Britain’s new aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, set sale from Rosyth for the start of their sea-trials on 26th June 2017. Generation’s mission was to supply scaffolding to support the construction and fitting out of the UK’s first Supercarrier.
Generation was the primary access and scaffolding supplier, providing our partners the Ship Support Services, a JV between Pyeroy (WGIS) and Cape Industrial Services with over 5,500 tons of scaffolding equipment.
It is hard to understand the scale of the Supercarrier until you are up close to it. The HMS Queen Elizabeth is longer than the Houses of Parliament and taller than the Niagara Falls. Inside the ship, specially designed handheld navigation devices help crew and workers find their way around. One UK shipyard was not large enough to house the construction. The solution was to build it as six modules across Glasgow, Appledore in Devon, Hebburn in Tyneside, Birkenhead in Merseyside, and Portsmouth before being assembled and completed at Rosyth in Fife.
The project size, complexity and multi-site location made Generation the perfect scaffolding supply partner. With the largest supply of European Standard compliant scaffolding hire and sale stock and its UK wide branch and distribution network Generation could guarantee a constant supply of scaffold to the four main build and assembly yards.
Generation made over 4,000 deliveries including a range of Aluminium products and their Genlok System Scaffold, supplying over a million pieces of scaffolding and 14.5 million feet of scaffolding tube. Laid end to end it reached 2,718 miles, the same as travelling from Land’s End to John O’Groats three times.
Transported via Generation’s haulage fleet, the team managed a 100% delivery rate on-time with the correct scaffolding supplies. Our partners lost no time through a lack of the correct access and scaffold equipment being available. With a complex supply-chain none of this would have been possible without the full commitment of our partners, fellow suppliers and the Generation team.
It has been a privilege to be part of the construction of the back bone of our Nation’s naval force for years to come. We wish the crew the best of British as they set sail.
Share on social media:
