Ten CMYA winners and finalists tell Stephen Cousins about the kit that’s helped them stamp their mark on projects, from high-tech scanners to self-climbing cranes.
Luis Menezes, site manager, Bouygues UK
2013 finalist, £4-£7m category, Phoenix School, East London
At Phoenix School I wanted to check that the reinforcement works in the walls of the 500 sq m basement, which forms a vital part of the structure, was compliant with the design. We used the Hilti portable PS 200 Ferroscan system to carry out a complete survey of the rebar layouts and diameters and to determine the level of concrete cover, which, if found to be insufficient, might have caused future problems.
Individual scans with the system can cover lengths of up to 30m and a true image of the reinforcement is immediately viewable on a portable monitor. It took the surveyor just two days to scan the entire basement, running the scanner across the surface of the walls.
Although the rebar was found to be in the correct alignment and did not deviate from the design, in some areas the concrete cover was insufficient, so the system enabled us to identify this and complete remedial works straight away. Providing such an efficient and exacting structural analysis helped ensure that the structure was compliant with our design intent.
John Brennan, operations manager, Skanska
2012 Gold winner, £23-£40m category, All Saints Academy, Cheltenham
We’re using iPads out in the field on my current project, the £25m Newton Park Campus Development at Bath Spa University. Site managers are using the devices to scan QR codes printed on 1:50 scale drawings posted on the walls of various classrooms, which directs them to a website where digital versions of the drawings and other related information is stored. It saves them having to walk back to the site office to retrieve hard copies.
Our trade contractors are also using iPads to scan QR codes printed on health & safety warning notices posted at the entrance to areas of risk around the site, which directs them to more specific information on the HSE’s website.
Smartphones have also revolutionised the industry. I use mine for everything from taking photos of snags to emailing straight to a subcontractor, accessing emails remotely or consulting my work calendar, which is synced to the office computer.
John Birch MCIOB, project director, Skanska
2012 Gold winner, £40-£100m category, UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre, London
On my current project, the £260m New Ludgate mixed-use development in London (above), we are using the “maturity” method to determine the early-age (under 14 days) compressive and flexural strength of the in-situ concrete frame prior to post-tensioning. It works on the principle that concrete strength is directly related to its age and temperature history.
Around 60 to 100 sacrificial temperature sensors are being cast into the floors of the 10-storey structure and connected up to data-logging equipment supplied by OtB Concrete, which records the temperature of the concrete in real-time as it cures and determines its strength.
Having direct access to the slab concrete is far more accurate than the traditional method of forming concrete cubes using the same concrete mix and sending them to a crush testing centre for tests at seven, 14 or 28 days, which relies on the cubes being formed and stored correctly.
Real-time knowledge of concrete strength should mean we can strike the formwork and post-tension the slabs early, providing serious programme advantages.
However, this method is relatively expensive, making it less viable on smaller projects, and we are still required to perform a crush test at 28 days.
Tony Daly, project manager, Wates
2013 finalist, Under £4m category, HMP Ford prison gym complex, Sussex
Quick hitch excavator buckets have been around for a while, but we’re using a quick hitch fork lift attachment from Dromone that enables a 360 excavator to lift palletised materials across rough terrain. The forks give an excavator the material handling capability of a teleporter, but without the associated capital cost. Flexibility is the main advantage as a tracked machine can travel where a wheeled forklift can’t, this is particularly useful during the early stages of a project.
Different fork lengths are available for a range of weight capacities on excavators ranging from six to 32 tonnes.
The automated quick hitch is perhaps one of the most important innovations in construction. Just a few years ago I remember watching operatives spend 30 minutes or more trying to unpin a bucket and line up and drive-in pins for a replacement, which had the safety risks of being hit by the sledge hammer or by flying debris. The quick hitch takes a matter of seconds and requires no manual handling.
Gareth Lewis FCIOB, coo, Mace
2013 finalist, over £100m category, The Shard, London
Erecting the Shard’s spire effectively meant building a new 25-storey building starting 72 floors, or 700ft, above ground, a task never attempted before in Western Europe. The spire comprises a prefabricated panellised system installed using a specially-designed luffing jib crane, supplied by Select Plant, that was cantilevered out from level 56.
The TC7 self-climbing crane was static at its base, but extended upwards using a hydraulic system. The base was positioned on a diving-board-like structure, and tied back into the building’s central core using 12-inch diameter tubular steel mega ties designed to counter the extreme wind loading at
that height.
Once the spire was erected, an innovative small derrick crane was positioned at level 87 (left), specifically designed by Select Plant to remove the TC7’s mast and jib at the end of the job. That task achieved, the derrick crane was quickly disassembled into a box, like a Russian doll, small enough to be hoisted down to the ground.
