Soil Engineering, the specialist site investigation and grouting division of VINCI Construction UK Ltd, is to be transferred in April to the ownership of VINCI’s Soletanche Freyssinet UK geotechnical arm; Bachy Soletanche Group. The services provided by Soil Engineering complement the specialist civil engineering and foundation activities of the Bachy Soletanche Group Bachy Soletanche is [...]
By Chris Merridew, Director, Bachy Soletanche
Getting specialist contractors in early doors
September 30, 2011
With the continuing global financial difficulties and constraints on government spending there has been and will continue to be a gradual reduction in road schemes over the coming years. However this has been matched by a welcome increase in rail and light rail projects. We are also seeing a geographical change in workload towards the South. With the continuing drive for further savings on both road and rail schemes, better delivery could be achieved through Early Contractor Involvement being extended to specialist contractors.
- Due to the rigorous design approvals process required for major road and rail schemes, often involving a number of stakeholders prior to appointment of specialist contractors, value-engineering opportunities are limited
- Further gains could be delivered if a vehicle could be found to allow Early Specialist Contractor Involvement
- This would obviously need to avoid reducing any commercial advantages for the client and main contractor in competitive bidding, however it would allow greater opportunity for innovations that can be offered by the specialist contractors
- This would also encourage new investment in innovation because of certainty of award and the longer lead in times ultimately leading to delivering sustainable, environmental, programme and/or cost benefits to the project
- Care of our environment and the management of our natural resources has and will continue to be a great concern to us all
- It is only by assessing the impact in the early stages of road and rail schemes, that we, as specialist contractors, can play our part in reducing any impact through innovation
- By using our carbon calculator, for example, we can compare the various geotechnical solutions to demonstrate the sustainable benefits of these long-term schemes
- However, these decisions need to be taken early on so that they can be fed into the design process