A joint venture (JV) between Balfour Beatty and Mott MacDonald has broken the record for the amount of road surface laid in one night.

Using a new method being trialled by Highways England, the contractors laid over 1,100 tonnes (13,000 sq m) of road surface on a two mile stretch of the M6 last month.

Preparation work for the scheme took place before the scheme on a Friday night, including planing off the existing road surface and repairing deep cracks and potholes.

A lane closure was kept in place during the day on Saturday to protect the unfinished road surface, allowing crews to focus entirely on laying the new 50mm deep tarmac during the night.


Overall, work that would have normally taken seven nights to complete was finished in two, with no near misses or safety incidents recorded.

An average 163.7 tonnes of road surface was laid every hour, totalling 1,146.3 tonnes during the Saturday night. Various machines used included:

• 14 tippers.

• Three rollers.

• Three traffic management vehicles.

• Two crew buses.

• One planer.

• One paver.

• One sprayer.

• One sweeper.

• One JCB.

• One detectors wagon.

• One line marking and study wagon.

John Lyssejko, Project Manager at Highways England, said: "We’re keen to do things differently, maintain high standards and reduce the impact on drivers and this new method of working ticks every box.

Everyone worked really hard on the planning and on the night to make it work, and the response has been very positive. Now we know how well it works, and we are confident that we can maintain safety, we can start to look to use the method elsewhere on the network."

(LM)