Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd

Best practice to save lives

A design improvement pioneered by Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering at Severn Trent Water reduced risk of someone getting impaled on reinforced concrete starter bars. All the wall bars at Sugarbrook storage tank are inverted U-bars and hence have no exposed points.

While improving safety, this design change reduced costs by eliminating the usual need for mushroom caps on the bars. Saving the cost of buying, fitting, maintaining and removing the caps helped pay for the change to U-bars.

This improvement came in response to a fatality on another Severn Trent site, where a worker fell onto the starter bars.

It has several further advantages:

• Eliminates 'borrowing' of bars and consequent risk of loss
• Improves rigidity and alignment of the following wall reinforcement, because the return on the U-bar is tied to the starter bar
• Facilitates easy prefabrication at ground level, minimising need for scaffolding and working at height
• Eliminating traditional bent starter bars leaves more space, is safer, and avoids the need for mushroom protection caps

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