Mouchel Consulting Final Report

Isheanesu Chimkupete - 1331834

Table of Contents1.0 List of Tables.....................................................................................................1

2.0 List of figures....................................................................................................1

3.0 Introduction...........................................................................................................2

1.1 About the Company...............................................................................................2

1.2 Sutton Coldfield office...........................................................................................2

1.3 My team.................................................................................................................3

.................................................................................................................................... 4

2.0 Objectives..............................................................................................................4

3.0 Lake Loathing...................................................................................................5

3.1.........................................................................................................................5

3.3 Mouchels Role.................................................................................................6

3.4 Health & Safety...............................................................................................6

3.5 Project roles....................................................................................................7

3.51 Compliance Check.........................................................................................7

3.52 Health and Safety design..............................................................................8

3.53 Ghost Island option proposal........................................................................9

3.54 Traffic flows.................................................................................................12

3.55 Vehicle tracking around pier.......................................................................13

4.0 Project Management...........................................................................................13

5.0 Conclusions.........................................................................................................15

5.1 Application of academic skills.......................................................................15

5.2 Knowledge Gained........................................................................................16

5.3 Conclusion.....................................................................................................16

6.0 Refrences.............................................................................................................16

7.0 Appendicies.........................................................................................................17

7.1 Road marking spec for Ghost island junction according to TSM5................17

7.3 Design Standards for ghost island according to TD42..................................18

7.4 Drawings off all the HGV movements around pier........................................21

http://www.mouchel.com/who-we-are/company-overview

1.0 List of TablesTable 1 – pg 4

Table 2- pg 8 - 9

2.0 List of figures

Figure 1. Office layout – pg 2

Figure 2. Highway team structure – pg 3

Figure 3. Map showing main highways associated with Lake Lothing – pg 5

Figure 4. Three options for crossings across Lake Lothing – pg 6

Figure 5. T Junction designed by Shah Rahim – pg 7

Figure 6. Drawing annotated with drawing numbers for road markings – pg 8

Figure 7. Designing T junction to TD4 – pg 10

Figure 8. Designing T junction to TD42, line offsets and HGV corner radii added – pg 10

Figure 9. Designing T junction to TD42, fitting the minor road to existing alignment – pg 11

Figure 10. Vehicle tracking of HGV on the T Junction – pg 11

Figure 11. Highway design in mouchel drawing frame – pg 12

Figure 12 Traffic flows going through new roundabout – pg 12

Figure 13. one of four HGV movements vehichle tracked around piers – pg 13

Figure 14. Mouchel Travel guide – pg 15

Figure 15 Road markings according to TSM5 – pg 17

Figure 16 Visibility checks to be made according to TD42 – pg 18

Figure 17 Lane widths, corner radii and tapers to be measured according to TD4 – pg 19

Figure 18 Minor road approch dimensions to be drawn to TD42 pg 20

Figure 19 HGV movement into APB building – pg 21

Figure 20 HGV movement into APB building alternate maneuver – pg 21

Figure 21 HGV movement into APB building alternate maneuver pg 22

PAGE 1

3.0 Introduction

3.1 About the Company

Mouchel is a civil engineering consultancy with offices across the UK/Ireland, Middle East and Australia(mouchel consulting,2016). The company focuses on a wide range of sectors within the industry of Civil Engineering, specifically Highways/Transportation, Water, environment, maritime and property infrastructure. Mouchel is perhaps best known for its work within the highways industry as a lot of their work is based within this sector. Mouchel’s legacy within the Highways industry can be seen as the company was involved heavily in the inception of Smart Motorways in the UK, assisting highways England. Most notably assisting in the piloting of the concept of Active Traffic Management (ATM) successfully demonstrated on the M42 in Birmingham, which would go on to be replicated on major UK motorways such as the M25, M4, M5, M65 and M1(mouchel consulting 2016)

