The work
Waste and energy facilities put extreme demands on floors and hardstandings, with constant heavy traffic, point loads and abrasion, often on live operational sites.
We engineer the build-up and finish for the duty, and phase works around continuous operations. We delivered heavy-duty work for Veolia at Southampton.
Proof, not promises. This is a sector where a floor that looks fine at handover can be gone in two years, so the specification has to be right before the first pour.
Most sectors worry about cracking. This one worries about the floor wearing away.
Waste is tipped directly onto concrete from collection vehicles and then pushed and scraped by loading shovels. That combination is brutally abrasive, and the Concrete Society has recorded wear rates in excess of 25mm in a single year on some domestic waste transfer floors. A slab losing 25mm a year is a slab with a very short life.
Wear is not even, either. It concentrates in the tipping area, in the wheel paths and in the pushing zones where the shovel works against the floor. A floor designed to an average duty will fail in those places first, which is why the specification has to follow the operation rather than the floor plate.
Three levers control it: the concrete itself, the surface, and the joints. A high-strength, low-permeability mix with a hard, well-graded aggregate resists wear better than a general slab. The surface finish and curing decide how dense the top few millimetres are, which is where abrasion actually happens. And joints, particularly arrised or unarmoured joints in a shovel run, are where the damage starts and spreads.
What is the actual operation on that floor? Tipping, pushing, storage, vehicle circulation and standing all wear differently. Zone the floor by duty and specify each zone for what happens on it.
What plant works the floor? Loading shovel size and how the operator uses the bucket against the slab is the single biggest wear factor, and it varies enormously between sites.
New slab or overlay? Existing facilities usually want a repair or an overlay rather than a new slab, and the two are completely different projects. An overlay depends entirely on the condition and preparation of what is underneath.
How much of the facility can close, and for how long? Waste facilities have contractual tonnage obligations. Closing a tipping hall is not a small ask, and the phasing usually drives the whole method.
What about push walls and edges? The slab-to-wall junction takes heavy impact. Detailing it properly is what stops the failure spreading in from the edges.
Energy facilities share the abrasion problem in the bunker and tipping areas, and add their own.
Bunker floors and tipping halls see the same shovel and vehicle duty as a transfer station. Fuel handling and storage areas see abrasion plus, in biomass, a different chemical environment. Turbine halls, plant rooms and equipment bases need tight setting out to supplier drawings rather than heavy duty. External areas and hardstandings take continuous HGV movement.
One facility can therefore need three or four different floor specifications, and pricing it as a single rate is how projects go wrong.
Concrete hardstanding for external yards, tipping areas, service roads and lorry parks, engineered for HGV loads and laid to falls for drainage.
Power floated floors for internal slabs where a dense, hard-wearing surface is the requirement.
Large pour and laser screed where the area is big and the programme is short.
Plant and equipment bases set out and poured to tight tolerances against supplier drawings.
Our own operatives, our own power floats, our own concrete line pumps, and two track-mounted placing booms which are two of only three in the country.
Placing is usually the hard part on these sites. A live waste facility has vehicles moving constantly, limited standing space, and areas that cannot be reached by a ready-mix truck without shutting down a route the site needs. Our own pumps and booms put the concrete where it needs to go without closing the operation down around it. See concrete pumping.
Self-delivery also means the finish is ours. On a floor where the top few millimetres decide whether it lasts two years or twenty, the finishing and curing are not something to hand to somebody else.
Constructionline Gold registered. Avetta and SSIP accredited. Member of the Nuclear Industry Association. We have delivered for Veolia and Tarmac among others.
On site
We plan the method, phasing and plant so work continues around us and the floor goes down right first time.
FAQs
Send us the drawings and the specification, and we'll tell you straight whether we can deliver it, and how.
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