UK road contract awarded

The UK Highways Agency has awarded contractor Carillion a £104.9 million (€125 million) contract to upgrade a section of the M6 motorway in England.

Carillion will transform a strip of the motorway between junctions 5 and 8 near Birmingham into a managed motorway.

Managed motorways use a range of technology combined with new operating procedures to control traffic flow. This includes variable mandatory speed limits and opening up the hard shoulder to traffic.

Carillion is one of the Highways Agency's four delivery partners for the managed motorway national framework, and the contract follows its delivery of two previous phases of the programme around Birmingham between junctions 4 and 5, and junctions 8 and 10A.

Advance works for the latest contract are due to start at the end of January 2012 and the main works by June 2012, with contract completion scheduled for 2014 to 2015.

UK Roads Minister Mike Penning said, "Our experience shows that managed motorways deliver significant safety and journey time benefits. That's why the government is continuing to invest in these schemes and has added two additional managed motorway schemes - one of which is the M6 junction 10A to 13 project - to the Agency's roads programme. This means that by 2015 work will have started on 16 such projects."