Following flooding in December 2015, Story designed and installed flood alleviation measures at the McVities factory in Carlisle.
In July 2016 Pladis Global (McVities’ parent company) approached Story with an opportunity to work with them in a collaborative manner to install flood alleviation measures to their Carlisle factory which had been forced to close for a three-month period as a result of the flooding from Storm Desmond in December 2015.
The investment from Pladis was to safeguard the premises for the long-term protected hundreds of locals of jobs and manufacturing capability.
Retaining wall modelled at the height expected of a
200-year storm
Officially flood resilient
as of 1st December 2016
The overarching concept of the project was to prevent the ingress of flood water onto the factory campus. The main scope of works included:
To allow the Design consultants to concentrate and focus on releasing construction status information we divided the scheme into wall types and requested a release of information aligned to the construction critical path.
By allowing the designer to concentrate on producing packaged construction status information in a practical and methodical manner, commercial teams could confirm budgets against a master cost plan and the project progressed in a controlled manner. Stage one defences were completed within the timescales and insurance for the premises was secured.
The Story proactive and open book approach gave the customer the confidence that the scheme was affordable and as a consequence the works were instructed and progressed in advance of a full and complete design.
This meant that works could commence on critical activities in advance of cost certainty and allowed the consulting engineers to concentrate on getting construction status information split into the individual packages and not on getting tender status information prepared for the whole.
Story then constructed the works in a packaged and logical sequence and started works on site significantly sooner than would have been possible under a traditional procurement strategy.
I’m delighted to report the site was secured before our very challenging target (that a lot of people thought was impossible), thus ensuring the future protection of the site. This could not have been achieved without the close working relationship we formed with Story Contracting. A great example of collaborative team working.
Network Rail
VolkerRail/Story joint venture were tasked with the £80m project as part of a £137m investment that saw the undertaking of extensive enhancement works to remove several bottlenecks along the route to improve reliability, increase passenger services and aid in freight movements.