Colne Valley Viaduct

Scope of works

Completed in late 2024, the Colne Valley Viaduct is a bridge, which will carry the High Speed 2 railway over the Colne Valley Regional Park and the Grand Union Canal. With a length of 2.1 miles (3.4 km) and a weight of 116,000 tonnes, it is the largest railway bridge in the UK, as well as one of largest single civil engineering works of this phase of HS2.

Kilnbridge were engaged to construct the foundations and 58 reinforced concrete piers for the iconic viaduct. The brief included producing high quality patterned concrete in a challenging location amongst highly sensitive natural habitats, and works included:

Design development of the ‘V-pier’, a large mock-up of one of reinforced concrete piers which supports the viaduct

Construction of individual pile cap bases, each up to 500m3 of concrete within cofferdams, associated pile cropping and capping beam construction

Establishment and operation of a precast concrete facility nearby which is delivering over 775 precast concrete bridging planks, some weighing up to 21.6t and measuring up to 11m in length, with a total concrete volume in excess of several thousand cubic metres.

Challenges

• The 11 V-piers were constructed, to a specified architectural finish, above water solely accessible via the jetty.
• Bespoke high quality visual concrete

Achievements

• Formwork for this project was designed and fabricated in-house by Kilnbridge
• Over 200 Kilnbridge employees were embedded within the wider project team
• The project was awarded the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust’s 2024 Building Beauty Awards