Rail: setting the standard
At Mouchel we encourage our people to embrace change, to capture innovation and to set new standards; enabling us to respond effectively to the ever-increasing demand for technological advancement in all our markets as well as meeting society’s expectation for safety and operational efficiency.
Our Advanced Engineering Group, for example, has pioneered the use of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites as construction products in the UK.
This group is at the forefront of FRP highway and railway bridge superstructure design in the UK, offering solutions to extend the operational life of existing bridges and create more sustainable, more durable new structures that can be constructed faster, more cheaply and with less disruption than their traditional equivalents.
This is perhaps one of the most exciting and significant innovations in bridge technology for many years, introducing a whole new product technology to a relatively conservative discipline.
Mouchel’s work for the Highways Agency, for example, includes designing four of these bridges, for 40t loading, over the M6 motorway between Junctions 32 – 33.
The solution is both cost effective for the HA and of huge benefit to the travelling public since because the bridges are quicker to build and require less future maintenance, the impact of construction work on road-users is kept to a minimum.