Sandwell Lantern Street Lighting Improvements (SOX Phase 1)

Fitzgerald Contractors were awarded an urban highways improvement scheme by Sandwell Council to install 4,000 new energy-saving SOX LED street lighting lanterns.

For Phase 1 of the SOX Lantern Replacement Scheme the Fitzgerald team installed new digital technology to bring huge benefits compared to traditional lighting – reducing whole life costs for the council and its residents and cutting carbon emissions. The LED lights can be centrally controlled and monitored, use less energy and need significantly less maintenance.

The street lighting installations took place in a very dynamic working environment across multiple urban and city locations, often for very short periods of time typically lasting less than one day and with significant interface with residents, businesses and the general public.

Ensuring safe and sufficient working areas at each site location was one of the key challenges that the project team faced and our approach was to view each site individually and create a bespoke installation plan. This included scheduling our works to be carried out in the evening to avoid key events / peak traffic periods which was safer and least disruptive for nearby stakeholders.

Over the past 3 years Fitzgerald have delivered £3 million of street lantern replacement schemes where we have worked collaboratively with our supply chain partner Hilton Main at both preconstruction and construction stage to find efficiencies and optimum methodologies for installation. We have been successful in meeting this challenging programme through strong client and stakeholder working relationships and utilising digital technology in real-time to work smarter and mitigate impacts at site locations.