Trade Journals for the Concrete Industry

A combination of prefabricated chamber rings and multistage in-situ concrete casting has been standard building practice in UK until now. This was a hugely time-consuming process that involved making the channels in the manhole as well as creating an in-situ concrete base in addition to the precast components. On top of the initial effort needed to provide and use the concrete at the construction site, this conventional procedure also, more importantly, leads to significantly longer completion times for each manhole. The precast concrete plants only provided standard building components such as chamber rings and cover slabs. Most of the concrete was delivered from the ready-mixed concrete plants to be able to manufacture the additional concrete layer for the channels and, more importantly, the concrete surround around the entire structure, measuring up to 150 mm thick. Europe has since been using a monolithic manhole base with precision-fit channels and sufficient wall thickness – this innovation has led British manufacturers to question the conventional costly and time-consuming process. Thanks to their Perfect manhole base manufacturing system in operation at their site in Leek/Staffordshire, the CPM Group has paved the way for implementing a modern approach that uses innovative precast concrete. It was very well received among all companies from the building site logistics sector even in its very first year on the market. Not only was this positive for the CPM Group, it was also a deciding factor when it came to Stanton Bonna using the Perfect system at their Ilkeston, Derbyshire site to also manufacture formwork-hardened individual bases for DN1200 and DN1500 mm manholes.