by Nick Drew | Fri 29 Jul 2016
“Down the glen came Whitnell’s men”
As reported in my recent article in Earthmovers Magazine, reservoir construction has become something of a speciality for Colchester based Whitnell Contracts, we visited the site of their latest job last week.
The initial Whitnell team have started this job with the topsoil strip and thanks to some glorious weather the guys were already ahead of schedule on the day of our visit. The job is called Trinity Reservoir Projects, with the operation taking place on two farms, consisting of Searsons Farm & Candlets Farm. The Client is Trinity College Cambridge, with Whitnell Contracts working on behalf of Reservoir Safety Services Ltd on both sites.
Lionel Whitnell’s first team on the job consists of two excavator’s including a Komatsu PC340-7 and the company’s brand new Caterpillar 336F XE machine which is being operated by Chris Squirell. The machine is fresh from its star appearance at the Hillhead mining and quarrying exhibition where it was working on the live demo plot adjacent to the Finning Cat stand.
Two Liebherr dozers were working on the job on the day of our visit a PR 724 and a PR 734 with the smaller model being operated by Steven Mcnally which was working on the topsoil storage heap while the PR 734 was engaged in stripping soil in the field into windrows ready for loading away by the excavators.
Lionel is a big fan of the South African Bell articulated dump trucks and on this job he had 4 of his B30D models working on the topsoil strip with more expected to arrive as the bulk dig gets underway.
The team were putting in some good hours as the hot spell continued starting at 6am and working through to 8pm to get the best out of the conditions!
According to Whitnell's Contracts Manager Trevor Martin the earth works on this job consists of 230,000m3 of top soil strip, clay excavation and compaction and final landscaping. The contract is estimated to take around 4 months to complete, subject to weather.
When completed the two reservoirs will cover a combined area of 105,000m2 with a total water capacity of 320,000m3 making it one of the largest agricultural water storage projects ever undertaken in East Anglia.