The £20 million contract to dual the 9.3 kilometre Louchbrickland to Beechill section, finishing beside the Sheepbridge Inn started in March 2004. Brian Herron Contracts was appointed by Whitemountain Civils Ltd. to take on the considerable earthmoving and drainage works.

The earthworks included one of the longest cuts ever to be completed in Northern Ireland. The first cut at Loughbrickland was over 500 metres long and the other, closer to Beechill was around 400 metres long. The cut at Loughbrickland had a slope distance (the distance from the top of the hill to the horizontal) of 66 metres, making it one of the deepest cuts ever to be completed in this country. the first cut located opposite Loughbrickland Lake involved the excavation of some 300,000 cu metres of bolder clay with some rock in the deepest section about 165,000 cu metres from the second cut.

50,000 metres of drainage was installed, this ranged from 150mm land drains to 1800mm diameter culverts at depths of up to 5 metres. A large section of the drainage was installed through rock.

At the peak of production we had 25 machines working in a very short stretch including dozers, excavators, mini excavators, telehandlers, rollers, backhoe loaders and dumptricks.