Cycling proficiency

Pearce Construction managing director Rob Bradley confesses to having experienced a "moment of terror" when he found out Pearce had won the contract to build the new Welsh National Velodrome in Newport.
This was not because the company had won the contract; it was because of the size of the gap between Pearce's price and the bids submitted by the four rival contractors. They were all higher, ranging from 2% to 5% more.
That might be an acceptable difference on a pure design-and-build project, but here the outline scheme had already been well defined, a scenario that would normally result in a much closer bunching of submissions.
However, Bradley's discomfort was short-lived. "After the initial moment of terror, we realised that ours was the winning bid for a good reason: the steel framework designer had come up with a quicker construction programme."
Time advantage
Pearce also had the advantage of time as it had signed up to a 46-week build period, whereas its competitors said they would take more than 70 weeks.
The difference did not worry Bradley. "Our sequences were always going to be quicker," he says. "We'd been told that the client expected more than 70 weeks, but we've done a lot of this sort of work and knew that 46 weeks was on. Failing would have been costly, as the delay penalty was £6,000 a week so a 10-week overrun would have burnt a £60,000 hole in our profit."
Initially, Pearce had missed the boat on the project drawn up by Newport City Council and submitted to the Sports Council for Wales for £7.5m of lottery funding. But after one bidder dropped out, Pearce was invited to come in at the last minute. "We were a late addition to the tender list," says Bradley. "However, the estimating department still had six weeks to price it and our bid was submitted in March 2002."
Biggest innovation
Pearce used that period to value engineer the client's concept design. The biggest innovation was on steelwork design. Site manager Bruce McMahon says: "We made it more efficient by reducing the height of the building by putting a crank in the steel roof trusses. It was a joint innovation between Hyder Consulting and ourselves."
A second cost-saving move resulted in reshaping one of two ramped outlets for the evacuation of the central area in an emergency, by adding a tunnel to take people below the banked cycle track.
Pearce's final £7.6m bid won the day by a comfortable margin. The bid included £447,000 for the wooden track, which the client specified would be designed and overseen by a specialist in this field, Ron Webb.
But the price was still a long way north of the client's go-ahead figure and Pearce had to take a further £420,000 off to hit the client's budget.
"That was a big number," recalls Bradley, "especially as we had already been so competitive to start with. But by changing the specification of the wall cladding, further value engineering on steel work and making the building smaller at the amenity end, we got there."
With the final price of £7.13m agreed, work started on site on 14 October 2002, with a completion date set for 1 September 2003. Work got under way with more than 400 piles being sunk to transform the soft ground into a workable base.
"The whole building had to be piled, including the internal slab, so that it wouldn't sink," says Bradley.
Next came the pile caps with the steel frame being bolted on to the caps. Conder, the specialist steelwork fabricator, built and installed the 75m trusses that span the Velodrome's roof (62m wide and 110m long). It also supplied 600t of steelwork in a contract valued at £750,000. The wide-span trusses were the largest ever manufactured at its Burton-on-Trent production base. Each one weighed in at more than 15t.
On site, Conder installed 3m-wide bases for each of the feet of the cranes so they remained stable and were able to lift the large trusses.
Site conditions called for the use of tracked cherry-pickers to handle the components forming the semi-circular end structures of the oval banking.
Webb's specifications called for a tolerance of ±2mm in the level of the steelwork on which the outer edge of the track's wooden trusses would rest. The standard tolerance for construction steelwork is ±10mm, so Condor provided an on-site final adjustment capability in the design of the beam seating.
The completed Velodrome has a 250m wooden track with semi-circular banked curves at each end to enable cyclists to rush around the corners at full speed. Although it will be used mainly for training, there is seating for 500 spectators.
Overall, the build process was very smooth and while Pearce got two weeks adrift at an earlier stage, it has subsequently completed the building on time on 1 September.
Additional attraction
Thanks to its indoor fitness facilities, steam room and sauna - all built into the extended front section of the Velodrome - the latest addition to Newport's expanding Spytty Park sporting complex is expected to attract more than just cyclists.
For example, the central area within the bounds of the cycle track can be curtained off and used for either badminton or five-a-side football.
The new Welsh National Velodrome opens its doors to the public on 14 November to host a top European cycle track-racing event. <F0A8>