News and blogs

Sports surfaces need to be made to the highest possible standard for the elite athletes who utilise them. To guarantee this, there is a delicate balancing act to be found in their creation to ensure the ground itself isn’t damaged by heavy machinery and construction vehicles.

While the demand for new housing in the UK has never been greater, it is estimated that three million too few homes have been built in the past ten years. Meanwhile, the government’s shake-up of planning laws in order to “build, build, build” should make it easier “to build better homes where people want to live”.

It’s common practice for manhole covers to be installed in the early stages of a housing development, well before the final tarmac is laid. This either means that the manhole cover is installed proud of the binding layer and is therefore susceptible to construction traffic damage, or if installed level with the binding layer, must be entirely dug out and effectively installed again. ClickLift completely eliminates this.

Critical industry standards have recently been updated at a time where many have had their attention dominated by COVID-19. Our Technical Manager Barry Turner, former chairman of the BSi BS EN 124 Standard committee, shares an overview of both BS 7903: 2020 and CD 534, providing a simple way to get up to speed on these recent and crucial changes.

Access to underground chamber systems is usually achieved by lifting manhole cover lids with lifting keys inserted into the keyways, but what if the keyways are blocked?

Failure to install compliant highway ironwork could lead to costly rework and in the worst-case scenario, dangerous conditions on busy carriageways. Barry Turner, Technical Manager at Wrekin Products and chairman of the BSI BS EN 124 Standard committee, discusses the dangers of assuming highway ironwork meets HA104/09 and the best practice to guarantee that it does.  

Through recommending and supplying Biaxial E’GRID at a sewage treatment works, Wrekin Products helped reduce the resources required; not only cutting costs, but also minimising the contractor’s construction programme and overheads.

Residents being kept awake by rattling manhole covers outside their properties in Sunderland is becoming a thing of the past after the City Council took expert advice on an issue which generates reports nationwide.

The importance of ensuring highway ironwork is “up to standard” cannot be underestimated.