For the past several decades the Crosskeys Bridge located near to Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire had suffered with a heavy infestation of pigeons nesting under the main sections of the bridge. Fields of crops nearby had meant that the pigeons had a local food source which helped to create a very large and established flock.

Our task was to prevent and limit the pigeons from gaining access to roost and nest in the under carriage and in other possible areas of displacement. This would have been an straightforward task if the bridge was locked in to position, however, as this was a swing bridge the netting had to be placed in such a way as to prevent catching whilst swinging past fixed platforms like as shown in the below movie:

The work was carried out over a period of 30 days as the scaffolding had to be removed before the netting could be installed. We worked in partnership with the scaffolding company throughout the installation.

For this work we needed to take into account additional health and safety issues related to working over the water. We created a safe working environment by using harnesses and wearing life vests at all times and had a person positioned in a boat ready to launch a rescue. 

One issue that was unseen at the time of installation was rubbish entering the drainage outlets directly onto the net and hence creating a small jam. We solved this issue by opening the nets around the pipes to remove the offending items and by installing weldmesh to the road sections to prevent future problems. As the main scaffold had been taken away our access solution was to use a floating barge moored with ropes and a support boat to position the tower scaffold at full tide to carry out the works. Needless to say that this was carried out on a calm day!