Kier airlifts storage tank in Launceston

The construction and property development company Kier have recently utilised air lifting in a phosphorus removal scheme which involved a 25sp m chemical storage tank being transported more than 280 miles from Stockport to Launceston by road and then airlifted into place from a site nearby.

The chemical storage tank needed to be disposed of in a suitable facility, which was located at St Leonards Sewage Treatment Works in Launceston, Cornwall, but the tank itself was too wide to fit down the narrow Cornish roads and was thus too narrow to be transported to its final destination.

However, instead of wasting time and money disassembling the tank to be transported, and later then reassembled on site in Launceston, Kier decided to use an airlift to transport the cumbersome tank from the Launceston Rugby Club to the treatment facility nearby.

The helicopter, which carried out the transportation scheme, was flown in from Oxford while the scheme itself forms part of Kier’s work within the South West Water Framework which supports Mechanical, Electrical, Instrumentation, Control, Automation (MEICA) work on clean and waste water assets across the region over the next three years

The Project Engineer for Kier Utilities, Ben Irwin stated: “Our works at St Leonards provided us with some interesting logistical challenges that we needed to think outside of the box to fix.

“Transporting the tank by road was not only impractical logistically, it would have added additional cost and time to the project as our team would have been required to reassemble the tank onsite.

“We worked extensively to ensure that we utilised the best solution possible that ensured we were able to complete the job, on time and without additional cost and we are pleased with how the airlift worked out.”

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