News
Sustainability in action
Steel’s sustainability has been demonstrated on a recent collaboration between Caunton Engineering and Honda Manufacturing.
At Honda’s main UK site in Swindon, a steel-framed warehouse was dismantled, stored for one year and then re-assembled on a new site.
“All of the original main frame hot-rolled structural steelwork was re-used, even the existing column base plates,” Tony Goodman, Caunton’s Contracts Manager said.
“We thought the cold rolled items may have been damaged, but they were even re-useable,” he added.
Honda originally used the 20m x 40m building as a storage warehouse, however during some facility realignment the structure was un-bolted, taken down carefully and stored.
“When Honda decided to re-assemble the structure on a nearby site they contacted us for advice,” Mr Goodman said. “We inspected all the steelwork and because it had been stored and taken down with care we said it wouldn’t be difficult to re-erect it.”
However, with changes in the interim to various aspects of the building codes, and the prescribed change of use for the structure, the original cladding couldn’t be utilised.
But sustainability again came to the fore, as the cladding was despatched to Caunton’s works near Nottingham and used as an internal cladding system.
“The project has been a good example of sustainability in action,” Mr Goodman said. “Steel is like Meccano it can be easily dismantled and turned into something else and we expect more projects like this in the future.”
The re-assembled structure is now on the main route into the Honda site and is the designated Central Receiving Area for all incoming components.