Marr Contracting has returned to the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project having being awarded the contract to deliver specialised heavy lift crane services for the construction of the unit 2 turbine hall.
Having previously worked with Balfour Beatty on the Hinkley Point C tunnelling and marine project, Marr was approached by EDF to develop a lifting strategy that would deliver improvements to the planned construction strategy.
Joint venture partners Bouygues Travaux Publics and Laing O’Rourke (BYLOR) – who were contracted to deliver the main civil engineering and construction work on the project in 2017 – have selected Marr to provide crane services at the unit 2 turbine hall.
Addressing the primary challenge of how to accelerate construction on what is an incredibly complex and congested site, Marr’s simple approach – using a single M2480D heavy lift luffing crane installed centrally within the unit 2 turbine hall – provides the heavy lifting capacity, reach and coverage required while at the same time improving productivity and reducing site congestion.
With the ability to lift in main trusses weighing up to 122 tonnes and the ability to reach all building steelwork from a single position, the simplified craneage solution reduced interfaces with the wider project and the need for multi-location rig and de-rigging activities that would have been required using alternative methods.
“Putting the M2480D inside the building means there’s far less disruption to other teams in the vicinity. We previously had to work around the movements of the crawler cranes and during a series of workshops, we identified this solution as one of the biggest things we could improve on, learning from our experiences on unit 1,” said Hinkley Point C project manager, David Wylie.
The M2480D can be used as a high-volume general construction crane. With the ability to operate in wind speeds of up to 20 m per second, the M2480D’s significantly higher availability will also address the challenges that comes with the constant risk of high winds due to Hinkley Point C’s coastal location.
The M2480D is expected to be onsite until 2026.
