Econ Group’s reactive maintenance team received a call early last month to attend a major incident on the A3 in Surrey. A lorry had struck an overhead highways structure on the northbound carriageway and it had become unsafe and a hazard to the public. The A3 had been closed following the accident during rush hour commute and traffic in the surrounding area was gridlocked as vehicles tried to find another route home.

“I was called around 18.30hrs by our valued client FM Conway Ltd to inform us of a time critical situation on the A3. The road had been closed for a number of hours whilst the vehicle involved was being recovered. The duty structural engineer had deemed the overhead information board unsafe and a risk to the public. It was my job to dispatch our on call resources to the incident, you can’t keep one of the main arterial roads into central London closed for long” Commented Stephen Ralley – Econ Group Duty Manager

Econ Group dispatched a response vehicle to the incident and was on scene within one hour. This highly skilled team fed further information back to our on call management team. The plan was then formulated to dispatch further resources including 13t Excavator, Low Loader, RORO Lorry, and mobile crane to lower the overhead structural to the floor in a controlled and steady manner. Further resources arrived at the site just before midnight and the duty manager completed all necessary paperwork including Risk Assessment, Method Statement and Safe System of work.

“On looking at the information presented to us and discussions with our client, the safest and most effective way of getting this down to the ground safely was securing it to the lifting equipment on the mobile crane, our response team then had to hot cut the legs of the structure. Once the legs had been cut, it was lowered to the ground in a steady and controlled manner. Once on the ground we were able to cut the structure up into loadable sized sections and clear it from the road with our excavator”

Our team completed the project just after 03.30hrs in the morning. All materials and equipment were off the A3 by 04.00hrs. The road opened up to normal traffic just before 05.00hrs and the morning commute.

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“There are not many companies out there in the industry that are able to offer our specialist enabling works skill set at such short notice and that’s why our clients come back to us time and time again. We have very good reputation in this field. We helped our client reopen the A3 within 12 hours of the initial incident. We have dedicated teams on call around the clock 24/7, 365 days a year. I am really proud of being part of the reactive maintenance service”

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If you would like to know more about how Econ Group can help with your reactive maintenance or incident response service, Please call our office on 0208 300 2916. Our out of hours call out number is 07836 673771.

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