A look at the huge HS2 viaducts located at the northern tip of the Delta junction, Curdworth, Sutton Coldfield.
The River Tame West single-track viaduct is the first completed viaduct in the West Midlands.
The River Tame West single-track viaduct is the first completed viaduct in the West Midlands.
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00:00Daniel Wharton with the Express and Star, so as you can see around us we're standing
00:11inside of the HS2's Delta Junction viaduct which is currently being built.
00:18So we've obviously taken loads of photos, spoken to a few of the site managers around
00:22here.
00:23It's an absolutely impressive structure that obviously as you can see inside, you can see
00:27all the way down the bottom, there are currently press down there as well, the press media.
00:30But yeah, it's an absolutely fantastic structure, we were talking to them about the innovative
00:34technologies that was being developed and that's also been brought in to help construct
00:40this mammoth sized project with one of the most important being a safety structure, so
00:47like an innovative bit of safety technology which sees all the major equipment equipped
00:53with sensors that stop dangerous things from happening on site, so the minute they sense
00:59danger they all switch off and you can't override them.
01:01So it's an absolutely fantastic project that's using a lot of innovative technologies.
01:07But yeah, it's an absolutely fantastic thing to look into and it's quite a mammoth sized
01:13project.
01:14So we are going to walk on the River Thames single track, the first completed viaduct
01:18of the Precast Segmental Viaduct at the north of the Delta Junction.
01:22Yeah, so if you just talk a little bit about, just describe a little bit about what the
01:26machinery that we can see in front of us, around us, if you don't mind.
01:29So yes, we have the mast and tool crane which allow us to build our Precast Segmental Viaduct
01:34and it's a piece of kit that is efficient and versatile so we can cover all the specificity
01:42and constraints of our project.
01:45That's fantastic.
01:46So obviously there's a lot of, we were talking a little bit over there about innovation,
01:50you described quite a few innovative techniques that's come up from this, like we were talking
01:53about VR.
01:54I believe these, did you say these are tailor made as well, these machines here?
01:59That's tailor made for the project, so it's been designed and built just for this project,
02:04but within our company we use them in the past.
02:07And yes, as I was mentioning earlier, we use the lesson learned and the experience from
02:11the past to redesign and improve the quality and the efficiency of the tool.
02:16That's fantastic.
02:17So what other innovative techniques are being used on site if we can talk about that?
02:21So the main, there is many innovative here on this project, many, but one of the most
02:27best ones is the VR training, so we have developed a virtual training which, so before the operative
02:34come and walk inside at height, we sat them in the meeting room and they can literally
02:41see the entire environment with the height of the mast, the two-wall crane, all the
02:45plants surrounding them, but inside the safe meeting room.
02:49That's one of the innovations, so when they arrive on site, they already know what to
02:53expect.
02:54And so what's the main difficulty with handling a job of this size?
03:00So the main difficulty I would say is the environment itself, so there is a lot of constraints,
03:06as we were explaining, there is the river frame, there is the minors conduit, there
03:09is two railway, we have 400 kV overhead cable, there is the Lichfield road, there is the
03:14motorway, the M42, M6, and all of that create us a big challenge because we have a lot of
03:21interface and we have a lot of interface.
03:25Absolutely, and obviously it's one hell of a thing to plan, isn't it really, I suppose,
03:30you know, it's a gigantic thing to plan.