Mouchel is currently thriving, and as a consequence of its continued growth; June 2015 saw the acquisition of Mouchel by Kier Group for £265,000,000, a move that served to increase the resources behind company operations, enhance company image and become a dominant player specifically in the UK Highways and Highway works market due to the backing of Kier Group (Aaron Morby. 2016)

3.2 Sutton Coldfield office

The placement took place in the Sutton Coldfield office north of Birmingham. Summer of 2016 proved to be a busy period in the office with several big jobs going on. For this reason, the summer placement consisted of assistance in multitudes of big and small projects, not restricted to Birmingham. Furthermore, the collaboration between the different departments in the office was emphasized in the project as the placement included tasks given from not only the highways team, but notably the Project Management team.

PAGE 2

Figure 21. Office layout Figure 1 depicts the configuration of the Sutton Coldfield office. As discussed in 1.1, Kier Group now backs Mouchel and therefore, the Sutton Coldfield office is shared between Kier and Mouchel.

3.3 My team

The placement was taken on the Highways team and the role assigned was that of a Highways technician. The primary role of a technicians in consultancies is to be competent enough with Computer aided design (CAD) to convey technical information into design drawings. The CAD drawings are then taken into the works requirement to aid the specification, which will be added to the contract and eventually interpreted by the chosen contractor. The role however was not limited to this as the highway team offered many shared responsibilities in tackling the challenges of design and meeting the client’s standards. The Highway consultancy team family tree is as follows.

PAGE 3

Keith LewisTechnical Director

Darren MorrisSenior Engineer

Oleg MakarovSenior Engineer

Shaun JoyceSenior Engineer

Shah RahimGraduate Engineer

Jamie CliftEngineer

Zoe SantosSenior technician

Ben AustinTechnician

Tom OwenTechnician

Anesu ChimkupeteTrainee Techician

Ethan SmithApprentice Technician

Daniel GoodwinEngineer

Rafael MoranSenior Engineer

Paul Principle Engineer

KwakuPrinciple Engineer

2.0 ObjectivesSpending 12 weeks with one of the UK’s leading Civil engineering Consultancies presents a very unique learning experience. With this in mind, a set of objectives was considered to address the question of maximizing all the benefits this opportunity gives. The key parameters considered in this regard are depicted and summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 Objectves

OBJECTIVES

COMMUNICATION - Networking with professionals for my career goals

- Learning technical language- Liaising with people from different disciplines

INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE - Awareness of the appropriate design standard attached to jobs

- Awareness of Health and Safety protocols associated with design

- Knowledge of the elements of a contract- Gain an appreciation of how different teams

collaborate and hold individual responsibilities in projects

`TECHNICAL PRACTICE - Improve my competence in AutoCAD- Learn new software

PROBLEM SOLVING - Gain experience in assessing real life situations

- Offer multiple proposals for tasks- Get in the habit of searching for data outside

of what’s presented

RELATING INDUSTRY PRACTICE TO COURSE

- Look out for applications of Eurocode 2- Look out for opportunities to practice the

known AutoCAD commands

PAGE 4

Figure 22. Highway team structure

- Look out for topics covered in CPM in particular such as Risk Assessment, Bill of Quantities and CDM regulations

3.0 Lake Loathing3.1 Background

Lake Loathing is a watercourse, which flows into the North Sea. It separates the town of Lowestoft in Suffolk into north and south and is approximately 180m wide at its widest point (Rob Surl, 2015)

Figure 23. Map showing main highways associated with Lake LothingThe north and south are currently linked by existing road crossings east and west (A12 and A1177 respectively), which have been deemed inadequate for the existing demand for traffic. The traffic issue in this town have become rather notorious and thus has taken away from incentives to visit the town. An Incompetent road network

PAGE 5

naturally has adverse effects on local business ass there is less investment, less attention and less expansion and in the Lowestoft project, a business case for the design proposals was put forward by Mouchel and approved. The issue with Lowestoft is one which has attracted publicity to the extent that it was promised in the last general election that a Lowestoft crossing will be built by the year 2020 (Rob Surl,2015) Mouchels role in BIM and the subsequent production of proposals has been going on since February 2015, and during the process, Mouchel assessed 4 separate options that were variations of Eastern Crossings, western crossings and central crossings based on Bridges or Tunnels.

