Heavy Industrial Demolition
Our team is currently ongoing with the demolition of the former Dawes Lane Coke Ovens site, British Steel, Scunthorpe. As part of a Tier 1 COMAH site, the project includes demolition of the preheat tower, former ovens, cooling towers, and various associated biproduct processing facilities. As the site remains live throughout the demolition special consideration was required at planning stages to phase the demolition so as not to impact upon manufacturing and coordinate the works around a methodical decommissioning strategy.
The first phase of the works completed in 2019 included the demolition of the redundant preheat tower and ancillary plant, the superstructure consisted of a steel framed 65m high tower structure with coal hoppers and adjoining conveyor systems. Utilising two 300te mobile cranes, each conveyor section was lifted free and placed at ground level, special care was taken with sections that were to be retained at request of the client. This isolated the tower structure from the remainder of the plant; the tower structure was removed by two explosive demolitions. A design and cutting sequence developed and executed by highly trained and experienced top-men burners prepared and pre-weakened the structure to ready it for the explosives. On each day of the blowdown’s, British Steel staff and neighbouring businesses were evacuated within a 500m radius which involved the movement of more than 200 people and the assistance of the local Police and Humberside Fire and Rescue, including liaison with Network Rail due to the proximity of their infrastructure.
This element of the works would go on to win the “World Demolition Awards 2019 – Explosive Demolition Category”.
From May 2021, our project team remobilised at Dawes Lane to complete the remainder of the demolition. Using cut and lift and mechanical demolition techniques, further structures, two chimney stacks, conveyors, pipe runs, and storage tanks have been and are currently being decommissioned, demolished, and recycled.
Most notably a 150m long oven, constructed of a heavy steel frame, masonry infills, and containing asbestos contaminated materials; due to years of neglect the integrity of the oven was in a poor condition and a controlled remote demolition method was necessary to safely demolish the oven within the live site, containing asbestos fibre release and progressively segregating the materials to maximise recycling.
