Howard Civil Engineering are thrilled to have been awarded Wates’ prestigious Preconstruction Support Highly Commended Award for our work on Leeds City College’s Quarry Hill campus.
As part of our £6.5m contract with Wates, in which we delivered a complex groundworks and RC Frame package, we supported our client by proposing various value engineering opportunities which enabled them to achieve efficiencies in time, cost and methodology.
To support Wates’ ambitious delivery programme, we proposed alternative construction methodologies and attended preconstruction planning, programming, and design team meetings. This enabled us to implement our sector-specific knowledge and experience in lean programming and follow-on trade collaboration.
Despite significant increases in the scale and complexity of the scheme, the new state-of-the-art learning centre was completed and handed over to Leeds City College right on schedule. Managing Director Michael Howard commented, ‘This award is a testament to our wealth of experience, our passion for innovation and our endless drive to deliver an exceptional service to our clients.’
‘This complex city-centre site demanded an abundance of resources, and we successfully utilised our local plant yard and off-site construction methods to coordinate deliveries and partially construct formwork and falsework off site. To say this was our first contract with Wates, we are thrilled to have received such a high level of recognition from one of our most prestigious clients so early on in our journey together.’
Read more about our work on this monumental city-centre site here.
We commenced work at the new Foss Park Hospital in September 2018, and it’s fair to say the site has come a long way in the past year!
Having already delivered 1,500m of service trenches, 5,500m of drainage and a 165m3 attenuation tank at this state-of-the-art facility in York, we’re now in the process of installing finishing touches such as steel edgings, resin-bound and rolled whinstone gravel, textured paving slabs and extensive street furniture.
Work at Foss Park Hospital is expected to last until April 2020, when our client Wates will hand the 72-bed mental health facility over to Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.
Slide along the pictures above to see how work is progressing on-site.
For more information, take a look at our case study here.
Taking into consideration site documentation, on-site inspections and environmental standards throughout the month, all of our sites excelled to achieve an overall landmark score of 94.77%. We are also pleased to report a spectacular 1.7 AFR rate for the month of September.
This milestone is a result of investment in new staff, new innovative equipment (such as GPS-excavators and remote-control trench rollers) and consultations with site managers on how we can improve health and safety company-wide.
Safety Advisor Wanda Curtis commented: ‘The site teams are all working hard to maintain these good levels of compliance with Health & Safety while conducting their work, and it is a pleasure to see this is reflected in the achieved scores for the month of September. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our site managers, supervisors and operatives for their continued contribution to achieving these great results. Keep up the good work!’
In order to ensure health and safety remains a priority on-site, all of our live sites are assessed monthly and rated individually on their performance with a target of 90%.
Left to Right: Paul McGarry, Oliver Downes, Emma Brier, Niall Gaughan
Paul McGarry has accepted a leading roles as Contract Manager, and Lee Wright and Oliver Downes have also joined us as Site Managers. Based in our offices, Emma Brier has taken the new position of Procurement Administrator.
We have also demonstrated a strong commitment to investing in the youth of West Yorkshire in appointing two new apprentices. Brendan O’Hara has joined the team as a High-Level Apprentice Engineer and Niall Gaughan has accepted an apprentice role as Trainee Quantity Surveyor. In addition to recruiting fresh-faced apprentices, we are also pleased to have offered permanent roles to existing apprentices Oliver Brown, Kian Hegarthy and Hayden Brook.
This dynamic growth comes as a result of winning multiple new contracts for highly esteemed clients such as Willmott Dixon and Caddick Construction across the Yorkshire region.
Managing Director, Michael Howard, commented: ‘We are over the moon to welcome such skilled and enthusiastic employees into a variety of roles across the business. I am confident that this worthwhile investment will not only ensure we continue to deliver quality products to our clients across the region but will also complement our ambitious growth strategy which should hopefully see us surpass £30m turnover in the next financial year.”
Last Friday, we laid the first area of surfacing around Beechcliffe Roundabout in just a single day. The decision was taken to complete the works within one 12-hour period in order to minimize the period of traffic congestion caused by the widened safe working zone required for our operatives and equipment. Additional newsletters were published to over 900 subscribers in advance of the work to warn road users of the predicted increased congestion.
This tight deadline required a lot of detailed planning and coordination, but it is a challenge that was carried out successfully and safely, with traffic around the roundabout returning to normal ahead of the weekend.
We commenced the works to widen Hard Ings Road and install an additional lane at Beechcliffe Roundabout in May this year. The resultant reduced congestion along this main thoroughfare between Keighley to Bradford is set to increase investment opportunities in the area and increase economic growth.
The scheme for the Hard Ings Road is being developed by the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (CBMDC). The scheme has received investment through the West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund as part of the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Growth Deal – a £1 billion package of government investment to accelerate growth and create jobs across Leeds City Region.
We’ve four new additions to our growing plant resources! Due to recent awards of several new contracts for our groundworks teams, we are investing in new plant to prepare for what will be a busy few months at Howard Civil Engineering.
The RTX-SC3 trench roller is ideal for the compaction of excavations and sub bases of foundations and roads, and uses a sensor to measure the vibration level and determine how much soil has been compacted.
To ensure the maximum safety of our operatives, this remote-control trench roller also offers an infrared signal with line-of-sight control and is disabled as soon as the line of sight between the operator and the device is lost.
This investment in smart technology comes off the back of our ongoing commitment to improve health and safety for our onsite operatives and the surrounding local communities. Recent equipment includes the PressToCheck RPE and PPE which considers our operatives’ religious and cultural beliefs.
We’ll be rolling out this new equipment to various sites over the coming weeks – if you spot one in action, take a picture and let us know!
TRUST US TO DELIVER YOUR PROJECT ON TIME AND ON BUDGET