Figure 24. Three options for crossings across Lake Lothing (Google Maps,2016)At the stage that the summer placement commenced, the options had been reduced to the central bridge. There has been great optimism shown towards opting for a Bridge instead of a Tunnel despite some debate including UKIP in Waveny calling for the Tunnel (Andrew Papworth,2016). However there seems to be a consensus on the Bridge with the Waveny MP Peter Aldous saying “We have got something that is so overwhelmingly with what the people want” (Andrew Papworth,2016)

3.3 Mouchels Role

In this job, the acting client was Suffolk County Council (SCC). SCC awarded a contract to Mouchel Consulting in which Mouchel was appointed Principle Designer (Andrew Papworth,2016). The scale of the job makes it multidisciplinary in nature and involved the collaboration of the structures team, Geotechnical team and the Highways team. Being a principle designer means that Mouchel Consulting leads all aspects of the pre-construction process.

3.4 Health & Safety

Health and safety is emphasized not just in construction, but also in the pre-construction phase. Mouchel Consulting; being the principle designer, was to adhere to the legislation presented in the Construction Design Management

PAGE 6

regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) which details the responsibilities of all parties involved in a construction job and in our case, the Principle designer’s responsibilities.

“Principal designers must: …work with any other designers on the project to

eliminate foreseeable health and safety risks to anyone affected by the work and,

where that is not possible, take steps to reduce or control those risks” – (HSE

Books,2015)

It should be noted that the legislation has written in bold the terms ‘eliminate, reduce or control’. The Protocol advocated in Mouchel is the ERIC principle. It is an Acronym for Eliminate Reduce Inform Control. It works as a logical process for designers and on this basis, which meets the ideas relating to ‘eliminate, reduce or control’. Meeting this particular legislation is often conveyed by Mouchel through the Hazard Identification checklist along with the Hazard elimination schedule.

3.5 Project roles

A lot of junction improvement and brand new horizontal road alignment needed to be considered to further assist the bridge crossing. Technicians working on the Lake Loathing project this summer were tasked with exploring all possible options, producing CAD sketches of appropriate alignments and either brand new junctions or junction improvements.

3.51 Compliance Check

The first task presented was a compliance check. Shah (a Graduate engineer) had drafted a Ghost Island junction as part of the horizontal alignment in Lowestoft. The Ghost Island Junction is a measure to reduce traffic that is commonly caused by vehicles turning. The compliance check was ordered by Paul (Principle engineer) who wanted assurance that the Ghost Island junction was in compliance with the Design manual for roads and bridges (DMRB Standard). Further specified in the task was to ensure that the junction was suitable to HGV access. The following drawing was given on a 1:500 scale A3 paper.

PAGE 7

After the compliance check, the Paul requested that the design be annotated with references to the traffic signs manual chapter 5 (TSM5). The relevant road markings specified are in the appendix.

Figure 26. Drawing annotated with drawing numbers for road markings

3.52 Health and Safety design

As alluded in 3.4, Health and safety is a major consideration in terms of design. Part of the task given was to carry out a health and safety protocol on the design of the proposed ghost island T-junction. The task is done to satisfy the CDM regulations and more bluntly, to ensure the most optimal design proposal.

