Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station on the River Tees in the north east of England has a capability to supply electricity to over 2 million UK homes.
The plant implements statutory outages at intervals to carry out planned maintenance work, which can’t be done while the reactor is at power.
The nuclear industry demands all the features of an industrial site, plus extremely high levels of safety, security and availability.
The station licence owner appointed EQUANS to coordinate the outage works, site accommodation and facility management for the duration of the project at Hartlepool.
The most recent statutory outage in Q1 2022 involved a large number of contractors working at the plant. During this time they required high quality modular site accommodation for office, storage and welfare needs.
An additional requirement on this project involved placing the modular units in a car park that had not previously been utilised for site accommodation. That meant there was no existing power supply.
All staff working on site had to be Counter Terrorist Check (CTC) cleared and have valid training records for their particular skillset.
Solution
EQUANS has highly experienced multidisciplined teams that provide hard and soft FM services, specialist maintenance and major projects to the UK’s fleet of eight nuclear power stations.
The EQUANS long standing partnership with the nuclear industry is founded on its professionalism, reliability and safety-first approach. Hartlepool is one of the eight nuclear power stations within the EQUANS remit.
Algeco is the preferred partner to EQUANS for site accommodation and temporary building hire, and has a proven track record of providing complex accommodation solutions for large scale shutdowns like on this project.
With a long track record of working with Algeco, EQUANS created a strategy for the site accommodation at Hartlepool. It involved Algeco supplying 90 bays of modular site accommodation for contractors working on the 18-week scheduled planned maintenance programme.
The core proposition from Algeco was based on the market leading Moduflex system, which was used for high quality temporary offices on site.
Alongside this were a range of Algeco temporary buildings for hire, including modular canteens, changing rooms, toilets and shower blocks. The layout encompassed small, complex blocks of 2 on 2, 3 on 3, and 4 on 4 to house individual contractors so that they could have their own workspace, whilst making optimum use of available car parking space.
In addition to this, Algeco generators, fuel management and fuel tanks, jackpad foundations, 14 effluent tanks, lockers, white goods and all other furniture to kit out the units as well as smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, bespoke entrance steps and emergency lighting were supplied.
The full turnkey modular accommodation was positioned over a large car park, along with the additional car parking area that did not have existing power supply.
Algeco co-ordinated power supply with Speedy Hire to ensure that all the cabins were fully operational from the day they were handed over to the various different contractors.
The Algeco branch in Scunthorpe delivered the units to Hartlepool to an agreed schedule.
Results
The solution proposed by EQUANS and Algeco created an effective turnkey solution for housing each of the different contracting companies, so that they could have their own workspace during the planned outage at Hartlepool
Andy Brind, Key Accounts Team Director at Algeco, said: “Due to the nature of the location and our customer’s needs, the works involved to ensure a safe, successful and compliant installation was very complex. This involved delivering the 90 bays in strict sequence, and to the timeline in order to ensure that the rest of the installation ran smoothly. We are pleased to report that this full turnkey solution was installed exactly on time for EQUANS.”
Mark Gibson, Senior Procurement Manager at EQUANS, said: “Hartlepool was a complex project that required a safe and methodical approach. The Algeco team was able to cope with this requirement and deployed the 90 bay modular accommodation exactly to schedule. The whole process ran like clockwork and our team were kept up to date with progress throughout.”
He added: “The things that really stand out for me about the Algeco team are many, but our longstanding partnership and aligned company culture are two important ones. The range of options offered by Algeco and quality of their accommodation meant that we were confident of meeting all the needs of the contractors at Hartlepool.”
Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station is now back in operation and supplying clean energy to millions of homes and businesses.
