What the is best way to construct a temporary access road?

Temporary access roads are required across and to construction sites. They provide access for heavy construction vehicles carrying materials and equipment needed at the site and occasional movement of tracked construction vehicles.

Because these roads are required for only temporary use, they are often constructed from a granular fill or aggregate placed over existing ground or sub soils. The granular fill or aggregate acts as the road surface itself.
These roads can be just a few hundred metres or extend to several kilometres.
Access roads may only be needed for a few weeks, or for several years. The design should therefore safely cover all factors, the number of axle loadings, average axle weights, heaviest loadings, and duration of its operational life.

Another factor the contractor should consider is the quantity of vehicles delivering the granular fill to site and the distance travelled from the source of the stone. Both factors will increase the carbon footprint of the temporary road from an environmental point of view. From a practical view point the delivery vehicles will running directly on the site sub soils and/or the newly laid stone, neither is ideal especially with poor weather or ground conditions. This means the critical time for building an access road is the construction phase itself, where the vehicles delivering the granular fill are travelling at their closest point to the subgrade soils.

The design procedure will identify what thickness of granular fill is needed to carry the traffic load. The traffic load is based on a surface deformation target established using a method of calculation derived from historical data.
Temporary access roads are needed where the existing ground conditions are poor. Often, this means that using historical information, these roads are constructed with a significantly thick layer of stone to cater for the anticipated traffic load and as a result will always need regular maintenance to address surface deformation and rutting.

Using stone:

• Construction costs reliant on fluctuating cost and availability of stone
• Construction times slow and subject to weather and delivery delays.
• Environmental and sustainability impact high.
• Maintenance during period of use generally high.
• Remediation is time consuming and labour intensive. With high costs if stone cannot be relocated to a local site.
• Future use of this traditional construction method for temporary works limited.

Therefore, finding an alternative method of construction is imperative. Ground stabilisation is the obvious solution, except for short-term requirements where track mats can be cost effective.

PowerCem Technologies in the UK, provide a custom designed product for constructing temporary access roads. The only technology on the market that can successfully stabilise all UK soil types and be used without any protective running surface. This makes RoadCem the most sustainable option for temporary access road construction.

Using RoadCem:

• Costs can be established prior to starting, with pre and post testing available.
• Construction times will be far faster than stone, with up to 3,000m2 treated per day.
• Reusing just the existing site materials is totally sustainable and low environmental impact.
• Maintenance is minimal even on long term access roads.
• Remediation is low cost and simple with access roads milled back to soil in-situ.
• Stabilisation of the existing soil in-situ is the most sensible option and RoadCem designed especially for this process is the best solution.

RoadCem is only available through PowerCem Technologies (UK) Ltd. We work closely with Rodgers Leask Consulting Engineers who are very experienced in linear strain analysis modelling of RoadCem soil bound layers and also with CE Geochem specialists in soil analytics for the purposes of stabilisation and remediation.