Skip to main content

Mott MacDonald Sweco JV to design part of A96 dualling, Scotland

A Mott MacDonald and Sweco joint venture has been appointed by Transport Scotland to carry out route option assessment and detailed design work for dualling of the A96 highway between Hardmuir and Fochabers. The nearly 47km stretch of the road will provide users with improved journey times between two of Scotland’s economic hubs, the cities of Inverness and Aberdeen. In 2011, the Scottish Government published its Infrastructure Investment Plan which set out the Government’s plans for infrastructure i
June 16, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A 2579 Mott MacDonald and 3392 Sweco joint venture has been appointed by 4068 Transport Scotland to carry out route option assessment and detailed design work for dualling of the A96 highway between Hardmuir and Fochabers.

The nearly 47km stretch of the road will provide users with improved journey times between two of Scotland’s economic hubs, the cities of  Inverness and Aberdeen.

In 2011, the Scottish Government published its Infrastructure Investment Plan which set out the Government’s plans for infrastructure investment over the coming decades.

The plan noted that dualling 86 miles of the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen, by 2030, was a key investment. The Hardmuir to Fochabers section of the road consists mainly of single-lane carriageway through or close to various towns and villages that suffered regular traffic bottlenecks.

The joint venture will begin design and assessment work that could take up to two years to complete. There will be a number of grade separated junctions where bypasses are created for a number of communities, such as Forres and Elgin. There will also be crossings of the River Findhorn, the River Lossie and the River Spey, as well as the Aberdeen to Inverness rail line.

Iain Scott, contract director for the Mott MacDonald and Sweco joint venture, said that the contract “builds on our long established collaborative relationship with Transport Scotland”.

Mott MacDonald is a €1.76 billion global management, engineering and development firm. Sweco, a Sweden-based engineering and architecture consultancy, has sales of €1.7 billion.

The joint venture was established in 2010 bringing together the broad experience of Mott MacDonald and Sweco, formerly Grontmij. The joint venture has been involved in improvement works around junction 10 of the M20 motorway in county Kent in England. It also worked on the introduction of the smart motorway on the M5 in the English Midlands.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Construction of Fehmarn Belt Link could start in 2019
    February 27, 2018
    Construction of a Fehmarn Belt Link could start a year from now – more than a year ahead of schedule, according to Danish media reports. The timing was put forward by Holger Schou Rasmussen, chairman of Femernbælt Development, and Kristian Pihl Lorenzen, the Liberal Party spokesman for traffic issues. They reportedly said that a pending environmental court case in Germany that has stalled approval by German authorities won’t hold up construction of the 18km crossing as much as had been feared. As late as
  • VIDEO: UN body protests England’s planned Stonehenge A303 tunnel
    May 1, 2018
    The Paris-based International Council on Monuments and Sites – Icomos- has objected to plans by Highways England for a road tunnel bedside the ancient monument Stonehenge. Icomos, which advises the United Nations on protection of world heritage sites, has written to Highways England urging a rethink of the planned tunnel that would be just under 3kmk long. It argues that the tunnel and the dualling of the A303 carriageways either side would damage the landscape and destroy archaeological evidence
  • UK’s A14 upgraded route opening early
    October 14, 2019
    A key section of the UK’s important A14 upgrade project is opening to traffic ahead of schedule. Work to deliver the new stretch of dual carriageway for the A14 bypass is being completed a full 12 months early. The bypass section will open to drivers in December 2019, cutting congestion and journey times. Work on the 19km bypass section commenced in October 2016 and forms part of a programme of 33.6km of road works in Cambridgeshire, costing £1.5 billion. The road building project has been carried out by
  • BAM, Morgan Sindall start UK’s €112 million Oldbury viaduct job
    July 31, 2017
    A joint venture of BAM, Morgan Sindall and VolkerFitzpatrick has started refurbishing the Oldbury viaduct on the UK’s M5 motorway. The €112 million project will see repairs to a 3.5km stretch between junctions 1 and 2 of the motorway – one of the UK’s busiest routes – to the west of Birmingham city. Work is being done in three phases starting with the removal of the road surface on the southbound carriageway to investigate the condition of the concrete deck.