Construction projects in the transport infrastructure sector or in marine and coastal environments often feature challenging locations. The equipment needed for operations such as excavation and piling can be highly specialised and perhaps not readily available on the plant-hire market.
This adds an additional risk factor to project schedules and may also limit the range of technical solutions available. Suttle Projects specialises in civil engineering for difficult locations – so acquiring specialised plant and machinery is a key part of our investment strategy.
Investing in our own equipment and self-delivery capabilities makes us less reliant on hiring machinery, which may have to travel a significant distance to the work site and can add significant costs to the project.
As ground engineering specialists, holding such an extensive range of self-owned and operated plant – Suttle Projects can provide displacement, replacement foundation and retaining wall options as well as temporary and permanent sheet piling solutions. In practice, if customers can engage us early – we can recommend the most efficient and effective methodologies that are best suited to the unique circumstances of each individual location and remove project risk.
Confined Spaces
Road and rail bridges can be degraded by the scouring action of river-borne materials. Installing protective measures to elongate their lifespan frequently presents difficulties with access and with the available working height below the bridge spans. Because the ideal equipment for the job didn’t exist, we developed our own.
The Little Mermaid is an underwater remote-controlled excavator. Removing the cab and engine reduced the height substantially, allowing the machine to work in locations that would otherwise be inaccessible. It is powered through umbilical hydraulic lines and controlled by an operative several metres away.
Adaptability
When it comes to the plant needed for unique and challenging work sites, size isn’t everything. Our 14-tonne Doosan DX140LC-3 crawler excavator, equipped with a Movax SG-30 side-grip piling hammer has proved invaluable many times for installing sheet piling in coastal and marine locations where our larger machinery would be unsuitable.
This more specialised type of machinery complements our more heavy duty plant, including our Komatsu PC490 50-tonne excavator which can be fitted with a Movax SG-75V attachment to install sheet piles. This is one of the largest side-grip rigs currently available in the UK and allows us to maximise productivity during tight rail possession periods.
Other equipment, such as our long-reach excavator can allow projects to be completed while only needing access to one bank of a river, for example, to save significant time and cost.
Having access to our own specialised equipment is one element in our projects: simplified approach to delivery, which aims to drive cost and uncertainty out of projects, even in the most challenging locations.
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