After more than a year of trial and development work, Conquip says that it has now removed the last lifting operation in the construction industry where a person needs to stand below a suspended load to operate the equipment.
Conquip has been working with Balfour Beatty and Select Plant Hire since summer 2023 to design, manufacture, test and trial a new set of accessories that enable the suspended skip to pour concrete accurately without any manual assistance from operatives.
The new attachments for Conquip鈥檚 concrete skip are:
- an extended flow gate handle, to control the pour from a safer distance, keeping operatives away from the suspended load
- hose guide and insert to position the hose during a pour
- a Bauer connection to switch between different hose lengths, eliminating manual refitting.
The attachments can be used individually or in conjunction with each other, according to site-specific requirements.
聽Conquip first released a concrete skip without bale arm in 2017. This version featured lifting chains providing an alternative, two-point lifting option as well as the concrete skip with bale arm.
Over the last 18 months to two years, says Conquip, Tier 1 contractors have increasingly specified the without-bale-arm variant, although both types are still in use in the industry.
聽Daniel Critchley, chief operating officer at Conquip Engineering Group, said: 鈥淲e work closely with main contractors to continually improve our equipment, ensuring every item is best-in-class. As well as designing and manufacturing our products and solutions in-house to make sure that the range solves customer challenges, we create and provide resources and technical support to ensure equipment is used for the right purpose, by competent, trained operatives.
聽鈥淥ur development partnership with Balfour Beatty, and Select Plant Hire, part of Laing O'Rourke, has led the best outcome to improve the safe use of concrete pouring equipment and we welcome any comments from our customers as they start to use these new attachments.鈥�
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