Intro

Burtonhead Road Power is a 20MW gas fired electricity generation plant. The site is comprised of 10no. 2MW Cummins gas generators. These generators are fed by natural gas and are directly connected to alternators that produce electricity. This electricity is then exported from the site to the local Scottish Power Ravenshead substation. The gas fired generator technology, gas peaking plants, is regarded as the enabling power generation technology to allow the transition from coal and diesel power to wind and solar. The plants are used in times of peak demand and are called on to bridge any shortfalls in supply, such as power outages when the wind is not blowing, or the sun is not shining.

Planning

The first phase of the Burtonhead Road project, like any other, began with the pre-construction phase. This phase is dominated by three main areas, planning, design and procurement. The project that was bought by our client, Terra Firma Energy Ltd, as a ‘shovel ready’ development the outline plan was already established. With it being a ‘shovel ready’ development certain things were already in place such as the electrical connection offer, the gas connection offer and the planning permission granted. Our responsibility, as both the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor, was to review the high level plans that were submitted as part of the initial planning process and create the detailed technical plans that will be used for the construction. The project delivery team also used the planning documents to create the suite of project management documents required to allow the onsite work to begin.

Concurrently to the design reviews, all of the onsite sub-surface investigations took place. The purpose of the intrusive ground investigations was to establish a number of different things. There was a need to know the make up of the ground at specific points on the site as this will determine the load bearing design requirements. Another key part of the investigation was to drill a number of 30m boreholes to establish if there were any unrecorded coal mine shafts below the site area.

Once the details from the initial planning and the intrusive site investigation work had been produced the procurement of the long lead items began, this was to allow the work required to make the site ready to receive the items to take place and ensure project delivery within the proposed timescale.

Construction

The construction of the development is broken into manageable phases to allow for efficient project management. The first phase of construction that has now taken place is the Mobilisation Works (MOB). This package of work has seen a number of things take place to enable the second phase of construction, the Civils phase. The MOB began with the establishment of the construction area, through the erection of the heras fence boundary and site signage to the installation of the site offices and welfare. Once the site had been

established the civils contractor then started the enabling groundworks. This included the breaking out of over 1000Tonnes of reinforced concrete that has been crushed and recycled for use onsite at a later date. A key enabling activity that has also taken place is the onsite utility diversion to clear the area that the gas generators are going to be installed on. This involved exposing the existing sewage, water, electric and gas mains and installing and connecting the new services along the boundary of the site.