Ashe’s largest ever concrete pour took place at one of our Hertfordshire sites, to make a foundation for two new 400,000L water storage tanks.

The tanks will supply the site-wide sprinkler system which needed to be upgraded to bring it up to date with modern fire safety standards.

With the groundworks taking place next to occupied offices, the team decided to use an electric digger to do the preliminary excavation work to make sure that those working in the offices were not exposed to vehicle exhaust fumes. This also made the process much quieter for workers in neighbouring buildings.

The project team chose an exvac suction excavator to help with the ground preparation which reduced noise, emissions and had the added benefit of improving safety by mitigating the chance of any cable strikes and damage to undocumented underground services.

Preparation work required driving 50 piles and creating the reinforced frame into which 51 lorry loads of concrete was poured over 10 hours, amounting to 375m3 of concrete to create the 1.2m depth slab.

The site was very busy and carparking limited, so it was decided to programme some of the work to take place outside of office hours to ensure the project team didn’t take up any parking spaces used by employees and visitors to the site.

New steel gantries to carry the piping connecting the water tanks to the sprinkler system were installed over a weekend and planned to reduce any inconvenience to the client.

Several footpaths needed to be closed resulting in rerouting pedestrians around the site, so the project team worked hard to complete the work to a tight programme to limit the impact of the construction works.