A specialist diamond drilling and concrete sawing company is working on one of its biggest ever jobs in London as part of a major infrastructure programme.
D-Drill and Sawing, which is headquartered in the Midlands with offices right across the UK – including in the capital city – has been engaged by main contractors for the western section of the Tideway project to carry out complex drilling and controlled demolition as part of work on London’s new super sewer.
A partnership between BAM Nuttall, Morgan Sindall and Balfour Beatty Group is leading on the west section of the £4.5 billion project to completely upgrade London’s sewerage system.
D-Drill and Sawing has been engaged on separate parts of the programme which, once complete, will have been five months of work for several highly-skilled operatives from its London team.
The company’s first piece of work on Tideway was to remove a temporary, highly reinforced concrete capping beam that was 30 metres by seven metres and 1.2 metres deep in the Fulham area of London.
To make the job even more complicated, it was in a busy residential area and meant the team had to limit noise and consider the safety of the public.
D-Drill and Sawing utilised a diamond drill to create hundreds of holes in the beam and followed that up with the use of a hydraulic burster to crack through the concrete.
The main contractors then removed the lumps of concrete using a 30-tonne JCB but the teams were limited to ‘noisy’ operations for just two hours a day to limit the impact of the works on local residents.
Further to that, the D-Drill and Sawing teams have been employed to create openings all along the west section of the Thames Tideway Tunnel in order to allow for access, ventilation and major service routes.
Multiple openings have been made using numerous specialist drilling and sawing techniques.
Chris Broadley, manager of D-Drill and Sawing’s London office, said: “We are thrilled to be working on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in London, for some of the biggest names in the sector.
“It’s great when you know that the job you are doing is going to make a real difference to the lives of millions of people and is going to have a lasting, positive effect on our capital city.
“There have been some complex circumstances but, as a company, we are used to finding solutions in order to solve our clients’ problems and make sure we get the job done in a timely fashion and to the satisfaction of everyone involved.”
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