A Big Machine

A couple of days ago a very large box arrived which took our engineers several hours to open... Well actually that's not quite it, but we did take delivery of this, the first of the new generation Schwing S 52 SX mobile pumps which, had it come in a box (I'm not sure how it would have been transported) would certainly have taken a while to free from it's packaging.

One thing is certain though, and that's that this is indeed a big machine. Being able to pump concrete 52 metres into the air obviously requires a big machine. If you think about it 52 metres is actually a long way. It is more than the length of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

This machine is on it's way to Reilly Concrete Pumping based in St Helens, (between Liverpool and Manchester) and I hope to head up that way and get some shots of it once it's in action when I can.

Small Certification

Over a few months around the end of 2014 / start of 2015 we gained four National Small Series approval documents from the United Kingdom Vehicle Approval Authority, the VCA. This means that Schwing Stetter (UK) is:

"able to prepare for vehicles built in full conformity with this approval to be presented for registration."

The four certificates were for DAF, Mercedes, Scania and Volvo and mean we can mount mixer drums on these chassis and do all the bodywork with the national authority confident that the work will be carried out to the standard required for registration.

The actual certificates are three pages long and we decided it would be nice to display these, together with the vehicles they refer to. These four displays, shown above, now sit proudly in our board room.

All Lined Up

A long-standing client of ours, Easymix Concrete recently decided to all get up very early one Sunday morning and get some promotional shots of their fleet including Volumetric Truck Mixers and Concrete Pumps. They also made a short video of the exercise (above) which really looks rather good. It turns out that their marketing guy, Ben, also has a background in video production.

It was a big event for the company. They gathered all of their vehicles very early on the Sunday morning and drove across their hometown of Croydon. The whole company came out in force to show off the growth of the business over the last 10 years, and friends and family joined them in the yard for lunch afterwards.

As Ben told me, as well as general promotion, the reason for this was that seeing as their fleet has grown in size so much, they were curious to see how it would look altogether on the road. What is particularly heart warming is that every concrete pump in the fleet is a Schwing. For the record that's four Truck Mounted Static Pumps and one S20 Mobile. Here they are on the right (taking pride of place...)

It's great to see our customers doing well and reaching such important milestones.

Fulfilling A Tall Order

Over in Saudi Arabia, what will be the tallest building in the world is currently under construction. Kingdom Tower in Jeddah will be over 1km high which is taller than four Canary Wharf towers standing on top of each other. It will house over half a million square metres of floor space across 240 floors. At 120m down, the foundations go deep enough to bury the London Eye or just leave the rooves of the three Barbican residential towers visible.

If you have already guessed that Schwing Stetter will be playing a major role in this development you would be absolutely correct. Indeed Schwing Stetter construction equipment and expertise is being used across the board.

To avoid long drives and unpredictable delays in the concrete supply, the concrete is being provided by two on-site Stetter HN 3.0 Batching Plants. This is being pumped through 3,750 meters of pipeline by four Schwing SP 8800 D stationary pumps and placed by five Schwing Separate Placing Booms (3 SPB 35 and 2 SPB 30s). There are also four Schwing S42SX, truck-mounted concrete pumps.

Pumping concrete to these heights means that equipment will be working at pressures significantly above 200 bar. Every part of the pumping equipment, delivery line and fastening equipment will need to be reliable and durable so as to handle this pressure with high output volumes for the long period of time it will take to complete this project. This is when it's good to know about Schwing Stetter's reputation for reliability.

Given that a Schwing pump holds the record for the highest ever vertical pumping distance, it is perhaps not surprising that Schwing Stetter was asked to provide equipment and expertise for this work. For more details please see the full news story on our website.

Everyone Happy

Leading concrete frame specialists MPB Structures have just taken delivery of four new Schwing Concrete Pumps. MPB have been in the industry since 1987 but have only recently been a Schwing Stetter client, having previously sourced their concrete pumps elsewhere.

Having purchased a Schwing S36X late in 2014 and received it in early January 2015, they were so happy with the equipment and level of service from Schwing Stetter (UK) Ltd, that they placed further orders for a Schwing SP1800D tier 4i, 2 more S36X’s and an SP2800D. All have now been delivered.

Everyone here works very hard to ensure our customers get the best possible service and equipment and it is very fulfilling when this is recognised by our customers through further orders.We are extremely happy to be working with MPB who have invested in a broad range of Schwing Stetter technology and we hope this is the beginning of a long lasting partnership.

A Good Investment

Yesterday we were officially recognised as an Investors In People accredited company.

According to the Investors in People website: "Investors in People signals an organisation that puts people first." 

What this means for us is the recognition that Schwing Stetter (UK) values its employees and wants to see each member of the team reach their potential. It was also an opportunity to tighten up and formalise some of our internal processes.

The whole process began last year with an initial induction and staff interviews. Then with expert guidance we went through the process necessary to achieve the core standard. In many ways this just meant formalising things we were already doing. The very low staff turnaround rate already showed that people here feel valued and generally 'invested in'.

Some of the things that needed to be evident were staff:

• being aware of their management line
• feeling happy to contribute ideas
• having the opportunity to progress in their career
• having the opportunity to receive training
• understanding where the company is going
• having opportunities to discuss targets, achievements, shortcomings and possible solutions
• not turning up each day just feeling like a number

Demonstrating all of these and other things has taken a short while but it has certainly been worthwhile for the company. It is also good news for our clients who can see that our staff care about the company, the products and service they are offering and the clients who benefit from them in the end.

You can see this and our other accreditations on the accreditations and memberships page of our website.

Why Pump Concrete?

The continuing refurbishment of the offices continues to yield items of interest. A few months ago we filled up a bunch of boxes with 'inessential general office stuff' (for want of a better phrase) and packed them away in storage. We recently brought them back and had a bit of a sort through, unearthing a not insubstantial collection of corporate videos.

Not wanting to lose these historical, if not interesting corporate records, we thought we'd transfer them to DVD.

The first of these, which can be seen above, is 'Why Pump Concrete', a 1990s 10 minute justification of using concrete pumps for building projects. All the concepts still apply today, but what is interesting is that the advantages of pumping concrete needed to be pointed out, indicating they were not so self evident back then as they would seem today.

The collection of videos contains a fairly wide scope of material including some interesting short documentaries about tunnel building, assembling a Stetter Compact Batching Plant, a 'catwalk' parade of Schwing Pumps in front of a cheering crowd and how to service a flat gate valve, right through to one which started with a promising soundtrack but soon became a not-so-riveting 15 minutes showing a chap shotcreting a wall.

Most if not all of these will make their way onto our dedicated YouTube channel so feel free to subscribe if all of this sends you into shivers of anticipation...

The promised Utiform video is still in post production (these things do take a short while) but should be ready in the not too distant future. (Keep watching this space...)

Boom's Eye View

Rob from R Pomphrett Pumping very kindly sent me some images recently including this spectacular shot from the top of his Schwing S24X boom.

He was using the pump to pour the footings for his own home extension in September last year and had a mate helping him out who had brought a GoPro camera with him. So while they had the opportunity they gaffa-taped the camera to the end hose, set it to take a shot every 30 seconds and extended the boom fully upwards.

They ended up with numerous good shots - this was about the best one. (Click on the image for an even bigger version.) What a great picture!