Month: May 2008

Leading civil engineering and groundworks contractor, O’Brien, has successfully completed the biggest concrete pour in its 50 year history.  The work was carried out at Hanson UK in Leicester and comprised 1100m³ concrete over a 2200m² slab for a chamber dryer.

Tony Mitchell, Project Manager said: “This is unique to O’Briens due to the large amount of concrete poured and we believe the key to our success was being able to co-ordinate simultaneous concrete deliveries from five separate plants, while making sure that the traffic management was thoroughly organised.

The large quantity of concrete required 2 no 52m boom concrete pumps to maintain the required output and ensure that concrete was placed in the working day”.

The Hanson brick factory is a £54 million facility with the capacity to produce 100 million bricks a year. It also features a low energy, low waste production process, including a kiln heat recycling system to maximise heat recovery and reduce gas consumption.

The value of O’Brien Contractors’ work is £4.75 over a 30 week period.

Leading midlands civil engineering and groundworks contractor, O’Brien, have recently been awarded a £1.3 million Enabling works package at Aston University in Birmingham.

The contractor will undertake the Project as Principal Contractor for new client, Aston Student Villages, set up to provide a new 3000 rooms, high rise student accommodation within the existing University campus.

The 20 week enabling works package consists of:

• The diversion of existing services currently running through the proposed development. These services, both private and owned by the statutory undertakers, include high and low voltage electric, telecommunication including fibre optic, gas and water mains;
• Road alterations and new adoptable 278 highway works to provide the new infrastructure to the proposed development;
• Demolition of existing properties currently on the site and ground remediation to the area beneath the two proposed blocks to allow future construction works to take place.

The ground remediation involves excavating 9000m3 of material, processing it to meet specification requirements and reinstating the resulting material to meet the compaction criteria laid down for end use.

Furthermore, there is requirement to carryout bulk earthworks of 8000m3 of reduced level dig and disposal off site and subsequent capping of the formation with granular material prior to the building contractor taking possession of the site.