The Civil Construction and Industrial Service division continues to grow. The activities of the ATB Group in the industrial building sector are further consolidating both in Italy- as the result of having acquired new customers- and abroad- in France and Germany, where joint work with the steel sites of the Riva Acciaio Group is further strengthened. In Italy, the Group has been focused on two project in particular in the last few months.
The first one involves building the foundations of the new oxygen system and the new water treatment system, osmosis area, of the Ferriere Nord plant of the Pittini Group in Potenza. Works began in the first days of last summer and ended in mid-October, and twenty technicians and workers had to be full time present at the construction site. On the other side, the works carried out at the Saluggia Eurex plant, in the province of Vercelli, were of an entirely different nature: the plant, managed by Sogin since 2003, had to be decommissioned.
The technicians of the CCIS division were in charge of finishing the temporary nuclear waste repository, a temporary solution until the Government finds a final measure for storing radioactive waste materials. At the site, ATB is building the reinforced concrete walls and the floor of the repository. «A special structure with a clear 15-meter light with self-supporting REP beams», explains Anastasio Intini, Project Manager, CCIS Division. According to the time schedule, the deadline for completing all works is February 2020.
Meanwhile, the works at the iron and steel plants where ATB have been operating for some time now have required some special and out-of-the-ordinary efforts in the last few months. In Lesegno, Province of Cuneo, the works to demolish and rebuild the foundations of the sizing mill and the rolling mill stands were finished a few days ago. A quite similar work was completed in Cerveno, Brescia, where the foundations of the flying shears and the feeder were also reconditioned. «We started our underpinning job from these job orders», explains Angelo Damioli, Industrial North General Manager of the CCIS Division.
«First, non-destructive demolitions in order to eliminate what had to be fully remade and to keep the existing parts intact». A very similar procedure was also implemented at the Montereau-Fault-Yonne steel plant in France, where preparing the foundations was key so that the foundations of the coil handing foundations, the pump tank, and the welding machine could be built again. At this site, given the depths to be reached and the hydrogeological characteristics of the land (located right at the junction of the Seine and Yonne rivers), «we had to find a technical solution to prevent water seeping: sheet piles and jet grouting, concrete columns made from the ground floor to compact the underlying soil; they were vital for the success of the work», adds Damioli. The downtime period instead was enough to finish modernising the beam furnace at the Hennigsdorf site in Germany.
«In this case we also had to modify the existing foundations, maintaining what had to be preserved, and then rebuilding the new ones», continues the manager. «For all these projects, we had to proceed at a fast pace, with shifts covering the 24 hours of the day». Efficient organisation and excellent performance also at safety level plus an accident rate reduced to zero.
