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The winner from our recent Concrete Heavyweight Competition has now been notified. Thank you to all those who took part in the competition. To find out more about why “Concrete can’t be beaten” please click here.

Two of our most frequently accessed online tools – our Structural Design Calculator and our Material Cost Calculator - have been updated to make it even easier to select the most appropriate and economical sewer pipeline solution. At the same time we are launching a downloadable App, providing access to the Calculators for people on the move, available from the Apple Store and the Google Play store.

To help designers and installers select the most economical buried pipeline solution the Concrete Pipeline Systems Association (CPSA) has updated two of its key online resources: the Structural Design Calculator and the Material Cost Calculator. The Association has also introduced a downloadable web App, to enable users to replicate the online calculators on portable devices.

The changes to the online calculators have been introduced to further simplify the calculation process and to improve the user experience.

The CPSA’s Structural Design Calculator is a source of expertise for the structural design of concrete sewers. It simplifies concrete pipeline design calculations based on the recommendations in the standard BS EN 1295-1 Structural design of buried pipelines under various conditions of loading. The Calculator takes into account external design loads, pipe crushing strength and bedding factors to offer advice on the type of bedding to use.

The recent updates now enable the Structural Design Calculator to automatically select the correct factor of safety used in the calculations according to pipe size and construction, based on British Standard BS 9295: 2010. In addition, the results table produced by the Structural Design Calculator can now be exported to a pdf file, an Excel file and to the CPSA’s Material Cost Calculator.

The Material Cost Calculator was developed by the CPSA to help designers and installers estimate the material costs for concrete pipe installations using different bedding designs and to make a comparison with plastic pipes. The calculation includes the cost of bedding, infill material and that of the pipes, seals and fittings.

Updates to the calculator give users the option of entering their own values for the bulk density of excavated material and granular backfill, or the default values can be used if project-specific data is unavailable. In addition, further data has been added to the results table to illustrate how the calculations are put together, for example it includes a value for the depth of initial granular backfill for Class S installations. As with the updated Structural Design Calculator, results can now be exported to a pdf file and an Excel file.

To check out the online calculators go to:

www.precastdrainage.co.uk/calculators/structural-design

www.precastdrainage.co.uk/calculators/material-cost

In addition, a new web App replicates the online calculators and has been optimised for portable devices. The App is available from the Apple Store and the Google Play store.

https://www.precastdrainage.co.uk/calculator-app

The winners from our Concrete Heavyweight Competition have now been notified. Thank you to all those who took part in the competition. To find out more about why “Concrete can’t be beaten” please click here.

The Concrete Pipeline Systems Association has been shortlisted as a finalist in two awards categories at this year’s Ground Engineering Awards:

The Concrete Pipe Lifter has been shortlisted in the Health and Safety category. This innovation was introduced by CPSA members to improve site safety and speed up installation by removing the need for operatives to be on the back of vehicles while offloading deliveries and within the trench during installation.

https://www.concretepipelifter.co.uk

The Circular Precast Concrete Manhole Base System has been shortlisted in the Sustainability category. The precast concrete monolithic base unit is supplied complete with channel and benching and predetermined combinations of inlet(s) and outlet. The environmental advantage of this solution is that it uses less concrete, particularly the need for a concrete surround is eliminated plus the design of a high performance watertight joint reduces the risk of leakage. An annual embodied carbon saving of over 22,000 tonnes of CO₂e is estimated in the UK due to the elimination of the concrete surround if all manholes manufactured by members of CPSA changed to the new precast base system. Even more carbon can be saved through the reduction in pumping energy arising from the elimination of water infiltrating into the drainage system from leaking manholes.

https://www.precastdrainage.co.uk/page/innovation-concrete-manholes

This year saw a record number of companies entering the Ground Engineering Awards and editor Claire Smith commented:

“The range of projects, initiatives and innovations within this year’s entries clearly demonstrate that the UK geotechnics industry is very active and growing, which is great to see. The volume of entries this year means that making it onto the shortlist for the 2016 event was no mean feat.”

The winners will be announced on 30 June 2016 at a lunchtime ceremony at the Hilton Park Lane, London, where over 800 of the industry elite will join together.

The winners from our questionnaire and prize draw have now been notified and the £100 gift cards collected. Thank you to all those who took part in the survey, the information collected will prove useful in improving the services that CPSA and it's member companies offer in the future.