Meet our Experts: Rob Law, Head of Temporary Works.
Supply Chain Engagement and Collaboration.
(video transcript)

What are your views on the benefits of engineering teams being approached at an earlier stage of a construction scheme?

It allows us to spend more time planning, it allows us to spend more time looking at how we’re going to go about doing the work, so getting in earlier on, you can make much bigger savings and methodology changes than being approached later.

How does your team approach the early stages of a project and what are the key considerations in Pre-Construction planning?

When developing temporary works schemes for a basement, what we see is that there’s a real focus on getting the kit in and getting to the bottom of the dig as quickly as possible, but not enough energy is often given to looking at how the structure is going to come back out of the ground afterwards and how that interacts with your temporary works.

How the contractors want to go about building it, they need to think about where they’re going to build up to where their joints are going to go, they want to know about clashes for the things coming out the ground again.

Structures can be buildable, often there’s quite a lot of leeway of where you can put your temporary works in and you can still build a structure, but if you’re planning that in advance, you can make a contractor’s life much easier and the guys on site have a much easier time building what’s coming out ground.

Why is early engagement becoming more important for customers and larger project schemes?

It’s important to realise that early engagement doesn’t just mean starting the same work a bit earlier. Involving our team early allows us to provide our own insights and apply our own expertise; it’s more than just temporary propping. It’s the methodologies and approaches to construction it’s combining all the full offerings that Conquip can give to a construction site with earth works, construction machinery and bespoke manufacturing working alongside our temporary propping.

Something that’s important to me is challenging the assumptions on how we do things. Many projects start with an idea of how something should be done, how we’re going to build something. That idea may be developed as a project moves along at some point it becomes quite fixed, and it gets passed on from person to person, and people stop questioning how should we do it. They start going well, this is how everyone said it’s going to be done.

A fresh pair of eyes to challenge that and say actually, there is another way of doing this and here’s what it looks like, that’s the real benefit of getting them at early engagement.

What specific methodologies does your team employ when working on project designs, and how do these methodologies contribute to the project’s success?

The starting point for all designs they must be safe and they must be fit for purpose, that’s the absolute minimum. We then start asking what are the project’s key objectives, what does a successful projects look like to our clients, how can we then incorporate principles of buildability, sustainability and efficiency to provide a better design that still meets their objectives. Being a supplier as well, once we start working with project teams and contractors, what we also find is that there are usually other areas, either design or equipment related, where we can add value to a project and provide an even greater benefit.

What digital tools do your team use in the pre-construction phase of a project?

All our basement schemes are modelled within a BIM environment, right from tender. It’s incorporating any existing structures, our temporary works and then the new structures being built. This allows us to discuss concepts with all the complexities in there, and we can do it interactively with our clients in meetings. We can go in live and walk around the model and see what’s going to be there and how you might go around building. It allows us to detect clashes and thoroughly assess the installation and removal process.

The same BIM technology we use for that then feeds right through the design process right down to picking equipment from The yards so we’re ensuring the parts we use in our design are the exact parts that we show on our drawings and that will feeds right through to the yard so they’re, picking the right equipment off the shelves to be delivered to sites. Once we have the design information captured within that BIM environment, we’re able to present it in different ways that suit the people who need to be using it.

What does value engineering mean to our customers?

Now for our clients, when we look at a scheme and we value engineer it, what that means for them is there’s a cost saving, not hiring the equipment, there’s a program saving where they don’t need to spend time putting that equipment in and also they’re not having to do storage manual handling lifting it around and as long as the design’s still safe there’s no reason not to go and push those ideas.