Phillip Cracknell MCIOB, operations manager, Willmott Dixon
2012 Gold winner, £13-£17m category, Haggerston School, east London
Five site managers on my current project, the £12m City & Guilds office refurbishment project at Giltspur Street in London, are using Samsung tablets running Mobile Computing Systems’ Priority 1 mobile project management software.
The software is being used mainly to record snagging information and attach photos of snags taken on site using the tablet’s in-built camera. Priority 1 generates a detailed snag list with all items numbered and marked on a digital drawing. When managers return to the office in the evening, the tablet syncs with a desktop computer and snag lists are automatically emailed to the relevant subcontractors.
It avoids the need to take a separate pen, paper and a camera onto site, mark up drawings then write all the information into emails back in the office.
The software remembers snags that are repeatedly entered, so when entering a new snag, such as “make good wall”, you can select it automatically from a drop-down menu rather than have to type it in manually.
Using Priority 1 means our site managers can spend more time doing their jobs on site and it avoids the need to employ a dedicated secretary. We also use the system to issue clear up notices and health & safety forms and there are also plans to use it to issue hot works permits.
Richard Bunn MCIOB, snr site manager, Kier
2013 finalist, £19-£26m category, Sainsbury’s, Pontypridd
I’ve been using the remote controlled helicopter service Heli-Eye to record aerial videos and high resolution photos of work on the massive Cardiff Pointe waterfront residential development.
The company’s Vulcan Mantis 1080 “multicopter” is equipped with a Sony Nex-7 camera that can produce ultra detailed images and videos. It is perfect for inspection and monitoring tasks in difficult-to-access areas such as the tops of buildings or tower cranes, and avoids the working at height issues associated with sending an operative up to inspect.
We’ve been taking aerial photos intermittently to monitor progress on site and check that subcontractors are pulling their weight and our client likes to watch aerial videos at each monthly meeting to get an overview of how the site is performing at a particular time.
The technology can also be used pre-construction to determine site levels and coordinates that can be plotted on a drawing.
Richard David MCIOB, construction manager, Willmott Dixon
2013 finalist, £7-£10m category, Weston-super-Mare Town Hall
We’re using the 4Projects cloud-based collaboration software to manage drawings and design information in the office and on five Samsung Galaxy tablets out on site. All the drawings, specifications and details from the architect, engineer and subcontractor are held on the website, which sends out emails to all authorised users every time a drawing is updated or revised to ensure that everyone is working from the most recent version.
It’s a much faster means of distributing information than the traditional method of using a document controller to check the latest revisions and issue hard copies to subcontractors by post. Different members of the supply chain can be assigned different levels of access. So, for example, the client isn’t able to see project-specific information they don’t need to see, but a site manager can alter or mark up plans.
I used to be our document controller and using 4Projects frees up around two hours for me every day. The system is also able to share, control and manage contracts, schedules and reports.
Robert Coppen MCIOB, construction manager, Willmott Dixon
2013 finalist, Housing above £10m category, Orchard Village, Rainham, Essex
Orchard Village is now in its third phase of development, which threw up the challenge of how to suppress noise generated by the hammers on two pile driving rigs from nearby occupied properties. We couldn’t find the right product for the job, until we came across Soundex by UK firm Rentavent. Soundex is a 1.2m wide by 2m high acoustic quilt that can be zip-tied together with adjacent quilts to create a bespoke barrier between the workplace and the public.
We attached several Soundex quilts to a metal frame, which has been hung from a mobile crane between the piling rig and neighbouring properties. We wanted to reduce noise by around 10dB, but the product is able to deliver a huge 32dB reduction. The quilts are also flexible, lightweight and cost-effective – we only spent £1,200.
Matthew Randall, operations director, Mace
2013 finalist, £40-£100m category, London’s Emirates Airline cable car, Greenwich
The £28m ($45m) LEA project includes three steel towers made up of giant prefabricated units weighing up to 73 tonnes each. Lifting the panels onto the concrete foundation for the south tower in the River Thames meant using a 644-tonne Liebherr LR11350 crawler crane, which was the only crane with a long enough jib to achieve the 120m-high, 120m-radius outreach required.
The site was underscored by a six metre-deep layer of alluvium mud and the crane would have sunk into the Thames if we simply dropped it onto a piling mat, so 24 temporary piles supporting a reinforced concrete H beam were installed to create a temporary reinforced concrete platform for the crane.
The crane itself was delivered to site in parts on 70 artic lorries and two other cranes were required to build it over a period of three weeks during February and March 2012. The LR11350 was the largest crawler crane ever used in the UK at the time.
