Successful Completion of Queen Elizabeth Hospital Bus priority scheme

Fitzgerald have successfully delivered a strategically important bus priority highways scheme at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham for our client West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and the key partners University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and Birmingham City Council. The completed works provide improved bus access and prioritisation for patients, visitors and staff at the hospital, funded as part of the Government’s National Productivity Investment Fund.

The £600,000 project to create a new bus lane along New Fosse Way and Hospital Way involved working in a live environment to undertake carriageway widening into the existing footway and subsequent footway widening into the verge. The team installed a toucan crossing and constructed a concrete slab to protect existing utilities, together with the relocation of street lighting, installation of new fencing and localised drainage works.

Fitzgerald’s site team undertook night-time working to mitigate the potential for traffic congestion during the daytime and implemented a considerate construction plan due to the close proximity of hospital wards. As part of a formal Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) process, our in-house preconstruction team carried out design development and review workshops with our client WMCA and the key partners. The team identified key site constraints and developed a detailed traffic and pedestrian management plan to create efficiencies in our construction programme and provide cost certainty whilst also enabling early liaison with individual stakeholders.

The scheme has been delivered safely whilst overcoming COVID-19, logistical and engineering challenges and now provides a safer and more efficient transport network in Edgbaston and Selly Oak for bus passengers, pedestrians and vehicle users.