Mcalpine's fleet moves in on A1

An expanding workload coupled with the effects of a wide ranging restructuring programme have ensured that the past 12 months have been a busy, and some times frenetic, time for Alfred McAlpine Plant.

It has been a period in which the Wirral-based firm has introduced major changes to the way it services the plant and transport requirements of the Alfred McAlpine Group. They are changes that md John Tull considers were fundamental and necessary to ensure the company's future competitiveness.

'There have been countless improvements and changes since the company established its plant and transport department in the 1930s,' says Tull. 'But few have been as radical as the latest developments. The past few years has see the plant hire industry having to contend with a much reduced work load and significantly lower margins. Our equipment costs have continued to rise while the hire rates are being squeezed to mirror the generally depressed conditions that prevail thoughout the whole of the construction industry.

'It was obvious that things had to change if the business was to have a secure future - and this has led to a very considerable change in emphasis in how the company is now managed. We are no longer regarded as merely a cost centre, but a profit centre that provides the group with the services it needs, while at the same time, achieving a satisfactory return on investment. We are now expected to make more effective use of our assets than ever before.'

Having carried out a full and complete review of its plant at the end of 1992, the company disposed of the older or obsolete equipment that was simply taking up space at the 8ha Cambridge Road plant depot at Elsmere Port. While this clean-out was under way, it adopted a more hard-nosed, commercially-based plant purchasing policy. 'We no longer invest in new equipment unless we are sure that it can command a good hire rate and achieve high utilisation figures,' says Tull.

'The other side of the equation is that we keep a much tighter control on our costs. Our new procurement policy, coupled to the significant changes in both usage and operating methods that have occurred with plant and equipment over the last decade, have had a major impact on the fleet holding. We still operate an extensive range of equipment to meet the requirement of the McAlpine Group, but its size has been reduced from the levels of the 1960s and 1970s.'

Tull clearly believes that the changes initiated within Alfred McAlpine Plant are enough to keep the company ahead of the competition well into the next century. His optimism is heightened by the first signs that the group is itself on the road to recovery. And he notes with great satisfaction that the group won a number of major civil engineering projects during the past year, all of which have involved a large plant requirement.

One of the largest, and most complex, is the œ54 million contract for the upgrading of a 21km stretch of the A1 trunk road to a three-lane motorway between Walshford and Dishforth in Yorkshire. An important feature of the 48-month project - a joint venture with AMEC - is that it has produced one of the largest concentrations of articulated dumptrucks ever seen in the UK.

Tull recalls that by the time the contract's 2 million m3 muckshifting operations were in full swing in mid-August last year, there were over 80 adts, 19 Volvo A35s and 60 Cat D400Ds, plus a few Terex and Moxy units, working on the site. In all there were over 150 items of, predominantly Cat, earthmoving equipment on the site, including six 245MEs, five 235s, three 627 scrapers, a lot of D6 and D8 dozers, four new CS-563 soil compactors and the ubiquitous 16G grader. The total on-site plant had a nominal value of œ21 million, and the weekly fuel intake was more than 315,000 litres.

'We literally only had a couple of months to pull together our equipment fleet for the job, so we had to take all the plant we could get hold of within the time frame. It was a massive exercise that would have been much more difficult if it were not for the support and help of Leverton, VME and other main dealers

'We were particularly impressed with the Leverton support package. A Caterpillar job study which showed that the 36t Cat D400Ds would be up to 20% more productive than the smaller 32t units convinced us that this was the way to go. One-way haul distances on the site varied between 0.5km and 14.0km depending on which borrow pit was used, and whether the material was suitable or otherwise.

'That 20% increase in productivity, which was not far short of reality, meant we could do the job with less trucks and excavators, and most importantly, maintain our schedule which on start up was 100,000m3 per week. We considered 36-53t payload rigid dumptrucks, but these were quickly discounted for two reasons. It would have meant a large Bailey bridge over the river crossing and they would not have coped as well as the adts with the variable haul road conditions. The site contains quite marked variations in soil types with Sherwood sandstones to the north and mixed glacial material to the south. It's amazing how quickly everyone on site becomes an amateur geologist,' muses Tull.

As the earth moving season progressed into the autumn and early winter of 1993, Mc Alpine had all the adts working in combination with either the Cat 235 or 245ME excavators. With each adt averaging 65 hours per week, most of the units had clocked well over 1,400km after only three months on the job.

'It is the longest distance we have ever operated artic dumptrucks, and they have all stood up remarkably well to what has been a very demanding application. The 1993 muckshifting season was one of the wettest on record for the region, but we still managed to maintain our target of 100,000m3 per week. In fact we never lost more than a few days of work due to weather.

'To my mind, it has proved beyond doubt why the combination of hydraulic excavator and articulated dumptruck has become the mainstay of the UK's general muckshifting industry,' en thuses Tull.

Tull estimates that during the last year, the firm's on-going investment programme and the integration of plant from AF Budge and McAlpine Services and Pipelines have boosted the total plant holding to over œ25 million. The earthmoving operations new revolve around a fleet of 14-70t hydraulic excavators on wheels and tracks and 23-40t adts. Other equipment includes Cat and Komatsu dozers from 100kW t0 250kW, graders, compactors, 627 scrapers and a fleet of towed boxes converted to hydraulic operation.

The company is also a major supplier of tower cranes, scaffolding and portable accommodation, and also is responsible for purchasing and maintaining the group's 1,000-plus cars, vans trucks and other vehicles. The company currently generates only a small proportion of its œ16 million turnover from outside the parent group. Tull has a number of ideas on this and expects that the external business will eventually produce around 15% to 20% of its income.

With most of the country's large motorway and civil engineering projects completed during the mid-1980s, and the more recent ones consigned to the back burner, Tull says that versatility is the key consideration in the plant market of the 1990s. 'The jobs are generally much smaller and often of much shorter duration than they were 10 to 15 years ago.

'That's why we are buying more excavators and adts. We have proved they are more versatile than scrapers, dozers and rigid off-highway dumptrucks, and they are able to keep going for longer when the weather deteriorates - a not uncommon problem here in the UK.

'Low hire rates and reduced margins are making it increasingly difficult to achieve a satisfactory return on items of general plant such as backhoes, small dumpers and rough terrain fork lifts. It is often more economic for the sites to hire this type of equipment locally.'

'We are looking at a number of possibilities to increase turnover and profit. We are putting a lot of effort into offering both our internal and external customers a complete hire package and we are actively researching new market sectors. Obviously I do not want to say too much about these at the present time but a little lateral thinking is all that is needed.'