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Modular Construction

Preassembly is nothing new for civil engineering

The article on use of pop up factories to construct small modular reactors (NCE, last month) has me very interested but somewhat surprised. I am now almost 91 years old and clearly have not worked for some time, but my surprise is that, at the age of 26, I had my first experience of site factory work.

SMRs: Modular construction in civils has been around for decades

At the time I was a site engineer working for John Mowlem at the Esso Refinery at Fawley, near Southampton.

We were constructing a new major loading/offloading deep water platform. There had to be a very long pipeline and road access from the major refinery area. This was constructed using thousands of prestressed piles and many hundreds of pipe support trestles with vehicle road supports. These were precast frames in two levels that slotted over jetty piles and many other units and had precast road sections. Pipes were in lengths to cover a great many frames and were lifted in when frames were set.

All these were fabricated in a factory onshore. There were also several mooring “isles” on piles and a control “office” at the corner where the access from onshore turned 90°.

I have overseen preassembly on various other projects since then, so the solution offered for the SMR construction is certainly not new.

Derek Emes (M), derek.emes@outlook.com

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