TRL wins contracts for WRAP Aggregates Programme

TRL has won four contracts under the Aggregates Programme of WRAP, the Waste & Resources Action Programme. The contracts will be handled by the Centre for Sustainability (C4S), a centre of excellence within the Infrastructure and Environment Division of TRL that deals with waste and resource management issues, as well as more traditional materials and structures aspects.

The four contracts, which cover a range of topics and involve collaborations with a number of industry partners, comprise: a project to assess the potential of redundant airfields in England as a resource for the provision of recycled aggregate; a project to develop targeted case studies for the AggRegain web site on an ‘as-required’ basis; a project to look at tools for calculating CO2 emissions for construction activities to see if they can be used to promote the benefits of using recycled and secondary aggregates instead of primary aggregates; and a project on the development of new performance tests for hydraulically bound materials (this contract was won by a consortium led by TRL and including Tarmac and Scott Wilson Pavement Engineering).

Mike Head, director of TRL’s Infrastructure and Environment Division, said the projects illustrated TRL’s ability to build consortia with a wide range of partners to assemble teams matched to the requirements of a diverse range of projects, ranging from traditional laboratory and site-based studies to assessing and trialling computer-based models.

John Barritt, aggregates technical advisor for WRAP, added: ‘These are important projects and WRAP is confident that the outcomes will facilitate the greater use of recycled and secondary aggregates.’

All four projects commenced in the summer of 2005 and will be completed by early 2007 (the airfield pavements project will be completed by April 2006). The results of all the projects will be published on the AggRegain web site, www.aggregain.org.uk