What was the brief?

The client was using a road tanker, based at Colchester Water Recycling Centre, for the ferric dosing of waste water there. We were asked to move this tanker from Colchester and to reinstall and commission it at the Clacton Water Recycling Centre. Usually this would be a simple project, but with a bund that needed updating, and that wasn’t particularly portable, there was more to the job than met the eye.

How did you go about it?

The existing bund surrounding the road tanker in Colchester was a bit of a problem. It had been made from a pond liner and sand bags, so wasn’t really fit for purpose or big enough and it didn’t meet today’s regulations.

We crafted a new bund with steel beams onto which the existing road tanker could be mounted, and designed it to be lifted all together – both the bund and the tanker – by one crane.

We structurally designed and engineered the bund, then constructed it with the tanker already installed within it. Most importantly, the unit was then moved, all together, from our yard in Newbourne, Suffolk over to Clacton in Essex.

Once on site at the Water Recycling Centre, we connected the tanker with water and electricity supplies before filling it with the ferric dosing chemicals. These are necessary for solid settlement in the water recycling process, helping to increase and improve the extraction of sludges from the process.

What was innovative about this?

The key element in this project was manoeuvrability. Our new bund was created with lifting eyes to make it portable, for both present-day and future use. This also meant that the road tanker could be installed inside it before the move, along with the dosing pumps, the emergency shower and the potable water wash down.

Essentially, we have created a one-piece, moveable unit that can be deployed from site to site as needed.

What was the timeframe for this project?

At M&C we pride ourselves on making sure that our projects are completed on budget and on schedule. From the time of the order to the delivery date, this project took around six weeks to complete.

How many people were involved?

This was a real team effort and a total of ten people were involved in the project. The M&C project team included our design engineers, welder fabricators, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and site operatives.