Blast From The Past

This week we are moving the server to a new home in what was the stationary cupboard (as part of the downstairs refurbishment). So last week we were cleaning out the old stationary cupboard and as you can imagine, there were things hidden away in there that hadn't been seen for ages.

One such little nugget was this pile of promotional ash-trays, back from a time when handing out promotional ash-trays was an entirely acceptable thing to do. They came emblazoned with out telex number(!) and our phone number beginning with the area code 01. I'm sure this had become 0108 by the late 1990's and I think there was an 081 version since around 1990. That makes these at least 25 years old!

As expected this was from the time when we were still Burlington Engineers and wouldn't become part of the Schwing Stetter group for at least another 16 years (see more about our company history here).

Of course we were still working with Schwing pumps back then. In fact we had been doing so since before 1962 when we were made the UK and Irish distributor for Schwing GbmH. Compared to that length of experience, this ash tray is positively modern!

Hope For A Schwing From Above

Andrew at Camfauds Concrete Pumps recently alerted me to a story in The Construction Index about the building of a wind farm in Scotland, featuring a really good aerial shot (thanks to 360 Aerial Imagery Ltd) of the works. What was interesting to us was the two Schwing concrete pumps also in shot doing the work.

Scott, our chief engineer here was able to look at the picture and straight away identify them as a Schwing S34X and a Schwing S39SX. He even knew who they belonged to.

The actual story was about Hope Construction Materials having supplied the concrete for the foundations for 19 new wind turbines at Aikengall II Community Wind Farm, East of Edinburgh. The turbines, set to be commissioned in August 2016 will stand 145 metres tall and apparently be amongst the tallest in the UK and will collectivly generate 68.4 Megawatts of locally sourced energy, supplying more than 42,000 homes.

Hope provided almost 12,000 cubic metres of ready-mixed concrete from their Dunbar and Dalkieth ready mix plants for the project being built by renewable energy specialists Community Windpower Ltd.

It would seem Schwing Stetter was helping out too, pumping and placing the concrete.

Beer and Browse

The London Build 2015 Expo took place at the end of last week and I thought it might be worth a quick visit. So I headed over to the old Millennium Dome on Friday afternoon to see what the great and the good of the UK Construction industry had to offer.

I was interesting to wander round and see the various businesses touting their wares and services but I have to say the show itself scored a real winner with the offer of free beer and wine!

The overall show was not as big as I had expected it to be and there were no exhibits dedicated to concrete pumping - I suppose it is rather a niche market, even within the confines of the construction industry.

However it was a pleasant way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Shut It

As part of our drive to modernise the workshop, yesterday saw the replacement of the decrepit old roller shutter with a brand spanking new one.

The battered old manual door (now a pile of scrap - pictured left) which took up extra space poking horizontally into the workshop when open has now been replaced with an all singing, all dancing (well all rolling anyway) new version (pictured right), bring us rolling into the 21st century, at least as far as entrance to the workshop is concerned.

All the better to present new concrete pumps and mixer trucks to the world from...


Update (12th June)

I had a message from a reader yesterday posing what I suppose is a fair question. He asks:

"does the new roller door in the workshop have anything to do with the tricks with the 36X a few weeks ago?"

He was of course referring to the demonstration of the flexibility of the boom on a Schwing S36X as shown here.

The answer is of course no! Our engineers are quite adept at manoeuvring large pieces of equipment about and pump booms is one of their specialities - as you would expect!

The old roller door has needed to be replaced for quite a while. It was costing money in maintenance and repairs and it's time had come.