Unilever

Project Jewel Unilever at Burton on Trent, East Staffordshire, England.

Construction of a new warehouse facility 65000 sq. ft and refurbishment of an existing 65000 sq. ft warehouse. The works were carried out at an existing food processing plant working within a live environment. This project was one of a series of projects carried out for Unilever at their Burton on Trent facility to provide increase manufacturing capacity.

This project relates to a programme of works, which is still ongoing, and the element of the works covered by this case study is for the refurbishment and upgrade of existing office and factory facilities in a Food & Beverage environment, working in clean conditions. The factory remained live throughout the works and all activities were closely coordinated to allow Unilever to operate “business as usual” operations for the duration of the project.

Close collaboration with the Client and their team was crucial in ensuring that the project was able to be conceived and delivered successfully. We demonstrated our full understanding of the project to the Client and their team through the use of a 3D animation, showing the interactivity being working regions and setting out our intentions to manage safe working. The animation also demonstrated the build sequence and progress linked to the proposed contract programmes, and how we could maintain business as usual operation for the client. This proved helpful, not only in demonstrating our understanding, but in highlighting potential pinch points in advance for the whole team and providing transparent justification for specific project milestone identified on the proposed programme. This level of transparency continued throughout the project, with regular team meetings involving Client Teams and our team including Design and Services Managers and our specialist supply chain. These sessions and meetings were very much focussed on presenting current status, and looking ahead to remove blockers and obstacles, and to deal with live events and changes that influenced the project.

Key Challenges:

• The site is on an industrial estate in Burton on Trent, next to a busy access road, so there were constraints around management of vehicles, logistics and deliveries to avoid causing traffic build up or accident risk adjacent to the entrances.
• There was a large area for our site compound, however there was a need for factory staff to share access to other parts of the campus, and there was a need for careful consideration of segregation, signage, plant movement protocols and site cleanliness and housekeeping to remove risks of trips and falls and being mindful of the clean environment within the buildings.
• We also needed to ensure that we maintained access for Unilever deliveries, as we shared the main gate access to our site compound.

Project Works include:

• The construction of a new build of a 63,000 sq. ft warehouse facility.
• The refurbishment of an existing 63,000 sq. ft warehouse.
• The project included a large number of Contractor Designed elements covering groundworks, drainage, structural and secondary steel, HVAC to existing areas, electrical upgrades to offices and interfaces with the other projects covering Cladding and Roofing, White Walling, Walk On Ceilings, Industrial Doors, Pedestrian Doors, HVAC to new areas and full electrical design.
• The project was managed under the auspices of our ISO9001; 14001 and 18001 (now 45001) Business Management System.

This project is currently live and being completed by our UK Construction team in Birmingham #TEAMmac

Unilever