Carillion has won a £104.9m contract from the UK Highway Agency to transform another section of the M6 in Birmingham, between Junctions 5 and 8 into a managed motorway.

Under the contract, the company will use a range of technologies and adopt new operating procedures to control traffic flow.

The company will install variable mandatory speed limits, as well as opening up the hard shoulder to traffic to reduce congestion and improve journey times in addition to safety.

Carillion chief executive Richard Howson said: "We are delighted to have been chosen to work with the Highways Agency as its delivery partner for this latest managed motorway contract, which further reinforces Carillion’s position as one of the leading suppliers for the agency’s managed motorway programme."

The present contract follows the delivery of two previous phases of the managed motorway programme around Birmingham.

Advanced works on the project are due to start at the end of January 2012 with the main works by June 2012, while the project is expected to be complete in 2014-15.

Last year, Carillion was appointed as one of four contractors for managed motorways framework worth up to £2bn.

Carillion and three other companies were responsible for delivery of the first phase of the UK Highways Agency’s managed motorways programme.

The managed motorway schemes involve the installation of variable speed limits and hard shoulder running to reduce congestion, as well as improving safety during peak traffic hours.

The company had secured a similar contract in 2008 for the first and second phase of the £96m Birmingham Box managed motorways project. In January 2009, the UK Government had announced a plan to hard shoulder some of the busiest parts of the Highways Agency’s major road network under the same programme.

The managed motorway concept builds upon the success of the active traffic management pilot on the M42, where dynamic use of the hard shoulder resulted in improvement in road traffic as well as journey times.