Exploiting a manufacturing-based approach to construction to deliver large numbers of accessible station footbridges for Network Rail is the cornerstone of the AVA Bridge Consortium. 

As Lead Designers, Expedition Engineering are working with Network Rail, Hawkins\Brown, X-Treme Systems and Walker Construction to demonstrate a shift from traditional design and construction processes to a cooperative model. The collaborative manufacturing process will prove the power of industrial scale repetition providing value to our partner, Network Rail, and the taxpayer. This project is a demonstration of the future of manufactured infrastructure.

In all of our minds, is how we deliver this system so that it can be repeated time and time again, with a site-specific configured outcome. In doing this, we challenge the status quo and ask our collaborators to explore the benefits of economies of scale, embrace Industry 4.0 and change mindset from the usual limitations of a construction approach.

We have been forceful about the value of time in the innovation process. Using this time to learn afresh, prototype and learn again, results in a better design and a better end result. It is an Expedition approach to project work that we live by. Hand in hand, the Consortium’s work here has been supported by strong and informed client leadership; Network Rail have been with us through the entire process, learning as we have, and challenging us, as we have them. Simultaneously, the Norman Foster Foundation has been acting as our ‘critical friend’. Their invaluable periodic review has sharpened our senses to refine the design.

The physical realisation of this project on a test track in Widmerpool will demonstrate the improved outcomes of this approach. Both capital and operational expenditure will be reduced with less carbon and less maintenance, whilst being more robust, adaptable, and reusable; the bridge will have a second life elsewhere.  We fully expect the reality of the build to throw at us the hurdles we need to work through to persuade the industry of the value of this change, and in experiencing the physical product, we seek to convert the unconverted in a way no product brochure ever could.

The AVA project is really a demonstration of where we need to be moving with the industry, particularly in infrastructure where long overdue opportunities for industrialisation are finally being explored. Expedition’s innovation work with Network Rail, HS2, and the i3P community, has affirmed that a key barrier to innovation is the commercial threat to existing companies when radical changes to the delivery model like AVA are realised. This is where the community of these construction clients can make the biggest impact; supporting the supply chain to reinvent itself by strong leadership, partaking in the research and innovation process, and agilely facilitating an industrial approach to procurement. 

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Find out more about AVA at www.avabridge.com . The AVA bridge consortium is a partnership between Network Rail, Expedition, Walker Construction, Extreme Systems and the MTC, along with our collaborators, Quantum Infrastructure, SCX, Hawkins\Brown, Norman Foster Foundation and Atelier Ten.