Arqiva – Orkney, Scotland

Client: Arqiva
Project length: 5 Years
Project value: £26k (Part of a £4.5m project)
Completion date: September 2019
HF divisions involved: Comms

Brief project description:  Cew telecoms street works pole & cabinet installation on the Orkney islands for Smart Meter, project ran by Arqiva for the DECC.

Project Challenges: With 20+ years in the telecoms industry new installations are not uncommon for HF Comms, however building these sites on the islands always presents unique challenges. The biggest issue is that resources are limited and it can be difficult to source materials, plant machinery & subcontractors and any deliveries to site take a minimum of 5 days.

For this particular site we ordered all materials in advance which meant our engineers had everything required for the build before they travelled to the island. Transporting the pole and cabinet was the next big challenge, this is something that Arqiva usually arrange, however we engaged Northward Ltd to do this for us and they also had a hi-ab on the island so were able to land both the pole and cabinet for us when the time came.

We usually do the civil works for these sites ourselves however sourcing the various plant for this job proved difficult as there were only limited machines available. We engaged Andrew Sinclair Ltd for these works and they carried out the excavations and concrete pour. We re-attended site the following week to land the pole and give the DNO access to the cabinet to complete the jointing, Andrew Sinclair were also on-site to complete the backfill and tar re-instatement. All works were complete in time, within budget and with no issues.

“We were happy to engage with HF on their first SW pole build on the Orkneys, works were well co-ordinated and ran smoothly, not always the case when resource and plant are limited, job well done.”