A1 Morpeth to Ellingham and Birtley to Coal House

Headland have a long history of completing large-scale linear projects with a minimum of fuss; it is what we do. We know from hard-won experience that collaboration is key, be that with clients, landowners, curators or other stakeholders. We are set up to take these kinds of projects from cradle to grave on time and budget, every time.

Our involvement in this upgrade scheme covered 12.6km of both off-line and online routes between Morpeth to Ellingham and around 6.5km of improvements between Birtley and Coal House. By utilising the client’s resources in terms of plant and welfare provision, we were able to streamline the trial trenching process, ensuring the works were completed ahead of schedule.

From the awarding of the contract in February 2021 to completion of reporting just over eight months later, this project highlighted how we are ideally set up to mobilise rapidly, get the right team in place, and provide a high-quality service to our clients, even when under pressure. The project was divided into three blocks of trenching, a programme of topographic survey and Historic Building Recording (HBR) work. In total, 910 trenches were excavated over the course of 18 weeks by two core teams led by a Senior Archaeologist.

It had been agreed upfront that plant, welfare and civils requirements would be provided by the client, allowing for more flexibility to increase/decrease the rates of progress with both trenching and backfilling, and ensuring the archaeology team could be entirely focused on achieving the aims of the trenching programme. For this approach to be successful and to avoid works halting due to decision-making falling between the cracks, excellent communication was vital. Formal weekly meetings between all stakeholders worked as longer-term planning sessions, along with 3-week look ahead programmes, allowing the responsible people to remove potential barriers well ahead of time. At ground level, the site teams used a digital site diary system which meant that issues and developments were instantly recorded and could be viewed by management at a glance. These were then resolved more immediately through discussion between the Senior Archaeologist and the client’s lead on site.

The relationship between Headland and the Costain Jacobs Partnership was a particularly successful one, and although there were various challenges over the course of the project, including refusal of access and ecological constraints, each of the blocks of trenching were completed ahead of schedule. Alongside this, the evaluation process successfully identified two domestic sites of Anglo-Saxon date, a period for which limited evidence had previously been recorded. The streamlined nature of the project continued through to the post-excavation stage, with the full suite of reporting completed on time, despite a challenging turnaround.