Media City UK – a multi-million pound development on a 200 acre site at Salford Quays, will host a major new BBC television and radio centre plus over 1,000 other media-related businesses. The scheme is expected to deliver £1.5 billion to the regional economy and provide over 15,000 new jobs.
Hewlett are employed by main contractor Bovis Lend Lease to carry out a £7 million contract during the initial stages of the development. The contract includes cut and fill works for piling platforms, roads, drainage and services plus substructures to studio block. Bovis’ main contract is valued at approximately £400 million.
Piletec, the specialist piling equipment division of hire group Groundforce, is hiring one of its Taets 314 pilebreakers to Hewlett who are using it to break off the caps of hundreds of continuous-flight-auger bored concrete piles in preparation for foundation slab construction.
The Taets breaker comprises a series of hydraulic chisels mounted on steel links that form a circular collar which is lowered over the pile cap. The chisels are extended to break the concrete pile around its circumference at a pre-determined level. The broken concrete is then removed to expose the reinforcing bars; these are then incorporated into the slab or beam cast on top of the piles.
“The breaker is very quick – you can easily do 50 or 60 piles in a day” comments Piletec director Bill Gorton. “There are several proprietary methods of pile-breaking, but this in our opinion is the quickest and safest method”.
The traditional method of breaking pile-caps is to use a hand-held pneumatic of hydraulic breaker. Although precise and accurate, this manual technique is very slow, very labour-intensive and fraught with health and safety risks. “Hand-arm vibration injuries are recognised as a major health and safety problem these days” says Mr Gorton, “using a Taets breaker suspended from a machine totally eliminates exposure to vibration and also reduces the amount of lifting required of the operatives when doing this kind of work”.
“Anything that has the potential to improve Health & Safety has to be the top priority for every company. The Taets Pile Breaker is a piece of equipment that is both safe and efficient in use. Not only does it save injury from vibration exposure it also, unlike operators, does not suffer from fatigue a plus for any contractor’ said Ian Dick, Director of Health and Safety at Hewlett.
The Health & Safety Executive estimates that around two million UK workers are exposed to harmful levels of vibration, risking muscular, skeletal and nerve damage. The HSE recommends the adoption of technologies that can reduce or remove the exposure of all forms of vibration in the workplace.
The Dutch-made Taets Pile Breaker can be assembled with any number of chisel links to suit the diameter of the piles in question. At MediaCity, the 600 mm diameter piles require a breaker comprising 10 links, plus a half-link to achieve the optimum diameter.
The machine will remain on hire to Hewlett until the New Year.
