Civils works at the new Abbotshaugh Gas Peaking Plant

In early 2022 Ready Construction were awarded the contract for the civils works at the new Abbotshaugh Gas Peaking plant in Falkirk from G2 Energy. the works included in this contract were the breakout of the existing concrete surface and reduced dig of the site, the installation of palisade fencing around the site perimeter, the installation of the new concrete foundations for the storage and transformer units to be landed upon, the ducting and cable routes connecting the units, the services trench for the new gas feed into site, the road and footpath construction and finally the dress off and finishing works to site.

The works faced challenges straight away as the new site lay directly beneath the 132,000V wires from the substation pylon located in the land directly beside the site so careful planning and preparation had to go into all works to ensure that machines were fitted with restrictors and unable to work within a certain distance of the wires, laydown areas had to be placed in areas that wouldn’t cause issues with loading and unloading and similarly with concrete pump / crane pad setup to allow for the concrete bases to be poured and the units lifted into position once the bases had cured. These works were all coordinated with the help of the local SPEN Engineer, the HSE GS6 document & the Energy Network Association’s Technical Document 43/8 to allow for exclusion zones to be set up in the correct locations and for RAMS to be created to ensure everyone on site was briefed and understood the safe methods of working along with the risks involved.

The site was stripped and cleared before the concrete bases were installed. The bases were an integral part of the site as they had to be poured in not only precise locations to ensure the minimum distances between the storage units was achieved in what was already a tightly packed site but also to ensure that the top hat sections of the founds were all poured to an accurate height allowing the units to be landed onto them to sit level with the required depth for cabling and services underneath. To ensure this the site engineer checked all shuttering and formwork as well as steel cage and starter bar locations before any pouring took place.

Once the concrete bases were in place and allowed to cure the cable & service routes were pulled through the site. As the storage units were fed by gas a new gas feed had to be brought to site from the existing main on the road outside the site. To allow for this to happen road closures and traffic management had to be setup to allow for the works to be carried out safely and to maintain access to the local businesses while minimising disruption to the general public. The local council representatives as well as the local business owners were consulted and agreements put in place before the works commenced to ensure all parties were happy with the arrangements. The service trench was then dug as per the agreements with the SGN install team and then backfilled accordingly once the new main was installed, tested and signed off.

Once the storage units were landed in place the finishing works were carried out around the site dressing off and creating the road in for future works and maintenance and installing the palisade fence with both pedestrian and vehicle gates around the site perimeter before handing the site back to the client.

All works were carried out without accident and incident in what was at times a tricky but mostly straight forward project for the team involved.