AIS Vanguard Drives Efficiency During Ford Dagenham Plant Decommissioning

Tuesday 20 July 2021, 10:27 AM

2 Minute Read

When Ford’s Dagenham plant was decommissioned, AIS Vanguard delivered a £4.2m full plant disposal project in accordance with Ford’s Global Standards – the largest decommissioning project ever carried out at a Ford facility. The project enabled key assets, including the press, tool and assembly shops, to be removed and transported to their new owner, Chinese manufacturer, Harbin Goodtime.

Extensive Scope

AIS Vanguard worked as the Principal Contractor for Harbin Goodtime with full CDM responsibility throughout the ten-month programme. The decommissioning project involved the removal of 83 heavy blanking & forming presses, supporting floor steelwork and all overhead cranes.

It also included removal of all tool room machinery, removal of all assembly cells – including robotics and tooling – and removal of sub-assembly, followed by the export of the required assets to China. The AIS Vanguard team also removed and disposed of any redundant supporting equipment, structural components and incidentals, to clear the buildings to a standard – unspecified at tender – that could meet with Ford’s approval.

 

Wide Ranging Skills and Equipment

With up to 80 AIS Vanguard operatives on site at any one time, the project utilised a variety of heavy lifting equipment from AIS Vanguard’s in-house fleet, including JS450 Hydraulic Gantries, JS400 Hydraulic Gantries, Machine Transfer Bogies, Versa Lifts, Valla Cranes and a Container Reach Stacker.

Preparation for the removal of the equipment included project scheduling, planning, implementation and management of Ford’s standards, along with management of the isolation and lock off procedures.

Removal of the 83 forming and blanking presses involved lifts of up to 120 tonnes each and a total of 6,464 tonnes was safely lifted and handled by the AIS Vanguard team during the project.

Once the equipment had been removed it was further dismantled as required for packing and onward shipping. Shipping was completed by a third party, managed by AIS Vanguard, using standard containers, open top containers and considerable break bulk transfers.

AIS Vanguard also carried out removals to scrap on a fully open book basis, which provided the customer with a flexible approach to making decisions about which items to dispose of to scrap during the decommissioning process.

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