Case Studies

The Three Daws Public House

  The Three Daws Public House Town Pier Royal Pier Road Gravesend   The building dates from 1488 and was serving ales by 1551. This is ... Read more

Creating Value through collaboration

CASE STUDY Creating value through collaboration. The Issues Faced...The repeated failure of ironwork within a busy commuter and bus route was ... Read more

Common Hill Road, West Sussex

To protect the properties from external Flooding using the new Kessel Ecolift XL Duo designed especially for the UK Market . Since 2009 16 ... Read more

Marine Crescent Flooding

Some properties in Goring on Sea, West Sussex were regularly being flooded and something permanent had to be done to alleviate this major and ... Read more

Seven Dials, Brighton

Due to an unacceptable number of road casualties, excessive street clutter and difficulty in cycling through this junction it was decided to ... Read more

Cutty Sark

Taking over 6 years and costing £50 million this was a huge project. Epitomising the great age of sail, this last remaining Tea Clipper is a ... Read more

Headwall Grilles, Rye East Sussex

A bespoke solution was required in Rye to protect two river outlets complete with outlet valves. The area around the valves had to be clear of ... Read more

Olympic Park

When, in July 2005, London was announced as the winner of the Olympic bidding process to host the 2012 Games it started one of the most expensive, ... Read more

Channel Tunnel & Rail Link

The Channel Tunnel runs beneath the English Channel and is 31 miles long, linking Folkestone in Kent with Coquelles near Calais in France via a rail ... Read more

Dartford Bridge

Dartford crossing consisted of two tunnels, one North bound, the other South bound. In 1990 the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (known more commonly as ... Read more

Faslane Navy Base

Faslane was expanded in the 1980s when the decision was taken by the British Government to develop Trident. Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde ... Read more

Dartford Bridge

Project Year: 1991

The Project
Dartford crossing consisted of two tunnels, one North bound, the other South bound. In 1990 the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (known more commonly as Dartford Bridge) was commissioned as one of the first ever Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project.


The work would be completed in 1991 and offer a one and a half mile toll controlled river crossing, the first to be built across the River Thames in 50 years, at a cost of £86million.


The Players
Dartford River Crossing Limited, under the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Act 1988 was awarded the PFI construction project and consisted of Atkins, Egis, Skanska and Balfour Beatty. Durey Castings were added to the limited approved supply chain and was asked to cast the gully chute connectors to collect the water from the road surface on the bridge and also to provide the heavy duty gratings to sit above the chutes.


The Products
The gully chutes were required to suit a 600x600mm grating and never existed before that time. A quality assured long lasting design was approved by the contractor and a tight deadline was met with ease. They were supplied and cast into short bridge sections that were fabricated off site. Each complete bridge section contained the steel supports, concrete base, built-in drainage (chute, heavy duty grating and piping), and part of the road surface and was delivered to site ready to be bolted in place with all the other sections to create the total structure. It was the first time this kind of construction had been tried in the UK.


The Postscript
This project was ground-breaking, not only in the way it was fabricated in sections off site but in the selection of never used before products. All supplies from Durey Castings were delivered strictly to the customer’s schedule and amazingly (considering the fact that the chutes were of a completely untried design) every item fitted into the structure with perfect precision. Over 50 million vehicles a year use the crossing and have proved that PFI can be a very successful method of constructing essential structures.