Like Father, like Son.

Fri 24 Mar 2017

Like Father, like Son.

At the relatively tender age of 21 James Dance shows a maturity way ahead of his years and clearly has ambition for his business J&A Groundworks Ltd in which he founded in 2013 in partnership with his father Andrew Dance, who was already a successful business man in his own right, having purchased his first JCB 3C at just 19 years old and has now had over 30 years in the plant and groundworks industry.

James tells a tale which is familiar to so many of us in the game. Having started operating plant from an early age, James gained invaluable experience in the seat before he had even left school. He also had a good basic knowledge of groundwork procedures and techniques which he had attained from working with his father. On leaving school James threw himself into work often accepting the “drive” on anything from 360^oexcavators, 180^o backhoe loaders, rollers and dumpers. During his time working for his father, James operated a number of small Takeuchi mini excavators, a JCB 4CX and a Hitachi EX135 which James described as a great machine and one that almost certainly cemented his loyalty to the brand for the future. In addition James worked for his uncles company Grabloader in Reading operating a wide variety of kit in their recycling quarry.

When the recession bit, the work slowed up and like so many at that time James’s father didn’t have a lot on, so James decided to go out on a self-employed basis. James’s first job on his own was working for a local developer alongside a groundworks contractor who were running their own 6 tonne Doosan excavator, by the end of his first week on site James had become the designated operator for that machine having quickly impressed the company with his operating skills. In 2013 James was presented with an opportunity to carry out a large civil engineering project in Weybridge, Surrey and having looked at the job James asked his father if he would like to come into partnership with him and having said yes to the idea, J&A Groundworks Ltd was founded. James takes up the story, “Having started from scratch I knew things were not going to be easy, I got on the phone and managed to get some credit accounts opened. Most companies were only prepared to offer us between £1-4k per month which on a project valued at over £1 million pounds wasn’t great even though we were only supplying plant and labour”

“The project was to create a large reinforced concrete basement with underground car parking something that we have gone on to become specialists in. The scope of the works included the demolition of an existing building and all recycling of materials on site. This was then followed a cut and fill operation and the formation of a piling mat some 8 metres high. Once the piles were in place excavation of the basement commenced which saw in excess of 400 lorry loads of spoil taken away. We then carried out deep drainage works and formed the basement slab and walls during which time we used around 130 tonnes of reinforcement bar and over 12000 tonnes of concrete! This was a great first job for our business and for this project we hired in a Hyundai R210-9, JCB JS220 and a brand new Hitachi ZX225US which was a cracking machine. This convinced us that investing in our own machines would be the route we would take for our next job”. The company went on to complete a number of jobs in Reading including a large commercial building with all associated infrastructure works and a further 6 basement projects during the following 2 years. As previously mentioned James and Andrew are big fans of Hitachi excavators and as such the growing fleet of machines is dominated by the orange paintwork of the popular Japanese brand. At the moment the company are running 3 models which include 2 x ZX130LCN’s and 1 x ZX85USB, which all sport a very distinctive white painted counterweight with blue corporate lettering. James was keen to give us his thoughts on them saying, “My favourite machine is the ZX130LCN, I may sound a bit biased here but I think it’s the best 13 tonner on the market by a mile! I have spent many hours on this machine and it really is a joy to operate. The performance of the machine is excellent and I simply cannot fault the hydraulics on it, in fact Hitachi hydraulics are the stuff of legends they are that good”.

“Operator comfort is very important to me as an operator; after all we spend half our lives inside the cab so you just want it to be right. The cab on the ZX130LCN has loads of room, great all round visibility and the heated seat is a real nice touch on a cold frosty morning that we only seem to get now once in a blue moon! In all honesty I don’t think it’s as fast as some other machines on the market and possibly slightly underpowered when compared to earlier Hitachi models, but having said that it’s by far the smoothest machine I’ve ever operated, in fact you hardly have to put any effort in when performing fine grading as it’s that smooth through the hydraulics”. James also had high praise for the 8 tonne class ZX85USB saying, “Once again the ZX85USB is a cracking little machine, very smooth in its operation just like the ZX130. The only downside to these machines is that I feel the cab could do with being a bit bigger, as someone with long legs like me would really struggle to use the track pedals, I know it’s a compromise in return for compact radius but it would be good if they could make a bit more room in them somehow”.

“Service from Hitachi is second to none, their regional depot in Reading is only around 10 miles from our yard which really works well for us and offers us peace of mind that they are really close in case of any emergency. We also like the service plans they offer, a flat rate throughout the life of your Hitachi however big the service is really good. I’ll give you an example of how good the service level is. We had a little strange engine noise develop on the ZX85USB not long after we had bought it, we rang the office and there was an engineer on site within 3 hours who sorted the problem and checked over all the pressures and flows to make sure they were correct, you can’t really ask for much more than that and its yet another reason why we are very happy with Hitachi overall and why we will continue to invest in the products”.

Earthmovers caught up with 2 of the machines on one of J&A Groundwork’s sites in Camberley, Surrey, a challenging project worth in the region of £600k. Hidden away behind a large house in a rather affluent part of the town, the team were working on an exclusive development for 3 large houses with basements, with access road and Gabion basket retaining walls on the side of a hill which has required extensive earthworks.

The scope of the works included loading away of stumps from the many trees that were felled, after which the topsoil was stripped and stockpiled for use later on when the houses are completed. A bulk excavation operation followed with an estimated 2500m³of sand dug out, with 2000m³being used in a cut and fill operation. Around 500m³of surplus sand was “mucked away”. The team also installed surface water drainage in the access road linked into 4 metre deep soakaways. Foul drainage was not a straightforward affair either with waste requiring to be pumped up the site over 10 metres in height from a 4000 litre pumping chamber into existing main sewer lines.

At the time of our visit work was progressing on the backfilling of the impressive looking Gabion baskets which were forming the retaining wall on the high side of the site. The ZX130LCN was loading sand into their Thwaites 9 ton dumper which was purchased second hand and had received a new coat of paint. The material was then being placed by the ZX85USB using the traditional British method of attaching the bucket backwards to use like a face shovel which works well in many applications. Since this piece was first written, James has now invested in a Rototilt tilt-rotator for his Zaxis 130LCN.

The other item of plant on the job was the firms Bomag BW90 AD-2 double drum vibratory roller, this elderly machine received massive praise from James who described it as being better than most modern compaction equipment out there today, a real credit to the manufacturer from when Bomag was solely German based.

This was another one of those interesting site visits where the quality of their work and experience shone through and also their passion for a particular brand of excavator, it was easy to see that this father and son team are clearly singing from the same hymn sheet.

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