Earthworks Efficiency Challenge - Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) West Target Cost Programme

The £2.1bn Transpennine Route Upgrade West Alliance required BAM to deliver a £90m earthworks package for just £60m, demanding 30% efficiency savings. Traditional paper-based tracking left BAM unable to monitor earthworks volumes or material types in real time, risking both cost overruns and schedule delays. With UK law mandating digital waste tracking by April 2026, BAM faced a tight deadline to transform processes. Managing earthworks at site level restricted programme-wide efficiencies, making it difficult to maximise material reuse and minimise hazardous waste disposal. BAM urgently needed a digital, scalable solution to ensure compliance, cost control, and effective programme management.

We were initially engaged to create a reporting tool for progress visibility. The remit quickly expanded to reconciling earthworks movements and leading a digital transformation programme for material and waste tracking, ensuring compliance with the Environmental Agency’s code of practice process for material reuse and UK law for waste disposal. We adopted a hybrid lifecycle: capturing requirements, reconciling movements, conducting options analysis, and selecting a solution based on Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC). Working collaboratively with stakeholders, we designed the system, developed process documentation, piloted the solution, and managed all stakeholders to transition the programme from paper to digital tracking, working closely with BAM’s teams and suppliers for rapid, effective adoption.

The digital system was successfully deployed within four months, and live data is now being reported into BAM and the Alliance. This has started to enable more intelligent, programme-level decisions. Early signs of benefit are emerging, including improved visibility of earthworks movements and enhanced forecasting accuracy.

With our support on reconciliation and future forecasting, BAM has begun to formalise efficiencies, with the first £20m identified and declared against the target. As adoption continues and data maturity improves, further benefits are expected to be realised across the programme, supporting ongoing improvements in cost control, compliance, and resource optimisation.

Our expertise delivered more than digital transformation. Their knowledge in intelligent programme management enabled the capture of key lessons and future recommendations, including data quality strategies, multi-layer testing to increase reuse, and transitioning from site to programme-level management.

Early improvements are visible in wagon utilisation, resource levelling, and site layout safety. As the system embeds further, our agile approach and sector insight continue to support BAM’s journey toward full realisation of efficiencies and regulatory compliance, demonstrating our value as a trusted partner for tier 1 civils contractors.