of the hard shoulder during busy traffic periods.

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The project utilised Balfour Beatty’s knowledge and experience of delivering smart motorway schemes, such as on the M25 and M20, and included the installation of 33 new gantries, the refurbishment of seven existing ones, resurfacing over 14 miles of carriageway, laying over 30 miles of fibre optic cabling and construction of six emergency refuge areas.

More than 2,000 people have worked on the scheme since construction began in January 2012 and Balfour Beatty employed almost 50 percent of the workforce from the local area. The improvements use a range of technologies and operational systems to reduce congestion and smooth the flow of traffic.

The project won the 2013 BCIA award for safety excellence after the team developed a unique training programme to avoid construction workers operating in close proximity to plant. The 'Zone In' training workshop included the use of life-sized model people, real machinery, on-site video footage of behaviours and reconstructions of major incidents to emphasise the risks on site and contributed to an outstanding safety record.

(CD/MH)