Providing the space to maintain maintenance
March 1st 2008 The Prestwick operation of GE
Caledonian will be the sole
maintenance and repair
centre for the new GEnx engine for
the Boeing 787.
With the facility in Ayrshire
already overhauling and repairing
aero engines and component
parts, an extension to the
infrastructure was required to keep
the company as a leading
aerospace maintenance and
overhaul hub.
An immediate requirement was
for a modern, clean warehouse to
store engine tooling to allow the
transition from the current product
line to the new engine type over a
three-year period.
CG Flooring Systems has
completed its largest and most
demanding project. It has upgraded
the 6000m2 floor of an iron
foundry to narrow-aisle warehouse
standard for racking to 12m high
in less than six weeks.
As part of a re-organisation of
its operations, Baxi Group, maker
of space and water heating
products, decided to close its cast
iron foundry near Preston and use
most of the building as its central
warehouse.
A floor survey highlighted
several challenges, including
seven large pits up to 3m deep,
vertical steel columns, horizontal Ibeams
and steel bolts within the
floor, damaged expansion joints,
and low and high areas throughout
the building.
All columns, beams and bolts
were removed, and 150 linear
metres of expansion joints were
repaired. Pits were filled with
consolidated hardcore, and then
covered with a waterproof
membrane and mesh
reinforcement. The edges were
cut to provide clean, vertical
surfaces, and then 1000 600mm
long dowel bars were inserted in
the walls to provide a load transfer
mechanism. Almost 100m3 of
concrete was poured in 5h to
bring the pits to floor level.
Elsewhere, a base screed was
used to build low areas to floor
level; high areas were scabbled to
lower them. The entire area was
then shot-blasted. The surface, a
nominal 10mm-thick pumped
cementitious screed, was
completed in five days. Once
cured, floor joints were transferred
through and sealed to reduce the
potential for cracking. Finally, a
clear acrylic seal was applied to
the entire surface.
Waste unit
IP65 luminaire
Comfort zone
Stertil Stokvis offers a proactive,
well-planned maintenance regime
for loading bays that is designed
specifically around a company's
operations.
Such a regime is said to guard
against breakdowns and keep the
employer abreast of the latest
regulations and health and safety
requirements.
Appreciating that breakdowns
don't always occur between 9 and
5, Monday to Friday, the company
says it will provide a fast response
when it is needed. Its engineers
carry an extensive range of parts to
enable them to carry out 'first time
repairs'. If a company is busy at set
times of the day, Stertil Stokvis will
work outside those times to ensure
minimum disruption.
Rubb Buildings met the
challenge by providing a BVI-type
building of 12 by 48m with 6m high
side walls.
Access to the
building is via an
electric 5 by 5m roller
shutter door. Due to
tight site restraints,
GE Caledonian
required a change in
the building size,
reducing the span
from 13.5 to 12m.
Rubb was able to
accommodate this
change to the
construction late in
the project due to the flexibility of
the design and its manufacturing
capability. More articles from Rubb Buildings Limited: | 
