A CIVIL engineering firm has started work on a £30m transport scheme.

The Owen Pugh Group is supporting the Morpeth Northern Bypass project, in Northumberland.

The company says its contracts division, which specialises in earthmoving, demolition and landfill, will help create a new carriageway.

It comes after the firm bought bulldozers and diggers from Komatsu, which has a factory in Birtley, near Chester-le-Street, for the project.

Working as a sub-contractor to Carillion, Owen Pugh says the scheme is the largest single project its contracts team has undertaken, with up to 30 workers expected to be on site.

Martin Forster, Owen Pugh Contracts’ general manager, said: “The bypass is an important for the North-East.

“Projects of this size and scale are rare in the current climate and we are absolutely delighted to have been contracted by Carillion.”

The bypass scheme will create a road from the Whorral Bank roundabout to the A1 trunk road, between Fairmoor and Lancaster Park.

The Morpeth project follows an £800,000 deal last year, which has seen Owen Pugh carry out earthmoving on the busy A174 and A19 junction, close to Thornaby, near Stockton, to help dual the route and add extra lanes to a roundabout.

The company operates across civil engineering, drainage and groundworks, plant hire and haulage, quarrying, and waste and drain cleaning.

Running an aggregate site at Marsden Quarry, South Tyneside, it has its HCS Drains Service division in Stockton, with its head office in Dudley, North Tyneside.