CONTRACTORS Whitemountain Construction and Somerset County Council have released an impressive video of the huge new Somerset Bridge being put into place over the River Parrett.

The new 52-metre steel bridge is part of the multi-million pound Colley Lane Southern Access Road and is the largest single span bridge in Somerset.

Somerset County Council’s contractor Whitemountain used a 1,250-tonne mobile crane with a 63m boom to lift three braced pairs of beams into place.

Each pair of beams measured 52m long, 2.2m deep and 3.8m wide with the heaviest weighing in at a whopping 156 tonnes.

The beams were fabricated off-site but each pair needed to be taken apart for transportation by road in three separate loads – with 9 loads in total. The beams were then reassembled into their curved shape at the Colley Lane site with much of the work done in advance to limit the need for working over water now the beams are in place.

The £18.4m Colley Lane Southern Access Road (CLSAR) plans include two new bridges, 840 metres of carriageway and new cycle and footways.

The scheme will help ease congestion along Taunton Road and Broadway by connecting Parrett Way to Marsh Lane and providing access to the Colley Lane Industrial Estate from the south. It will also open up brownfield development sites between the River Parrett and the Taunton and Bridgwater Canal.

The project will use innovative engineering solutions to overcome some of the challenges on site, such as poor ground conditions between the canal and river.

To minimise loading in this area, high density polystyrene blocks will be used as a lightweight alternative to conventional quarry materials. This has an additional benefit by reducing the number of vehicle movements to site by 90 per cent – saving around 500 truck deliveries.