Month: November 2014

Seddon Construction has awarded O’Brien Contractors Limited, a leading Midlands-based Civil Engineering Contractor, an Earthworks and Groundworks package for the Westcliffe Extra Care Retirement Village in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

The regeneration of the former hospital is part of a £100m investment to deliver three new retirement villages at sites across the city, namely: Blurton, Abbey Hulton and Westcliffe. The villages will provide 390 new care apartments for people over the age of 55.

The works to be undertaken by O’Brien, include: a Cut & Fill remodelling of 17000m3 of the existing ground profile, with 11000m3 of the earthworks arisings being disposed off-site; mass fill concrete foundations; reinforced concrete retaining walls and associated storm and foul drainage – including a large storm water attenuation tank.

The remodelling design works have all been carried out in-house with the control information being fed directly to the GPS guided Earthworks plant. This technique ensures accurate excavation of foundations to the required formation levels, without the operative having to leave the cab of the excavator.

O’Brien’s experience of working on active developments will come to the fore in this project as connection to an existing surface water manhole within the adjacent highway, as well as extensive services installation works, are contained in the package.

This win comes on the back of a successful year in which the contractor picked up a number of high-profile projects, including: a £6.5m Marks and Spencer civil engineering and groundworks package with Morgan Sindall at Longbridge in Birmingham; a £5.5m roads and sewers contract for new service personnel housing at MOD Stafford with Lovell Partnership; and £2.5m groundworks for Kier Construction at the New Cross Hospital Emergency Department, Wolverhampton.

O’Brien Contractors Director, Stuart Chamberlain, said: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to partner, once again, with Seddon Construction on such a prestigious development for Stoke City Council.”

“As with all our projects, we will ensure that the scheme receives the highest attention to detail and utilises the latest in construction technology and skills, saving both time and money for our client,” added Stuart.

Work on the retirement village started in September 2014 and is expected to be completed during 2016.

O’Brien Contractors, winner of Construction News Awards 2014: Tomorrow’s Company, is on the verge of completing two flood alleviation projects, both for specialist sports turf construction and drainage firm, Turfdry. O’Brien’s sports division has carried out a £60k project at The Rayleigh Club’s championship golf course, which has seen the excavation of a number of new ponds and the formation of bunds with the arising’s.

The contractor is also set to complete a £75k river restoration scheme at Firs Farm Playing Fields for Enfield Council. The works involved the excavation of a watercourse stretching between the north-west and north-east corners of the park.

O’Brien Contractors, the first and only large civil engineering firm able to offer turnkey solutions for a range of sports pitch installations, secured the contracts with Turfdry through its investment in cutting edge surveying equipment and state-of-the-art excavators and bulldozers; equipped with GPS control systems which are linked to the design software. This technical capability was pivotal to carrying out the works and assisting in the concept, in terms of creating cut and fill balance on complex earthworks. It also ensured our expert operators delivered the design to the exact client specifications in the most efficient method possible and with minimal disruption.

Our team of experts have a proven track record of delivering design and build sports projects to a diverse range of exacting client specifications. Recent projects have seen us construct a synthetic grass hockey pitch for Oswestry School, 11 natural turf pitches at Kewford Eagles FC in Kingswinford, a synthetic grass sports pitch for Parklands School in Chorley, as well as a synthetic “Mondo” 6 lane 400m IAAF and UK Athletics track with an infield, full size FIFA compliant football pitch at Eastwood School in Essex.