FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

Surrey combined. The DTP separates out the waste matter from the water, sand, grit, and aggregates. The waste matter gets sent for recycling to a third party. Everything else is reused either in our aggregate recycling process, or in our own concrete production. But I wasn’t entirely happy with the way that we were managing our concrete production. So, I used the opportunity offered by the new DTP to modernise our concrete production by introducing some innovation there, too. In 2004, we bought a small fleet of mobile concrete production vehicles known as Volumetric Mixers. The problem that we were addressing with the Volumetric Mixers was this. The traditional way to deliver ready-mixed concrete, by lorry, meant that the customer paid the same amount whether they wanted a full load or not. As far as the supplier was concerned, they had to mix the stuff, put it on a lorry, and send it out – so a half load cost them pretty much the same as a full load, and that’s what they charged for. A Volumetric Mixer, however, carries all the same ingredients but only mixes them as required – and it can deliver up to twelve different mixes. That reduces the number of wasted journeys dramatically, and of course it reduces our costs. And if you’re using 50,000 cubic metres of concrete a year – which we do – that makes a big difference. Most importantly, however, it allowed us to use our own recycled aggregates back into our concrete, saving money, and increasing efficiency: a real virtuous circle. Technology-led innovation was transforming the output end of our Cleansing business (recycling waste into useable materials), but it was also transforming the input end, too. While Jon was working on the DTP, Tristan Miles, (a young man Jon had recruited a couple of years before, who would take over as Director of Cleansing when Jon

Our Drainage Treatment Plant was the first of its kind in the UK, and it is still the best. We can deal with up to 30,000 tonnes of gully waste each year. We screen out the aggregates, sand, and water, and re-use them in our own production processes.

112