Blackhill Engineering is building flood defence gates as part of the flood defence system being installed to protect a new flagship patient wing at the NYU Langone Medical Centre, one of the US’ leading university hospitals in New York City. The hospital’s new $150 million Kimmel Pavilion is being designed to meet new standards for flood protection that were introduced in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which in 2012 forced the evacuation of patients at the Manhattan hospital overlooking the East River.

Blackhill was awarded the contract by Flood Control International, also based in Devon and a world leading specialist supplier of bespoke engineered flood defence systems. The Kimmel Pavilion is the largest contract to date for Flood Control International   which has supplied systems for Nairobi Airport, retail stores in Australia and East Anglian coastal towns.

Flood Control International selected Blackhill for its capacity to manufacture four steel `flip up` flood defence gates, the largest one measuring 12m long and 2.5m high, which combined use some 10 tonnes of steel.

 

Due to Blackhill Engineering’s heavy engineering capability and their unique 50 tonne lifting capability in the South West of England, they secured the contract to act as subcontractor for this project.

This is Blackhill’s largest project to date in terms of tonnage, as the work involving over 650 tonnes of steel. Blackhill fabricated the 30 steel caps required for the piles supporting the top of the jetty, and the 48 steel bridge beams spanning the piles, some of which measured up to 14 metres long.

The temporary jetty, which will extend 500m into the Bristol Channel, is designed to shift freight movement of cement, sand and aggregates away from local roads to more sustainable sea transportation. Some 80 per cent of the aggregates needed to build Hinkley Point C will be delivered to site via the jetty.

The contract represents a further breakthrough into the nuclear sector for Blackhill, which has also completed its first contract with Magnox to manufacture equipment to support nuclear decommissioning work at their Winfrith site in Dorset.

The job required high precision machining on large diameter fabricated, double skin tube sections.

These sections are required to be fitted together and to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures to cope with material processing that is carried out in a controlled environment.

Blackhill Engineering completed the machining and then supported the customer through to the components entering service. We are expecting that we will be able to repeat this work in the near future.

The manufacture of the chassis requires extremely tight fabrication tolerances to be maintained on a highly complex space-frame chassis.

Phil Applegarth, Head of Supacat, said “Blackhill Engineering have demonstrated sufficient levels of detail and quality on a highly complex fabrication. This has enabled us to deliver exactly what the British Army and our other overseas customers need.”

More information on the vehicles can be found on the Supacat website.

The Launch and Recovery System (L&RS) was developed by SC Innovation for the RNLI to transport their Shannon class lifeboats.  It facilitates the quick, efficient and safe, launch and recovery of the lifeboats from unstable beaches.

Blackhill Engineering were responsible for manufacturing key components for the L&RS.  Our machining capability enabled us to produce the L&RS components to extremely tight tolerances while adhering to stringent Quality demands and efficient deliveries.  This kept the Project Schedule on time and within budget.

Paul Buckland, SC Innovation Production Manager said “The level of quality and capabilities of Blackhill Engineering have enabled us to ensure on time delivery of the vehicles to the RNLI.  This has undoubtedly meant that the RNLI can deploy the systems in line with their plan.”