Construction World March 2016

PROJECTS AND CONTRACTS

in Middelburg ULTRAMODERN FACILITY

As a customer-focused company that continuously invests in improving service delivery, Babcock has completed an ultramodern, bespoke sales, parts and service dealership in Middelburg to offer responsive regional support and service across Babcock’s entire construction equipment product range. Babcock’s bigger offering Babcock is the exclusive regional distributor for leading international brands and equipment including Volvo and SDLG construction equip- ment, Tadano mobile cranes and Winget concrete handling machinery. Babcock was also appointed the official distributor of Terex Trucks in October 2015 following the truck company’s acquisition by Volvo earlier last year. With an extensive history in sales and servicing of construction equipment to the mining and construction sectors in South Africa, Babcock has had a presence in the Middelburg region for the last 16 years and has outgrown two previous premises in this period. The new Middelburg facility was purpose-built to assist and support customers in the region and is expected to service the coal mining fields of Middelburg and surrounds for at least the next 20 years. Highly specialised The estimated R100-million yellow-metal facility covers 30 000 square metres and features highly specialised and unique design elements as well as modern, high-end finishes. Babcock’s project manager Michael de Weijer, who was instru- mental in managing the construction of the new facility, says that the ergonomic design was conceptualised around the flow of equip-

ment, parts and people to ensure efficient operational and communica- tion management. Accordingly, the administrative open-plan offices are located across two floors. The workshop offices on the first floor overlook the 12 work bays and service facilities area comprising the component workshop, spray booths, wash bays and boiler workshops. All heavy equipment operation and parts are on a single level enhancing safety when handling these machines and heavy parts. The workshop area The primary workshop covers an area of nearly 2 000 m 2 under roof and includes 12 nine-metre wide work bays in two adjoining rows of six bays, all serviced by overhead gantry cranes. All bays have a ceiling of 9 m under hook, making it possible to service mega trucks, such as the rigid and articulated dump trucks from Terex Trucks, bucket up. All the workshop bays, component workshop, spray booths, wash bays and boiler shop bays drain into a common settling tank and oil separation facility before being discharged into municipal waste. A further custom feature in the workshop is the railway tracks linking the wash bays to four workshop bays, specifically for tracked excavators and chain link front end loaders so that this equipment with high point loads does not damage the site hardstand. The workshop parts requirements are served by the parts ware- house, connected by a three metre-wide east/west passage that runs along the entire length of the workshops and warehouse. The ware- house has increased from 280 m 2 at the previous premises to 1 615 m 2 to accommodate an increase in inventory and stock lines required. This increase is largely attributed to regional growth and parts for the new Terex Truck range. With extra stacking space of up to 5-6 m, larger “When we increased our product line to include the Terex Truck range with a payload of up to 100 tonnes, we knew we had the facilities to bring these trucks to our customers.”

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD MARCH 2016