The Health and Safety assurance was done through the use of a Hazard Identification checklist along with the Hazard elimination schedule. The Hazard Identification checklist lists the most common hazards associated with construction and leaves a section for the designer to rank each hazard into low risk, high risk or not applicable. Classification of risk was done on the basis of opinion and then subsequent discussion with the Paul. Below is a summary of the Hazards

Table 2 Hazard Identification Checklist

Potential Hazards arising from

Not Applicable

Low Risk => No action needed

High Risk => Action needed

1. Existing Structures

X

2. Existing services

X

3. Earthworks X4. Foundation X5. Service installation

X

6. Drainage works X7. Highways X

PAGE 8

8. Steelwork Construction

X

9. Concrete Construction

X

10. Masonry Construction

X

11. Timber Construction

X

12.Cladding X13. Glazing X14. Mechanical/electrical systems

X

15. Railway activity

X

16. Demolition X17. Maintainence X

The activities of high potential risk are the ones that need heavy consideration in the design stage. For instance, existing services was singled out as a high risk in the sense that the ground represents a large unknown. A designer would address this by carrying out statutory undertaking to gather information about any BT lines, oil pipes, electric cables etc that are underground at the location of the build. In general anything that represented a big unknown was associated with high risk, another example would be earthworks, at the time of the design there was little knowledge of the ground conditions, not to mention the Lake Lothing represents a water course ~300m away from the junction proposal hence groundwater is a reasonable concern. Low risks were activities that could be reasonably managed without major input from the designer, however they are marked to show they have been acknowledged. Such is the case with the railway. A railway does exist a few hundred meters away and it is thus important to acknowledge it, however a designer can be confident that the potential hazards caused by the railway do not need to be addressed in the design stage. Lastly the ones non applicable do not have anything to do with the project, cladding and glazing for instance are more typical in the construction of buildings than junction builds.

3.53 Ghost Island option proposal

The alignment proposed included a new roundabout in close proximity to an existing roundabout. The new roundabout drafted by one of the engineers was directly connected to the bridge. However the Principle designer was curious as to whether designing a T-junction into the bridge extension would be feasible instead of another roundabout. Hence in order to investigate this, an appropriate DMRB compliant sketch was needed. Depicted below is the existing solution.

PAGE 9

Figure 27. Designing T junction to TD42By inspection, it seems probable that a T junction can replace the roundabout as it can fit in line with the major road however this is not without concern. There exists a number of constraints in the geometric design. The addition of a T junction here would push the design up a little which is an issue due to the lack of space above the roundabout. Furthermore it was noted before designing that the corner radius of the T Junction was to comply with the standards of a HGV. As alluded above, the position of the T Junction can be gauged by inspection, as the major road can be joined by a line through the roundabout. This line gives a suitable insertion point for the ghost island which can be designed in space and then joined into the alignment, furthermore the design lanes can be defined through the offsets of this line. The ghost island T junction was drawn according to the DMRB standards set inTD42. And the first draft can be seen below.

Figure 28. Designing T junction to TD42, line offsets and HGV corner radii addedThis preliminary draft was just to get a better picture of the T junction and very specifically its alignment with the major road. Having decided that this was acceptable, the joining of the minor road to the existing alignment was figured out.

PAGE 10

Noteworthy also is how the design above includes a 15m radius corner radius coupled with a taper for HGV access. Going further I elected to use the more standard 20 m corner radius with no taper.

Figure 29. Designing T junction to TD42, fitting the minor road to existing alignment

After all the necessary geometries were designed, the ghost island was finally tested for HGV adequacy using the Autodesk Vehicle tracking software, which in effect, modeled the junction. Finally the Junction was inserted into the alignment whilst cutting out the roundabout. Furthermore, the appropriate road markings were added in place according to TSM5.

PAGE 11

Figure 30. Vehicle tracking of HGV on the T JunctionThis design was then put into a Mouchel Drawing frame and taken by the principle engineer to be used as part of the presentation to the client.

Figure 31. Highway design in mouchel drawing frame

PAGE 12

Figure 32 Traffic flows going through new roundabout

3.54 Traffic flows

Another key part of the lake loathing project was to obtain the traffic flows going through the bridges and through various junctions in the area. Going back to the role of a technician, the technician is responsible for conveying information in a way that is coherent for others to easily interpret. Hence another task assigned was to take traffic flow data for different roundabouts and bridges, and represent the data through CAD drawings, one of the drawings depicting the information can be seen below.

