Oxfordshire bridge will use revolutionary Mouchel-designed ASSET system to slash build time and costs.
Europe's first plastic highway bridge is to be built at West Mill, near Shrivenham in Oxfordshire, by a team led by Mouchel and Skanska.

The project will be the first test of a construction system that, its designers say, will cut the time needed to put up a bridge by half and the cost by about one-third.

The system uses glass-fibre-reinforced polymer, and its main advantages over traditional methods are the low weight of its bridges and the fact that they can be prefabricated off site in one piece.

Sam Luke, head of advanced engineering at Mouchel, said the polymer would be "five times lighter than traditional materials". This meant that its foundations did not need to be as strong and that the bridge could be lifted into position in a single day without the need for heavy cranes.

Groundworks on the £500,000 Oxfordshire bridge are expected to begin in July while the structure itself is built off-site by Skanska. It is expected to be ready for the first cars by October.

It doesn’t need heavy cranes because it is five times lighter than traditional materials

Sam Luke, Mouchel

The West Mill Bridge will replace an existing version. At 10 × 7 m, it will be longer and wider than its predecessor, will weigh 30 tonnes and be capable of carrying 40 tonnes of vehicle weight.

Mouchel and its six pan-European partners have received £2.5m from the European Commission to research the system, which its designers call ASSET.

Mouchel used it to reinforce the Hythe Bridge in Oxford two years ago – the world's first example of this kind of work.

New-build plastic bridges have been constructed privately for a few European developments and work has begun on similar examples in the USA.