A46 Walsgrave £112M DCO: junction upgrade design and staging notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Government approval of a £112M Development Consent Order will replace the congested A46 Walsgrave roundabout near Coventry with a fully grade-separated junction on this key north–south freight corridor. National Highways plans free-flow mainline movements with local traffic diverted via new slip roads and bridges, removing the existing at-grade conflict that regularly causes long peak-hour queues. For designers and contractors, the scheme will involve complex staging to maintain A46 traffic, significant earthworks, and new structures over existing utilities and local access roads.
Technical Brief
- Grade separation will require new bridge structures over existing local roads and buried utilities corridors.
- Construction sequencing must maintain strategic A46 traffic flows while progressively decommissioning the existing roundabout.
- Significant earthworks expected to form mainline embankments and tie-ins to existing carriageway levels.
- Drainage redesign will be needed to manage altered runoff patterns from new embankments and structures.
- As with other recent DCO’d trunk road junction upgrades, detailed traffic management phasing will strongly influence construction methodology and programme.
Our Take
Within our 646-item Infrastructure set, Midlands road schemes in the United Kingdom have tended to be smaller, incremental works, so a nine-figure upgrade signals a shift towards tackling structurally constrained junctions rather than relying on piecemeal widening.
A £100M-plus junction intervention in the Midlands typically triggers complex Development Consent Order processes and multi-phase traffic management, which contractors will factor into risk pricing and programme buffers even before detailed design is finalised.
For UK regional authorities, securing a DCO on a scheme of this scale often unlocks follow-on funding for active travel and local access improvements around the corridor, so practitioners should watch how complementary works are packaged and procured alongside the core upgrade.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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