3.55 Vehicle tracking

around pier

An issue was raised in terms of the public interaction with the central bridge. The issue was that there were two piers in close proximity to a warehouse, which HGVs frequently use. The piers hence cause a potential obstruction for the HGV access to the building. The task given to me was to demonstrate designs suitability to HGV access which can be done using Autodesk’s Vehicle Tracking software. A number of different movements were considered.

PAGE 13

Figure 33. one of four HGV movements vehichle tracked around piers

4.0 Project Management/SustainabilityWhilst the placement was taken as part of the highways team, a portion of the time was spent working with the Project Management team who were stationed on the same floor. Whilst project management in of itself is not engineering, their role is an extremely pivotal one in driving the success of jobs, being awarded work from clients, and promoting sustainability in the running of the office.

4.1 West midlands Framework

Mouchel has recently been awarded jobs in the west midlands area. The procurement of these jobs was made possible in part due to the condition that Mouchel adheres to a Framework Agreement. It is known as the West midlands Framework, and is an agreement between Mouchel with Walsal, Sandwell and Birmingham city council on a set of terms and conditions associated with awarding jobs to Mouchel with each respective council being the client.

4.2 Social Value action plan

Part of the Framework included a social value action plan, put into effect as part of the agreement with Birmingham city council. The social value action plan constituted a set of activities promised by Mouchel to Birmingham city council to demonstrate mouchels commitment to having a socioeconomic effect on the local area (i.e Birmingham), and furthermore demonstrating that the company has a high

PAGE 14

regard for sustainable practice. The socioeconomic/enviromental effects were split into the following parameters; Local Employment, Buy Birmingham, Partners in communities, Good employer, Green and sustainable and Ethical procurement. Following through on the social value action plan is important as it enhances company image and the reputation of Mocuhel as being involved with the local communities can result in being more favorable in the awarding of contracts specifically within Birmingham.

There were 52 promises in total, listed in a spreadsheet as Key Performance indicators (KPI’s); and as part of the social value action plan, the Project Management team needed someone to find a way of providing updates as to whether the promises have been met by mouchel or not. The task was to find ways of providing updates on the company. The main approach was to ask for recommended contacts and send e-mails requesting information, particularly with Human Recourses on the first floor. Other information could be mined on the Company shared folder. The task entailed a lot of networking/communication skills as well as discussion.

4.3 Green Travel Plan

One KPI in particular was highlighted as an issue for Mouchel. Mouchel made the following promise in KPI42.

“Mouchel will develop and maintain a Green Travel Plan for its McLaren House and Sutton Coldfield offices that will focus on maximising sustainable transport outcomes for journeys to and from the offices, and between the offices and BCC's operational locations associated with the Framework contract.”

This promise was problematic at the time because Mouchel’s Sutton Coldfield office still had no Green Travel Plan. Thus added to the project management task was the drafting of a Green travel plan for the company. This required research into Green travel plans in other companies as well as research into the current measures taken by the company in promoting Green travel. The company Travel Guide in particular was a helpful source of information. The guide itself offers some good information on the travel options available to the office but still requires a lot more detail in terms of being a company green travel plan; for instance it mentions the cycle routes as well as the cycling scheme but forgets to mention the office showers and changing rooms which would further incentivize cycling and thus demonstrate mouchels commitment to green travel and hence, sustainability.

PAGE 15

These small details regarding incentivizing green travel were not the only elements need adding; an appropriate Green Travel Plan also needs a staff survey along with an analysis of results. Using Surveymonkey.com, a staff survey was created and checked with members of the PM team. At this point it was realized that a staff wide survey could generate information that could be of much wider use than just the framework agreements. With this in mind the task became of even higher significance and for this reason it was suggested that the Survey should be sent to transport planning on the first floor.

