ROADBUILDING IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28630, 5 July 1958, Page 10

ROADBUILDING IN BRITAIN

Engineer’s Use Of Helicopter

LONDON.

The men handling the giant excavating machinery on the 53mile Luton to Dunchurch stretch of the new London-Yorkshire motorway hardly bother to look up now as the scarlet and silver Bristol Sycamore helicopter sweeps overhead at little more than tree-top height. ‘For the last few weeks, John Laing and Son, the contractors, have been using the aircraft as a vital link in their chain of communications up and down the length of the motorway—one of the few times that a helicopter has ever been used in the United Kingdom on a major civil engineering project. To carry out the contract —the largest o'! its kind ever awarded in Britain to one company—Laings have put a work force of more than 3000 men on the job. and some £5 million’s worth of equipment is being used. / Before the 2J million square yards of asphalt and tar macadam can be laid on the road’s stone and concrete foundations, 12 million cubic yards of earth must be excavated —and more than a quarter of a million tons of concrete and 12,000 tons of steel reinforcement will be needed to build the 130 bridges, which include six major flyovers, ranged along the motorway.

A quick, up-to-the-minute survey of such a vast undertaking is impossible by conventional means, as much of the motorway passes through remote countryside inaccessible by existing roads and surface transport is necessarily slow.

To John Michie, project general manager in charge of operations, the helicopter has provided the answer to his problem. With Bristol helicopter test pilot Bob Smith at the controls. Mr Michie can take off from the tiny .landing site just outside his headquarters at Newport Paghell, fly over the whole project and be back at his office desk 90 minutes later. To do the survey by car would take him the better part of four days.