News Friday Feature – M56 Thorley Lane bridge

Our Friday Feature series takes a closer look at some of the videos that you can view on our YouTube and Vimeo channels. This week’s video was a collaborative project between Aerial Images and Time-Lapse systems.

It is very rewarding to see our time-lapse work shining a light on the special achievements of companies on major infrastructure projects.

This week’s feature highlights the hard work and close collaboration between Balfour Beatty and Mott MacDonald on the M56 bridge replacement at Thorley Lane.

Each phase of the project required extensive planning so that the replacement works could be carried out with minimal risk and disruption to the public. Following demolition and once the new bridge was constructed, the structure then needed to be manoeuvred into place.

To give you a clearer idea of what this epic feat entailed, we have crunched some numbers:

• The new bridge itself weighs 1,500 tonnes
• And measures 90 metres long (equivalent to the length of a football pitch!) and 15 metres wide
• It was constructed adjacent to the M56 motorway and had to be jacked up to 8 metres high
• And the project cost £5.5million in total

Working in partnership with our colleagues at Aerial Images, we remotely captured time-lapse video of the bridge lift and start of the move from a fixed position. The total time for the bridge move and installation took well over 12 hours!

Having taken place back in 2014, the grand scale of these replacement works means that the finished video edit is still garnering interest via social media channels and has recently featured on Construction News.