The A465, or Heads of the Valleys road, is one of The Welsh Government’s key strategic corridors and an international gateway for the South Wales economy.
The existing A465, a single three lane carriageway, was built in the 1960’s with two lanes in the uphill direction. The dualling project will significantly improve its safety, shorten journey times, generally improve transport links and therefore benefit the local economy.
Since September 2015, CAN has been working as a subcontractor for Costain on the Heads of the Valleys A465 widening scheme. The HOTV contract, now into its fourth year, is CAN’s largest project to date.
Throughout the job CAN has been able to adapt and provide viable solutions to the continuing challenges encountered on the project. The works are still ongoing and are expected to continue well into 2019.
Current works include:
- Installation of soil nails, rock bolts and rockfall netting
- Removing temporary road level catch fences
- Installation of gabion facing
- Drilling environmental barrier foundations
- Construction of a bat gully
- Filling voids caused by old mine workings
As of January 2019 CAN has carried work out on the following installing:
- 97,904 meters of drilling – which would reach double the height of the Red Bull Stratos skydive (the highest in the world)
- 13,901 soil nails/rock bolts
- 46,850.5m2 of rock fall netting – enough to cover Trafalgar square more than 3 times
- 34 retaining walls have been built
- 1,373,380 litres of grout – the equivalent of 2,416,811 pints of beer
- 250 tonnes of sprayed – the same weight as 140 pallets of bricks