Case Study

Automotive - Swindon

Date Completed: Feb 2010

As a consultancy MechTek are often asked to design and engineer support or access steelwork structures for clients, both for internal and external usage. This contract was for a heavy internal support structure to be located inside a leading automotive plant.

The site belonged to an international automotive manufacturer and the project involved the installation of 3 heavy duty girders and floor access around them to support robotic machinery arms. These arms were required to load and unload presses for the automotive production lines.

Most of the structure involved the design, manufacture and installation of chequer plate flooring to provide access above a girder pit area approx seven meters deep. In total around 90 tonnes of steelwork were installed, with the girders on average weighing around 9 tonnes each. A lot of the chequer plate flooring provided both access to the robotics area and doubled up neatly to cover up the electrical service pit installations below. The finished laid down flooring was shot blasted, primed and top coated on specification.

MechTek complied with the high safety standards on-site required and produced all risk assessments and method statements. Additional 14mm air manifold pipework for the press was produced on-site. Coded welding was undertaken, successfully MPI tested and certified.

Project Engineer Tony Cook recalled "The job had to progress in stages, in conjunction with the building of the press. The challenge of getting the girders in place was made easier than normal due to the large permanent overhead crane already on-site. I feel proud that we done a first class job and gave our client the quality of work they were looking for."