Highways England’s Concrete Roads Centre of Excellence has published the first concrete roads handbook in more than 30 years, bringing together the latest updates, advice and guidance from industry experts on how to maintain, survey and repair roads.
The new Concrete Pavement Maintenance Manual is a key part of Highways England’s £400m nationwide drive to revitalise concrete roads in England. The guidebook was developed by the Concrete Roads Centre of Excellence, which has been set up as the development and knowledge hub for the programme.
The new step-by-step guide will help users across the construction industry in identifying, designing and repairing faults in concrete roads, not just surface faults like potholes, but also any underlying structural problems.
To launch the new handbook Highways England is holding a seminar on Tuesday 6 July from 3:30pm to 4:30pm for members of its supply chain and wider industry stakeholders. The seminar will be an opportunity to hear more about the newly published manual and discuss it with other industry experts.
The handbook can also be applied to other transport sectors that use large areas of concrete, such as airports and airfields. Highways England aims to work with these sectors to build up collective knowledge.
Mike Ambrose, Technical Lead for the Concrete Roads Centre of Excellence, said: “We are very proud to publish the first manual of its kind for 30 years. Like the concrete roads we are now upgrading or rebuilding, the old guidance has served the industry and country well since it was last published. This up to date handbook brings together and updates advice and guidance from across the industry into a single document and sets out commonly used techniques to inspect and repair concrete roads and other surfaces
“Our new concrete road handbook will enable us to work with our supply chain as we repair and rebuild the concrete roads in our network as we build back better in the years to come.”
Concrete roads make up almost 400 miles (4%) of England’s motorway and major A-road network. Mostly found along the eastern side of the country, in the North East, Yorkshire, East Anglia and the South East, there are also some smaller stretches in other parts of England.
