Diamond Floor Sawing
Cutting of Motorway Bridge in to Sections
This
contract was one of the most challenging jobs ever to have been under taken;
our client Costain-Skanksa-Mowlem JV had the problem of removing the centre
section of the M2 motorway bridge in Kent.
This in it’s self doesn’t sound too difficult but when you consider the bridge, which runs over the river Medway and is approximately 50 metres above the water with no crash decking below to catch or hold any cut sections now you will see how complicated the job became.
We
sat down on numerous brain storming sessions with the client, the highways
agency and the river people to discuss how best we could achieve what was
being asked.
After
many meetings the client’s engineers and ourselves decided on a method
of saw cutting both floor and track mounted sawing (see track saw page),
first transverse cut were done using our 72hp diesel floor saw machine,
at the end of each cut we were tasked to cut through the ring beam, which
did not pose any problems for this high torque machine.
On completion of the floor sawing technique a frame was affixed to the structure and our diamond track saws deployed to cut within the framework.
When
the area require for lifting was completely cut with the frame taking the
load, we handed it over to our client for him to lift out and take away.
