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Scaf­fold In­nov­a­tion at Hinkley Point C | KAEFER UK & Ireland
Design­ing, build­ing, and in­stalling a sus­pen­ded scaf­fold for a cli­ent, when some said it could­n't be done: it's all part of the job when you're part of the team at KAEFER UK & Ire­land
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Scaf­fold In­nov­a­tion at Hinkley Point C

Home / 2022  / Scaf­fold In­nov­a­tion at Hinkley Point C

Scaf­fold In­nov­a­tion at Hinkley Point C

Design­ing, build­ing, and in­stalling a sus­pen­ded scaf­fold for a cli­ent, when some said it could­n’t be done: it’s all part of the job when you’re part of the team at KAEFER UK & Ire­land

The scaf­fold, needed to en­able the weld­ing the equip­ment hatch onto the nuc­lear is­land in­ner con­tain­ment liner at Hinkley Point C, used a be­spoke design min­im­ising the need to work at height. “We de­signed the scaf­fold so it could be built on ground level and then be lif­ted into po­s­i­tion, fo­cus­ing on build­ab­il­ity,” ex­plained Thomas Hurst, KAE­FER’s Tem­por­ary Works Co­ordin­ator and De­signer for the Hinkley Point C site.

Our innovative design allowed for critical path works on site to be replanned, allowing for early installation of the liner, a significant milestone for the client. The site team then ensured the scaffold was erected safely and professionally in a challenging reactive environment.

Thomas Hurst, KAE­FER's Tem­por­ary Works Co­ordin­ator and De­signer for the Hinkley Point C site

KAEFER‘s abil­ity to be flex­ible to sup­port the cli­ent al­lowed com­ple­tion of the scaf­fold over a Bank Hol­i­day, en­sur­ing the cli­ents pro­gramme could be met. The hatch was ori­gin­ally in­ten­ded to be in­stalled prior to the 47m wide ring be­ing lif­ted into po­s­i­tion but do­ing so would have delayed a crit­ical ele­ment of the build pro­ject. “We pro­posed the sus­pen­ded scaf­fold design to al­low the pro­ject to con­tinue on sched­ule, other con­tract­ors had said it could­n’t be done but we were con­fid­ent we could design and build a safe, ac­cess sys­tem to meet the cli­ents’ re­quire­ments,” said Thomas.

The fi­nal in­stall­a­tion of the scaf­fold util­ised the worlds largest crane, Big Carl, to lift the sus­pen­ded scaf­fold which was erec­ted at ground level ap­prox­im­ately 270 metres away, and to place it into po­s­i­tion 35m high in the liner.

As well as provid­ing ac­cess solu­tions at Hinkley Point C, in­dus­trial ser­vices spe­cial­ist KAEFER is re­spons­ible for de­liv­er­ing the con­tain­ment liner coat­ings: sur­face pro­tec­tion for con­crete in the in­ternal build­ing rooms of both nuc­lear re­act­ors, and sup­ply­ing high grade steel duct­ing for the nuc­lear is­land HVAC sys­tems.