After the brain ache sessions of the last two months blogging on thermal effects in struts, I thought it better to provide perhaps a gentler themed blog commensurate with the holiday season being in full swing. So, what have we been up to here recently in the technical team?
Well, we are busy planning our presence at the forthcoming Basement and Underground Conference exhibition in October. This is a key event for us and we are planning a highly informative exhibition stand. Please come along and talk to us if this is of interest to you.
Despite the noticeable summer holiday lull in enquiries, it has nevertheless been nonstop within the technical department at the minute with several live projects from Scotland to London all coming to fruition at once. A selection of these projects include:-
- Glasgow School of Arts
- Merchant Square, London
- Crossrail at Plumstead and North Woolwich
All three jobs above used our newly created MP500 strut which if you are a reader of NCE or on our mailing list you may have seen something like the image below:-
The MP500 is the largest capacity proprietary strut currently available, in the UK and perhaps the world! It is sometimes referred to as the “hybrid” strut as it combines the benefits of hydraulic actuation (adjustment and pre-stress) with the security of mechanical locking screws.
We have recently introduced and end swivel unit (see photo and yes it is big!) capable of incorporating our on-board load monitoring system. If you want to find out more just drop us an email on technical@vpplc.com or visit the technical area of our website. By the way, the good looking guy in the photo is Steve, one of our senior engineers.
It has been particularly interesting to note some of the results from our on board load monitoring on these jobs particularly on a couple very long (>45m) clear spanning struts we have on hire at the Merchant Square site in London. During a recent hot spell, where daytime temperatures exceeded 30° on several consecutive days, the effects of thermal loads on the rigid MP500 struts was quite marked and certainly back up the theory expounded in the blogs over the last couple of months on thermal loading. I aim to present the results in a later blog in the Autumn to conclude the trilogy on this subject.
We have recently employed Helen Aird as a Technical Sales Engineer to cover the North of the UK. One of Helen’s key tasks is to liaise with key industry figures such as yourselves, keeping you up to date with what we can offer in terms of products and services. So if you find Helen on the other end of the line please give her a sympathetic hearing!
To conclude for this month with another plug for the Basements and Underground Conference; I am pleased to say we are the leading sponsors of the event, and with that comes great opportunity for us to showcase what we have to offer. We will have some new exciting things to show you but in order to see it you will have to come find us in the Conference Centre. Tickets are still available from the B&U website and the event is held on the 3rd October 2012.
That’s all for now until September at least!
Tony.
Comments
Blog post currently doesn't have any comments.