With the recent Budget setting out the UK’s largest
ever investment in the Strategic Road Network, Lafarge Cement, part of Aggregate Industries, has stated that
wider adoption of soil stabilisation could be key to making road construction
much more cost-effective and sustainable.
In October, the
Chancellor pledged £25bn over the next five years for the second phase of the Road
Investment Strategy to continue long-term improvements to Britain’s
motorways and major roads.
One of the core
objectives of the strategy is to create a ‘greener network’ and bring down
maintenance costs, calling on Highways England and its supply chain partners to
step up to the challenge through innovation and creativity2.
According to Lafarge Cement, one of the ways the
industry can achieve this is by taking a ‘ground-up’ approach that
utilises soil stabilisation by using hydraulic road binders – a process
widely-used in the US and across Europe to improve weak in-situ materials for
foundations in road engineering.
Steve
Curley, Commercial Director at Lafarge Cement, comments: “As we move on to the
planning and implementation of the Road Investment Strategy 2, the key to
successfully building a world-class sustainable road network will be taking a
holistic ‘ground up’ approach to innovative ways of working.
“This
often starts with ground engineering, where for years the issue of weak in-situ
materials has been solved by replacing them with imported natural aggregates –
a costly method. More recently, soil stabilisation that blends in-situ
materials with a rapidly hardening hydraulic road binder has been proven to
remove the need for traditional sub base or base course aggregate, making it
more environmentally friendly as it cuts down on material waste and the carbon
emissions associated with hauling aggregates. This method is also much
more cost-effective due to reduced landfill costs and reduced project
timescales and costs.”
Last year,
Lafarge Cement launched TerraCem, the
UK’s first hydraulic road binder specially formulated for use in soil
stabilisation. Designed to strengthen existing onsite material without the need
to import aggregates, TerraCem has been
specifically engineered, using sustainable binder technology, to improve soils,
strengthening weak substructure layers to create a working platform and
offering reduced embodied carbon in comparison to traditional cement
stabilisation.
Steve adds: “With a greater onus on contractors to deliver
the UK’s most ambitious road projects to date in the most sustainable and
economical way possible, world-leading agencies such as Highways England,
Heathrow and Associated British Ports are already seeing the benefits of using
hydraulically bound mixtures. Hence, the direction of travel is clear; best
practice now dictates the use of specialist binders in soil stabilisation as
the ‘go-to’ method for greener, leaner and more efficient road construction.”
