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Blog: Winter is a year-round effort at Connect Plus Services…

By Rob Haddow, Inspections Portfolio Manager at Connect Plus Services.

This weekend marked the start of the winter season at Connect Plus Services (CPS). The season runs from October to April but the preparation work to ensure we can keep the M25 network running safely through the winter months is a year-round effort.

So, what does being ready to keep the M25 running in all weather conditions entail?

To start with, we’ve got over 22,000 tonnes of salt stored and ready to go in our eight depots, strategically located around the network. Salt barn inspections have taken place at all these sites and the moisture content of the salt has been checked to ensure that it complies with the British Standards target specification of less than four percent moisture.

We’ve also added essential equipment to our fleet as well as conducted critical maintenance on our existing vehicles. In total we have 34 dedicated gritting vehicles to cover 27 predefined routes as well as two additional strategic spares. Additionally, we are proud to maintain and operate 14 Telehandler vehicles, four extra effort ploughing vehicles, two snow blowers and 40 de-mountable ploughs. These were all ready and out in force for our winter parade on Friday to celebrate the hard work that has been put into getting ready for the colder months ahead.

To give you an idea of the scale of the winter operation, last year we carried out 1,827 runs of rock salt for the roads and 82 runs of potassium acetate for the tunnels, which equated to 10,287 tonnes of rock salt and 15,287 litres of potassium acetate being used to protect our network and keep it safely moving for our customers. Weather forecasts are delivered every four hours and a decision is made by 4pm each day as to whether we need to go out on the network to distribute salt or carry out other protective measures. If temperatures go below 1ºc, the team is heading out!

This video explains all the work we do to combat the effects of severe weather conditions in more detail.

If you’d like to join the M25 team and take part in programmes like this, please take a look at our current vacancies and get in touch!