HS2 is a new a state-of-the-art high-speed railway that will form the backbone of Britain's transport network. Critical for the UK’s low carbon transport future, it will provide much needed rail capacity across the country and is integral to rail projects in the North and Midlands – helping rebalance the UK economy.
The Skanska, Costain and STRABAG (SCS) joint venture (JV) brings together an industry-leading combination of tried, tested and successful partnerships, world-wide high-speed rail experience and extensive national and regional knowledge.
The huge scale of the HS2 project means the security and health and safety of the construction sites needs to be of the highest standard. It has therefore been essential the site is kept extremely secure.
SCS has entrusted Solar Gates UK and the SOSEC barrier with the security of their HS2 sites. The versatility, ease of use, solar power, quick set up and being portable are all significant benefits of the SOSEC barrier for SCS. The huge volume of works traffic also means each entrance is heavily used 6 days a week, so the barrier needs to be especially reliable.
The SOSEC barriers made an instant improvement to the heavy volume of works traffic entering the site that SCS now have over 20 SOSEC and INSTABOOM barriers securing different entrances across the site. SCS have also secured the conveyor belt bridge, transporting soil and rubble across the site from an over height vehicle strike by using a Wireless GS6. The Wireless GS6detects any over height vehicles and physically closes the lane stopping them from proceeding.
The main entrances for the site have 4 SOSEC barriers that close both sides of the road and create an ‘airlock’ for vehicles to enter whilst their security is checked. This allows for extra site security to be checked. Each barrier has to be completely reliable to allow the system to work.
Being solar hybrid powered they are delivered ready to work and are extremely reliable harnessing the suns energy even on the dark winter days the barriers have been able to fully support and keep the site working. The barriers are controlled by our radio control fob which can operate up to 4 barriers on each fob. For the main entrances this allows each security operative at the gate to operate all four barriers allowing swift entrances and exits for vehicles. The fobs can be used up to 800 meters away.
The SOSEC, INSTABOOM and Wireless GS6 barriers are all fully mobile and can be moved easily when the site requires, meaning no wires or cables. They were delivered ready to work and are up and running in minutes.
Jason French, Security Manager at the SCS site says:
“With the security threat levels changing I could move away from the large CLD gates to amore slick barrier which solar gates provided with their SOSEC INSTABOOM I have been able to improve safety at the access/egress points and speeding up deliveries into site and still provide a robust security plan.
On the day of install, within 10 mins of observing the barriers I could clearly see that straight away this was going to speed up the operations throughout the week, throughout the month. The install was very slick, very quick. Because they are forklift balanced you can move them around and the luxury of being solar powered if the gates location, we can just pick it up and move them. It's in minutes. It’s a pretty slick operation from flash to bang. Its massively increased our ability to get the job done and effectively each day.
So fundamentally in the world of security and logistics it's pretty much made it an extremely safe environment for security and persons, and it's sped up our operations for deliveries into site.”