K&S Site Services – SAICA Pack – Overhead Scaffold, Newport
Background
MTS Scaffolding were asked by K&S Site Services in January 2022 to tender for a very challenging scaffolding project at SAICA Pack’s manufacturing building at Newport Docks. SAICA Pack are an international corrugated packaging solutions group. At Newport Docks they produce hundreds of tonnes of corrugated cardboard and run a 16-hour day, 6 days a week operation to keep up with the high demand. The buildings at Alexandra Docks, Newport were originally built back in the 1870’s and although there have been many additions over the years, the buildings at SIACA Pack needed some desperate renovation works. K&S Site Services manage the site for SIACA and one of the many renovation items on the list was to replace the degrading glass skylights in both the reel stores building and the corrugator buildings with a much safer plastic option.
Challenges
Because the factory works on a 16-hour day shift pattern and all of the floor space is in constant use, we were challenged to build a scaffold to access all the skylights at 8m high, all the way across the 120m long, 18m wide reel stores building without any scaffold touching the ground! We also had to work around the staff working shifts while building the scaffold so could only work night and weekend shifts ourselves. As you can imagine, this was a huge feat both technically and operationally. We knew that both our commercial & build teams had to be extremely dedicated to be able to accomplish such a large, technical scaffold during unsociable hours.. but as always, challenge accepted!
Objectives
We worked together with TAD Scaffold Design and K&S Site Services to achieve a safe scaffold design that would work over the. Many obstacles in the building. The design was drawn using bridged 750mm alloy beams founded on the existing steel beam running down either side of the eaves of the building. The 6m long steel beams were box tied around the existing steel and then laced together to bridge the 18m span across the building. This all had to be completed on MEWPs , a combination of scissor lifts and cherry pickers. There were 2 sets of 750mm beams spaced every metre down the 120m long building.. that’s a LOT of beams! Working out the weight of the beams alone that’s nearly 30 tonnes of beams we fixed in just one building!! Once all the beams were in place, we then puncheon fixed the scaffold on to the beams and built 2 lifts on top of the beams so that the contractors could safely reach the skylights to replace them.
Results
Across both the Reel Stores building and the Corrugator Building totalling 240m x 36m, the project build duration was 16 weeks, only being able to work nights and weekends. The scaffold contract value for this project was £198,000. Completed on time and within budget.