Microtunnelling at Project Pipeline: County Durham and Tees Valley reaches major milestone

Farrans and our client Northumbrian Water have reached an important milestone in our work to construct part of a new water pipeline beneath one of the region’s key roads.

The £155m Project Pipeline: County Durham and Tees Valley project needed to cross the A68 between Darlington and West Auckland, at Bildershaw Bank, so that it can feed Northumbrian Water’s storage reservoir near Shildon.

To avoid impacting traffic on this, the final road crossing of the pipeline’s Phase 1 route, microtunnelling was used to feed the pipeline between specially created pits either side of the road. We engaged specialists to carry out this work.

While ground conditions proved challenging and made for slower than anticipated progress as the tunnelling machine passed beneath the road, the technique used ensured that this didn’t cause any issues for motorists, and the pipes inside the tunnel have now been connected to the main pipeline.