5.0 Conclusions5.1 Application of academic skills

Whilst Highways was something I’ve never encountered on an undergraduate level; there were some opportunities presented where academic skills and knowledge was put into practical use in the office. The main skill put into practice was autoCAD, a software I learnt independently over last summer and further practiced in the second semester of my second year at uni; the use of the software was extremely relevant during the placement. Construction Practice Management class of second

PAGE 16

Figure 34. Mouchel Travel guide

year provided a good knowledge base in terms of the protocol and management associated with civil engineering; for instance, I came into the placement familiar with the CDM regulations (granted we covered the 2007 CDM). Core skills as it pertains to teamwork and planning also relevant to the placement as I had done a lot of group work before. In general there was a good knowledge base from the degree I am studying, however much to learn as it was my first time in industry and first encounter with highways.

5.2 Knowledge Gained

A lot of valuable knowledge was gained from the experience, as I had never had previous involvement, working with a civil engineering consultancy. Coupled with that, Highways is a subject that is not at all covered on an undergraduate, emphasised the learning curve. In terms of technical knowledge, I learnt a lot more about manipulating AutoCAD though the invaluable help of the other technicians who showed me new commands and methods of design to speed up work. Furthermore, the use of AutoCAD Vehicle tracking was something entirely new to me but eventually became very intuitive and fun to use and indeed was a vital part of the work I did. Most importantly (as far as technical work) was the knowledge of the DMRB design standards of which I became more and more familiar with especially as it pertains to horizontal alignments.

The learning was not just limited to technical knowledge, but discussions with senior members of the team revealed other important responsibilities of engineers outside of technical work. Most notably I learnt about the contents of a contract document. Contract documents compile all the works information and site information necessary for the contractor to do the job. What I found interesting and relevant was all the documentation that engineers may be responsible such as producing a Bill of Quantities, a works Specification and PCI (pre-construction information).

5.3 Conclusion

The summer placement was extremely beneficial to my development as a civil engineering student. It opened my eyes to the busy world of highways engineering, a sector that is seemingly booming with work to be done on both small and large scales. The experience helped me narrow down my options in terms of a career path in Civil engineering

PAGE 17

6.0 Refrencesmouchel consulting. (2016). MOUCHEL - HELPING COMMUNITIES THRIVE. Available: http://www.mouchel.com/who-we-are/company-overview. Last accessed 23/10/16.

mouchel consulting. (2016). THE SMART MOTORWAYS JOURNEY WITH HIGHWAYS ENGLAND. Available: http://www.mouchel.com/sectors-and-services/smart-

motorways-journey. Last accessed 23/10/16.

Aaron Morby. (2016). Kier to sell Mouchel Consulting as group streamlines. Available: http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2016/07/04/kier-to-sell-mouchel-consulting-in-

streamlining-plan/. Last accessed 23/10/16.

Rob Surl. (2015). Outline Business Case. Lake Lothing Third Crossing, Lowestoft. 1.4

Andrew Papworth. (2016). High-Level bridge recommended to be Lowestoft's third crossing. Eastern Daily Press.

HSE Books. (2015). Regulation 11 Duties of a principle designer in relation to health and safety at the pre-construction phase. Managing health and safety in constuction.

1 (1), pg30.

PAGE 18

7.0 Appendicies7.1 Road marking spec for Ghost island junction according to TSM5

PAGE 19

Figure 35 Road markings according to TSM5

PAGE 20

7.3 Design Standards for ghost island according to TD42

Figure 36 Visibility checks to be made according to TD42

PAGE 21

Figure 37 Lane widths, corner radii and tapers to be measured according to TD42

PAGE 22

Figure 38 Minor road approch dimensions to be drawn to TD42

PAGE 23

7.4 Drawings off all the HGV movements around pier

Figure 39 HGV movement into APB building

PAGE 24

Figure 40 HGV movement into APB building alternate maneuver

PAGE 25

Figure 21 HGV movement into APB building alternate maneuver

PAGE 26